Is this version any good? Should I play Unity?

[N-Ding the Rice Farmer™]

Back when Daggerfall and Arena were added to Steam, I got this since I like Elder Scrolls and free stuff is cool. I played it for a bit then pussied out before I even made it out of the intro dungeon because waaaaah too complicated. For context, up until then I had only played Skyrim and Oblivion. Now, after having completed Morrowind, I'm looking to try again and see if it'll click this time.

When this was originally added to Steam, I did see a few reviews say that this is supposedly one of the inferior versions of the game. Why? Which version is this and why is it seen as a lesser version? Is it missing content or is it a technical matter?

I also see people hailing Daggerfall Unity as the best way to experience Daggerfall and obviously see the threads and guides on how to install it. Why is it the best option when playing Daggerfall? The name makes me think it's a Unity engine remake or something, but I could be very wrong. Does it add anything? Is it a performance enhancer? What's the main selling point of Unity over vanilla?

[The Great Cornholio]

Its a 25 year old DOS game and one of the buggiest games ever released.. Unity gives it a modern front end and fixes most of the bugs.

Is it missing content or is it a technical matter?

The whole game is a technical matter without Unity.

[Zsrai]

I would strongly suggest just playing DFU over the original. It's a direct port, with just some of the glaring bugs and exploits fixed. It also has an option for smaller dungeons (random ones, not the MQ dungeons), that can be a sanity saver if you're not into 3+ hour dungeon crawls.

[76561199273953362]

If you are into nostalgia or elder scrolls history it is probably best to play vanilla for a brief time to get the feel of it, then install Unity and play it for awhile, and then install the Dream mod if you like the game. There are a bunch of mods worth getting, check Nexus or DF Workshop.

[lonetrav]

Try both and form your own opinion. Like Zsrai said, DFU is a Unity port of classic DF (but still requires classic DF to be installed and uses its files), fixes a few major problems (but also introduces new, different ones - no surprise, it's still a beta game). I can't comment on the option to play smaller dungeons, because I haven't tried it myself - but the DF dungeons can keep you occupied for 3 hours or more and orientation is difficult indeed, and DFU has exactly the same dungeons by default.
To call classic DF "one of the buggiest games ever released" is probably a matter of personal experience and repeating sentiments of others - all I can say is that for me classic DF has only one really severe bug, the so-called "void bug", which is a rare one (at least in my games) and for which an easy workaround is available. At any rate, it's fixed in DFU.

The main differences between DF and DFU are technical (DOSBox emulator vs. Unity frontend), UI (the DFU one is likely to appeal more to players used to today's game UIs), and moddability (DFU is highly moddable and there is a huge mod selection available).
I myself play classic DF when I want to play without mods, and DFU for enjoying and trying out mods - but I admit that I've played classic DF from the time it was released and am very familiar and used to its UI (and I still prefer it to DFU's in certain respects).

[Thermal Lance]

I'd recommend Unity honestly.

Even without mods it has some features that really makes the game more enjoyable to play from a modern perspective. Like click to attack, questlist for guilds and stuff, it uses topographical data that wasn't used in vanilla for some reasons... etc.

There is nothing wrong if you want to take the purist route but from my perspective there isn't much to gain from it outside an historical perspective.