Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bryan^H 
Wow. It is a good game(I'm enjoying it), but I don't think it is superior in any way.
For me, the superiority comes from:
- Combat that's actually fun (dragons are boring to fight, combat with a follower is a chore because they are always in the way, combat with any melee weapon really feels the same in the end, and only stealth combat is interesting)
- Voice acting isn't embarrassingly bad (everyone in Skyrim has this vaguely Icelandic/Canadian accent, and most of the acting is barely acting)
- Leveling system is fun and varied (once again, Bethesda found a way to make leveling in an RPG boring and/or a chore, though it's a marked improvement from Oblivion)
- Graphics are both stylized and interesting (Skyrim is simply more of the same for Bethesda, and only approaches good on PC, with the high res mods)
- The main quest is fun (Skyrim's main quest is bland, and often usurped by the more-interesting side quests--I admit both games have boring endings)
- No crippling bugs
- A world I actually want to explore (while certainly Skyrim's world is larger and more explorable in the strict sense, it's boring and uninspired, so I only really care about the experience at the end of the quest that brought me to a new area; indoor zones [keeps/holds/castles/et cetera] are terrible
- Animation is amazing--each frame looks like an awesome panel from a comic book; Todd McFarlane's hand is seen clearly (I don't see how anyone can defend the animation at all in Skyrim, as it's jerky, unnatural, boring, and bugged for too often, including npcs sliding around--the opening seen at the block has at least one instance of this, for example)
Regarding the combat, Gabe from Penny Arcade puts it best:
"The combat in Skyrim is miserable. If games like Bayonetta and God of War are on one end of a spectrum, games like Skyrim are so far on the other end that they have fallen off the spectrum and actually can not even see the spectrum from where they are. It seems like if you want to play a massive open world RPG you have to give up a fun,energetic combat system. The thrill of discovering a cave full of vampires in Skyrim is diminished by the knowledge that once I get in there, fighting them is just going to be a chore."
Again, those are just my thoughts (and PA's Gabe), but for me, Skyrim, like Oblivion, never lived up to the hype or expectations, whereas Kingdoms of Amalur quietly flew under my radar. Best RPG I've played since Borderlands, really (though FF13-2 is on the shelf, so we'll see which one ultimately wins).
