After making my preorder of Skyrim for the 360 (say what you will, I can take it :p), I decided that in honor of such a glorious game, I should have to at least play one of the first TES games ever made. It turns out that Daggerfall is being offered as a free download on the Elder Scrolls website, complete with installation instructions. It’s not that hard to install, easy to make a mistake and have to reinstall, but once you get the hang of dealing with Dosbox it’s a piece of cake (it’s been a while since I’ve played around with Dos, but it’s comparable to riding the bicycles and all that :D).
Gotta’ say, for someone who’s never played TES 1 or 2, even I felt nostalgia upon creating my character and starting the game (could’ve been the old graphics reminding me of Doom though ;)). Like so many others have complained about, the dungeon you start in is somewhat difficult, however, I didn’t have that much of a problem defeating the enemies and eventually finding my way out of that rats maze (pun definitely intended :D). I guess you’ve got to be a little old school to be able to play an old school game, it’s not for total noobs that’s for sure. I could not help but laugh as soon as I saw the actual world itself once I made it through. Staring at a tree and what I think was a bush, the surrounding landscape looked quite sad, to say the least, I now know how they managed to make the game so big, nothing is detailed at all outside. At least the dungeon had brick walls and some basic textures, but outside it’s just flat planes with variations in altitude and a sprinkling of vegetation that looks out of place amongst the raw nothingness. Don’t get me wrong, my respect level was exceedingly high (and still is), but it tickled me a bit to see this, like playing Duke Nukem but with a sword instead of a gun and near infinite roaming capabilities (can I get Verizon way out here? :D).
The towns are impressively large (short draw distance so that’s not hard to achieve BTW), in fact you can easily get lost in them. I didn’t play much past arriving in Daggerfall, I couldn’t allow myself to get that sucked in to a game like that, I may revisit it later if I have some spare time, but for the most part it’s way too big for any sane human being with responsibilities to actually dive into it. If you’re a die-hard fan of TES and haven’t played 1 or 2, I highly recommend taking a little time to explore this game, simply to know where the series has come from and where it’s trying to end up. A lot of people talk about how TES has lost its roots and it’s sacrificing roleplay for graphics, but I say that’s a bunch of bull. Being able to go anywhere and do anything isn’t much fun if you can hardly see what it is exactly you’re going and doing :). Sure, I’ve got quite the imagination on me, but no amount of imagination can supplement for great visuals. Porn is awesome, but if you only watch porn and never have sex, you’ve missed out on 90% of what you enjoy (just an analogy, no offense intended toward anyone).
Oh, and speaking of porn, in Daggerfall, if you select female as your gender, guess what, you get to see titties :D. I was actually a little shocked at the nudity, I know, it’s like one pixel nipples and stuff, but still, for back then, this game is quite risque. I was just tinkering around with characters and decided to see what they did for no clothes, and I’m sad they felt the need to add underwear for later games 
:D. However, this may have been one of the major reasons TES took off like it did, and why people insist the old ones are better, they just can’t stand not having this freedom to go about…well…freely :D.
Anyway, that’s my review of the game so far, I like it a lot, but the price is just too damn high! (timewise)
