Daggerfall Impressions

Finally managed to mod Daggerfall into Daggerfall Unity, and I've plaid "enough" I think to have impressions about the game.

Actually I think Daggerfall might be more impressive than most Elder Scrolls games in CERTAIN areas. Not all, but certain areas. Daggerfall is definitely more of a fantasy life sim, but has a more generic fantasy and not very well written quest system.

One thing I'm really impressed about when it comes to daggerfall is the Banking system, in that you can actually take out loans to buy a ship or a cart or whatever to help you get to places faster as well as transport more loot, or to buy a house. This is what makes it mostly feel like a fantasy sim.

Another thing I think Daggerfall does better than more modern Elder Scrolls titles is truly customizing your character to be a specialist in certain areas and skills. You can forbid certain weapon or armor types or makes it so you can only use magic during certain parts of the day. And while it's true you can basically do that for your character in, say, Skyrim, what Daggerfall does to make it worth it is by increasing the rate at which you level up when you give your character more disadvantages. You get something to losing something. In later titles, you just sort of choose whether or not to use anything, without any real benefit to doing so.

Radiant quests. I hated them in Skyrim and Fallout 4. I liked them in Daggerfall. Why? Well, because radiant quests in Daggerfall are tied to factions, and you do faction quests in order to gain reputation in your chosen guild, and gaining reputation in your guild gives you the benefits of whatever guild you're apart of. Say that you're apart of the Mages Guild in Daggerfall, as you gain reputation you'll gain access to spell crafting AND the highly desire teleportation service to take you anywhere in Daggerfall instantly without any delay. However, if you don't do any quests for a while in a guild, you'll start to lose reputation and guild perks, meaning there's a mechanical reason to keep doing those radiant quests from time to time. The only benefit to doing radiant quests in Fallout 4 or Skyrim is loot and money. This makes radiant quests in Daggerfall feel much more necessary. Plus, there tends to be a lot more variety to what you can do as a radiant quest in Daggerfall.

Climbing skill, it's fucking awesome. I wish it never went away. I wish I could climb up the side of any castle or wall or tower I ever saw in Oblivion, Morrowind, or Skyrim.

Vampirism. Also something that is way more cool in Daggerfall than in future game installments. Why? Because there are so many different vampirism bloodlines and clans, all of which you can be apart of .

That said, Daggerfall has a lot of aspects that are hard to love. I don't like the UI or the character inventory screen. And I think it's combat mechanics are actually kind of terrible. Still, as a fantasy life sim, I honestly have never seen a game that tries to be as ambitious as this, even to any modern game.