I'm about 37 hours and 3 hard crashes into this now. (Gotta love/hate Bethesda.) Someone said it felt like Oblivion 1.5, and I guess that's not too far from the truth. I can see how much they've improved the look and even the combat, but it feels like they've done more polishing than reinventing. Some things are a step backward. The menu system is confusing as hell at first, and even after getting used to it, I miss the Oblivion interface. Containers are no longer organized. If you use one chest to store all your stuff, sifting through it is a painful process. It isn't even fully alphabetized. God knows what rules the listing follows, if any.
Worst of all, you can't cast a spell unless you have a free hand to do it with. Why anyone would think this is an improvement is beyond me. They tried to minimize the problem with a system of favorites you can scroll through, but it's still an awkward mess. Me conjuring a flame atronach in preparation for a fight goes like this: bring up the favorites list, scroll several entries to that spell, select it, press L to bring up my hands, press L again to cast, bring up favorites list again, scroll to the steel warhammer, select it, and watch the slow animation of the warhammer coming up in my hands. If whatever enemy prompted me to go through all this hasn't whacked me at least once by this point, it means I detected him way early. Yay for my alertness.
I've run into a couple of interesting bugs already, besides the crashing (which so far involve only the outdoors, with 2 of the 3 instances being caused by loading of an outdoor destination). One was the head and neck of a dragon looking for all the world like a snake coming out of the ground. It was moving somewhat while opening and shutting its mouth. It was actually supposed to be the remains of a dragon I had already killed. I could even go up to it and search it for loot. The other bug was more perplexing. I was whittling a mammoth's health down from a high perch with arrows and my flame atronach, when suddenly I absorbed the soul of a dragon. Don't know where it came from. I suppose a dragon got killed nearby somehow. But shortly after I finished off the mammoth, I encountered a dragon. Killed him, got that soul as well. And the quest for killing a dragon at a location nearby was still active.
Regardless of such issues, the game is extremely engrossing. Interactions with NPCs have taken a step up. The look of everything is outstanding. Performance is consistently good, better than Oblivion's (when the code is behaving itself). The fighting mechanics are definitely better (ignoring the crippled spellcasting). I don't miss weapon and armor damage in the slightest. Good riddance. I still have a lot to figure out with the skill trees, or is it constellations? A lot of promising variety of perks there. Smithing seems like a great addition. I've done a bit of that, and hope to do a lot more. I plan on ignoring alchemy here as much as I did in Oblivion, though. Oh, and the 3rd-person view is actually decent this time around. Well done. The missions have been great so far. I'm slowly getting into the shouts. I'm trying to force myself to use them more often.
Much more to learn ahead, hopefully all good. Buggy or not, I've jumped into this with both feet.
