The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
One of the towering pinnacles of computer RPGs. Within are hundreds of hours of adventure, most of it satisfyingly scripted and designed. Your experience takes place in a majestic land crammed with inviting secrets, intrigue, danger, and rewards. You'll start as a loin-cloth-clad weakling in a cave and end as a demigod bedecked in magical items, devastating weapons and spells, and the skills to wield them against awesome enemies. Along the way you'll make some friends, but mostly you'll leave a trail of bloody destruction. Skyrim's world is gritty, cold, and dark and it's often hard to discern right from wrong. Almost always the answer is violence.
My previous Elder Scrolls experience was Morrowind, which I called "a masterpiece buried under a mud flow". I'm happy to say that most of the old problems have been overcome in Skyrim. Combat is actually exciting and demands your attention, whether it's aiming your two-handed weapon for a slow, crushing hit, surveying a good spot to rain arrows on a bandit camp, sneaking behind enemies to backstab them one at a time, or leading monsters into an enclosed area where you can incinerate them with fire magic. The right way to play is "survival mode", which forces you to eat, sleep, and keep warm, and severely limits your ability to fast-travel. It's immersive and heart-pounding, though it can make the endgame drag on a bit too long.
Despite its devout commitment to exploratory freedom, if you insist on role-playing as a righteous paladin then you will miss out on some of the best quests. The world of Skyrim wants you to get your hands dirty. Unfortunately, worldbuilding is more broad than deep. I've never been inspired by the world of Tamriel: it's a run-of-the-mill post-Tolkien world with all the usual fantasy genre clichés. The lore is very elaborated in thousands of pages of documents, but I find it almost all skippable. At the end of the day Tamriel is to Elder Scrolls as Forgotten Realms is to D&D: just a bunch of ready-made world stuff in which adventures and stories can take place. That's fine. Elder Scrolls is not The Witcher.
The game systems are many and mostly exciting, and whatever path you choose to take will likely be fulfilling. There are heavyweight and lightweight combat skills, thievery and assassination, many schools of entertaining magic, alchemy and smithing, and loot and money as well as ways to make money. Each system is elaborate enough to keep you occupied, reaping massive combat improvements if you persist. And yet the game practically forces you to avoid over-specialization, as skills max out at 100 and increasing skills is the only way to gain levels. Reached 100? Time to explore a system you've previously ignored, though you can also reset the skill by making it "legendary". Unfortunately the economy is quite broken, as around mid-game I was already filthy rich and stopped worrying about money.
I've played Skyrim for the first time in 2023 and thus could enjoy more than a decade of community modding. I kept the gameplay vanilla but completely overhauled the graphics and UI. The base game looked great in 2011 and is still very playable as is, but mods can make it look like 2020 AAA. One thing mods can't easily fix is the loading screens between the world and locations, as well as the meager scale of "cities" (~15 houses each). It's actually a step back from Morrowind in this respect! Though the game engine hasn't aged well, Jeremy Soule's soundtrack is timeless, gorgeous, and so intrinsic to the Skyrim experience. (He's an awful person, unfortunately.)
Are there bugs? It says "Bethesda" on the cover, so you bet it does. Despite installing a mod that fixes hundreds of them, I still encountered far too many dispiriting quest-breaking and general bugs. They're all fixable with community tips and console commands, but it absolutely pulls you out of the experience. Bugs are easily the worst thing about Skyrim, and easily the worst thing about Bethesda.
And there's general clunkiness. Movement controls can be frustrating: getting stuck on a piece of scenery that seems only 1 mm high is normal and very annoying during tense combat. AI is sub-par: enemies give up far too easily on pursuing you if you just run to another room, and they seem perfectly happy to walk over the dead bodies of their friends you've just murdered as if nothing had happened. Your buddies, too, often act like impulsive idiots and are usually more trouble than help in a mission. If you quicksave in a safe situation then you might load it later to find an enemy right next to you, instant-killing you before you can do anything. And finally: the horse system is 100% frustration.
These and many other annoyances can likely be fixed with mods, but ... modding is an overwhelming rabbit hole. Don't waste too much time tinkering. Play the game! Deal with the bugs! Viva Bethesda!
I recommend Skyrim without reservation. Whatever aggravating problems it has, its ability to delight and surprise, challenge and reward, endures. The time investment is considerable, but the memories you make will last forever. FUS RO DAH!