Should I buy Oblivion or Morrowind?

[Juice Boi]

I've played skyrim since day one (on console) and Ive played eso (pc) for a while and I just want more elder scrolls. I've read a lot of discussions on what game is better but im still not sure. I want to know which has the best story, combat, side quests, graphics, and all the juicy stuff.

[Juice Boi]

btw im fine using mods to enhance the game but id perfer to get the better base game then mod off that

[Rocky]

Well for mods oblivion. For everything else Morrowind.

[Juice Boi]

Ok I've asked a few of my friends and read some more i think i might get oblivion first, then at a later date get morrowind

[Juice Boi]

is the dlc for Oblivion good?

[Deadbubble]

Unless you're familiar with and can tolerate old games, get Oblivion. I mean this. Morrowind has not aged well.

Since you've played Skyrim first, I'd suggest Oblivion next, and Morrowind after that if you're feeling desperate for more ES content.

[Juice Boi]

Ok thanks Im gonna get oblivion

[Customs Officer]

Oblivion has times more original content than Skyrim, but it's leveling system is even worse. It's not particularly good for people who like fighting, but none of TES games really are. Be sure to take your time, talk to everybody for rumors, and explore everybody's houses. The NPCs have schedules and secrets in their houses and official quests that are pretty great for people interested in exploring. I recommend playing through without mods at least once, but the modding community adds a lot more to the game. It's also fun to play through with self-limitations like a pure Mysticism-Alteration-Illusion run. Shivering Isles is the best DLC, and I recommend buying at least that. Knights of the Nine doesn't add very much of value to a player who spent any serious time in the base campaign or SI.

Morrowind's different regions have much more varied designs and feels really alien and hostile, so it is a really great game for atmosphere and exploration. Oblivion is mostly going to be forests and regular old towns, for comparison. If you're really into studying lore, Morrowind is much denser than Oblivion. All the DLC is great, too. Nearly everything Oblivion does, Morrowind does better, but they both have their own charms.

Daggerfall is also really fun, and it's been free on Bethesda's website for years now. It's a huge pro-gen dungeoncrawling game with character development that is way better than Oblivion and Morrowind. If you like fighting through dungeons and finding hidden doors, you'll never get bored of Daggerfall. For comparison, Oblivion has pretty terrible copy-paste dungeons and Morrowind has a number of varied dungeons with some fairly easy magic puzzle dungeons.

[Smokedice]

Morrowind is way too low down the ladder for me

[Deadbubble]

Originally posted by Rawfire:

Morrowind is way too low down the ladder for me

What do you mean by this exactly?

Originally posted by Nykki Jo:

Oblivion has times more original content than Skyrim, but it's leveling system is even worse. It's not particularly good for people who like fighting, but none of TES games really are. Be sure to take your time, talk to everybody for rumors, and explore everybody's houses. The NPCs have schedules and secrets in their houses and official quests that are pretty great for people interested in exploring. I recommend playing through without mods at least once, but the modding community adds a lot more to the game. It's also fun to play through with self-limitations like a pure Mysticism-Alteration-Illusion run. Shivering Isles is the best DLC, and I recommend buying at least that. Knights of the Nine doesn't add very much of value to a player who spent any serious time in the base campaign or SI.

Morrowind's different regions have much more varied designs and feels really alien and hostile, so it is a really great game for atmosphere and exploration. Oblivion is mostly going to be forests and regular old towns, for comparison. If you're really into studying lore, Morrowind is much denser than Oblivion. All the DLC is great, too. Nearly everything Oblivion does, Morrowind does better, but they both have their own charms.

Daggerfall is also really fun, and it's been free on Bethesda's website for years now. It's a huge pro-gen dungeoncrawling game with character development that is way better than Oblivion and Morrowind. If you like fighting through dungeons and finding hidden doors, you'll never get bored of Daggerfall. For comparison, Oblivion has pretty terrible copy-paste dungeons and Morrowind has a number of varied dungeons with some fairly easy magic puzzle dungeons.

From what little I've played of Morrowind (which I didn't enjoy, honestly), I do have to agree with the general landscape of Morowind. It feels so alien, so unique. It was amazing. Compared to Oblivion, its a hell of a place to explore.

[Deadbubble]

Originally posted by Dr. Dro:

Buy Oblivion. If you want landscape, this is THE game. Cyrodiil has a bit of every region in Tamriel in it. Bruma resembles Skyrim, Cheydinhal is Morrowind-esque, Leyawiin resembles Black Marsh, Bravil is next to the border to Elsweyr, for example...

I would strongly advise against getting Morrowind. Most people that defend it to death are the same sort of nostalgia-driven people that used to hate on Fallout New Vegas and now plague the Fallout 4 forums. A similar effect occurred with Skyrim, when it was new, by Oblivion fanboys.

Nostalgia heavily clouds judgment, and if you started playing TES with Skyrim, I strongly believe you will find Morrowind to be thoroughly unenjoyable and beyond saving, even with endless gigabytes of mods, tweaks and rebalances, unless you have the nostalgia in your head. On the other hand, I think you may come to really enjoy Oblivion because it's a middle ground in that aspect. Faster paced, and more advanced combat, coupled with some of Morrowind's mechanics, and it also did away with what kills Morrowind beyond any redemption to me: the obnoxious overusage of RNG diceroll for literally everything in the game.

Its like Morrowind tried to be some table-top RPG in video game form, and good lord was it awful.

[Customs Officer]

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls, and it will probably always be my favorite Elder Scrolls. I don't have any nostalgia for Morrowind since I played it so late, but I still have tons of fun with it. "Just because it's old" is no reason not to like Morrowind. Lots of old games are fun. The RNG boils down to making it nearly impossible to hit anything for the first few hours then being able to kill everything with ease forever afterwards. It's still really to kill whatever crosses your path or pick whatever lock. It's a little less silly than Oblivion's system where a level 1 player character is far more powerful than a level 40 player character.

Regardless, TES is more about questing and exploring than fighting mobs and bosses. Nearly any other game has more interesting combat. Morrowind's magic system is a lot more fun than any other Elder Scrolls game, with levitation spells and slowfall potions. There's also a lot more guilds, unique dungeons, hidden high-tier treasure, and (from my feeling) more quests to be found, even in the middle of nowhere. What's not fun?

[Customs Officer]

With the tabletop RNG, it's still only a handful of hours before the player is OP. Daggerfall was the only Elder Scrolls game I've played where the combat and RPG elements felt right and interesting. Everything in Morrowind contributes to the alien atmosphere. The NPCs are insular, sneering you with racially appropriate slurs. The laws allow honor killing, slavery, and demon worship, so even the law-abiding citizens are uncomfortable to be around. The architecture and fashion, especially for Telvanni, is different from the very mainstream fantasy imagery. It's a very immersive game, especially compared to Oblivion that's environment is so lazily put together that seams in dungeon walls, the distressed textures on NPCs, and the copy-pasted trees become pretty obvious early on. Oblivion is just one big forest that uses the same handful of tree assets rotated a little with the exception of Bruma, which is the same but with snow. The architecture is varied a little, but it still resembles houses. It's a comfy world, but it's not an nearly the immersive alien world that Morrowind is. Shivering Isles compares, but it's not as big and long as Morrowind + its DLC.

Character progression is just awful in Oblivion and really bad in Skyrim and Morrowind. Daggerfall allows you to fine-tune characters that actually play differently and actually grow more powerful over time. In Morrowind, you can master nearly everything no matter what race you are so long as you grind at it, but you start out very underpowered. In Skyrim, you're so OP no matter what race or level that no difficulty mod will keep enemies from being one-hit-kill. In Oblivion, if you level up from running and jumping a lot, then all the enemies will level up and increase their combat and sneaking skills. Oblivion is the worst for character progression because all the enemies will be stronger than you in every way if you level up.

I agree, Oblivion has more mods and better quality mods IMO than any other Elder Scrolls game.

The voiced protagonist of Fallout 4 hurt the protagonist, and the voiced NPCs of Oblivion hurt Oblivion. It makes the game take up much more space on the hard drive and takes much more freedom and lore out of gameplay. In Morrowind, each NPC can tell you everything about themselves, all the quests, their land, rumors, whatever. You can ask them about anything, too. Voicing requires actors' work, so that necessarily takes writing, lore, and depth out of the game. You can't have so many branching quests anymore because every direction needs unique voice acting, which gets to be ridiculous.

All the games have their flaws, but they're still really fun.

[CullinB]

Originally posted by Dr. Dro:

Originally posted by Z3RO:

As I wrote before; Morrowind is fundamentally different from Oblivion and Skyrim and I understand that many players of the newer games find it hard or impossible to get into it, but to call the game bad and everyone who enjoys it "Nostalgia blinded" is just stupid.

Most of its fervorous defenders are nostalgic. It's an endemic syndrome with long running franchises, but you nailed it in the head: it is a fundamentally different game, and it does not cater to the same audience Oblivion/Fallout 3 and its successors do, and as such, it isn't a game I find even remotely enjoyable. I own it, but it's been sitting there for years now. Maybe one day i'll feel masochistic enough to give it another shot, meanwhile, just the thought makes me sick to my stomach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNXYrAkUntU

Those n'wahs...

This video author did not understand TES3 system.
To fool to play

[Arrancar]

Personally Oblivion for me, although I played through whole Morrowind only once.
Oblivion :
- Better combat system than Morrowind (skyrim has best one, but yeah it's 5 years younger). Although later on levels 20+ only certain enemies will spawn, they are leveled and will continue to level up with you. So you will be constantly fighting same enemies over and over, just stronger. Goblin Warlords are especially boring to fight. Do not move difficulty slider to the right, or prepare for pain.
- Better graphics, it's 4 years younger after all.
- Enviroment - best in any of the Elder scroll games.
- Story wise, oblivion is pretty good. Main quest gets boring after while with all the Oblivion gates. Guild quests are really good, especially Dark Brotherhood. DLC's are nice as well. Shivering Isles rule.
- Side quests in Oblivion are really great, there is also quite a few non journal quests and secrets. Just to mention a few, if you kill certain troll "boss" you will get a special bow, pirate ghosts in a cave, crazy dude that will follow you until you take his quests etc...

Morrowind :
- Combat is awful and outdated. I literally rage quit(and I almost never rq) few times back in the days(like in 2012/2013) until I finally decided to play through it. Let's talk about simple character using long blade and heavy armor. I hit my oponent 1/5 times at the early levels. Later on it gets better. Finally level 100 long blades and I am still hitting only 3/5 of my hits, woohoo. So yeah unless you are fan of the old school RPG with rolling a dice combat system, Morrowind will be really frustrating for you. Also do not try dungeons at early levels. Unlike in Oblivion or Skyrim where you can clear them easilly, in Morrowind you will get raped by first bandit(at elast that was my experience).
- Graphics sucks, especially people, use mods. Do not use mods that enhance enviroment, they will kill your FPS(Morrowind will use only 1 core of your CPU, it's an old game), unless you like 30 FPS ofc. Trust me on this, while in Oblivion I can get steady 60 FPS, unless I was in big cities, in Morrowind I was struggling with FPS, when I had mods that enhanced enviroment.
- Enviroment feels like there is only one colour used lmao. I hated these flying things.
- Story is not that great. You can beat main story in few minutes (check it out on youtube), ofc you gotta know what to do. People are boring and you have to walk great distances. There is no true fast travel, but you can use boats and silt striders for travelling further distances, aka city to city etc. Also there is no compass, so good luck finding stuff. If you are really bad at directions like me, you will be struggling to get to the first town.
- Side quests are decent, especially daedric ones and I really enjoyed that you can actually join Imperial Legion.

[Jeremy]

Originally posted by Dr. Dro:

Originally posted by Deadbubble:

Its like Morrowind tried to be some table-top RPG in video game form, and good lord was it awful.

Exactly this

Yeah, the base morrowind is really garbage in the rng dicerolls. I found the only way for it to be truly bearable to playthrough was to install over 50 mods to fix everything bad about the game. After that, the game still wasn't as enjoyable as oblivion was for me, but it was okay. I still don't understand the hype behind it though.