I’d love to know what other people think of this game. I got into the early access yesterday and played a bit for the last couple of days. My expectations were fairly low and they managed to hit that low bar almost exactly. Cumbersome movement, mediocre combat system, and everything hooked up to a timer and/or premium currency. It has an Oblivion vibe that I’ve missed and random loot will always pull me in a little. But other than that, yikes.

Why oh why would you take my favorite part of an Elder Scrolls game, the sense of discovery, and work so very hard to avoid any at all? It’s like it’s purpose built to omit all sense of wonder and surprise. You build your town up, you’re teleported to a dungeon, you complete missions killing goblins or skeletons, you wait for chests to open, and then you lather, rinse, repeat. It’s all so repetitive. There’s no exploration and no where to actually go. Couple that with no voice acting and miserably dull conversations and you got yourself a real stinker.

Maybe I’m missing the fun, but I’m worried Bethesda doesn’t understand why people like their games.

I don't think exploration is all that well monetizable that's why they deleted it. You need more shitty timers and other resources you manage with real money in a FTP Phone Games. So yeah that why i hate all FTP phone games they have constant timers trying to get you to spend something. They'll probably make a lot off money out of this as the TES playerbase became more mainstream after Skyrim.

Hmm, I don't really play games on my phone so I had no expectations going in and I think it's quite fun.

The dual joystick method of movement feels fine to me. You can also tap to move, and swipe back and forth on the upper part of the screen to turn faster, but the dual joysticks feels more natural to me.

The combat is pretty simple, but you're limited to tapping and swiping a screen so in that regard I think it works fine for the most part. I've been using the tap and hold method since I haven't been able to get the swipe method to work at all. I haven't had much need to use either of the abilities I've unlocked since the basic combat move has been able to kill everything in three hits or less so far. Shield Bash may be bugged, by the way. I tried using it once and lost all my controls. I had to quit back to town to get them back.

The timers would bug me if I played this game for long stretches, but I don't. I've been doing, I don't know, 3-6 quests throughout the day and it's been okay. I'm level five I think, and the game has given me enough gems to open three silver chests so far. I haven't used any of them since the timers haven't been an issue yet.

No open world in an Elder Scrolls game is definitely weird. Mobile devices have limited storage so an open world would most likely have to be smaller than their usual or procedurally generated, so maybe they thought neither would meet expectations and felt it best to just not have one. Or maybe they expect people to play like I do, jump in and do a quest or two and then put it down, and wanted to get people into the action in that limited timeframe.

I know this is a week old thread, but I've been playing since they opened it up to everyone a few days ago. This game does a great job of making me not want to play it.

The environments could be a little more varied, sure, and the combat isn't great. But that's hardly different from the main TES games, so whatever. The abilities seem to add a little bit to that and I'm okay with the loot I've gotten so far.

What really gets me is the time gating (my phone auto corrected this to "hating," which feels accurate--I hate it, and it apparently hates me). It's downright fucking atrocious. From 5 seconds to open a basic chest to...3 hours for a mid-tier chest?! If you play for a couple hours and clear out a a handful of quests you'll easily get to the point where it would take the better part of a day to open every chest you've earned. Between picking chests up in the environment, quest rewards, and that endless Abyss mode, you can load up on chests FAST. I thought limited energy to do quests was a bad system. This is way worse, IMO. They need to seriously tweak this system.

A game throwing up multiple hourlong time gates you can pay yourself through is a game that is not designed to be fun. The notion that they let you pay your way out of actually having to play the game shows that at least they're aware that they're not providing a fun experience. Instant walk away.

Yep, the chest timers and the pay-to-play are really bad. I play for a half-hour or so on my lunch break and then I've got 9-12 hours of chest timers to get through.

The random nature in which we get crafting materials is bad, too. I haven't really been able to get my town going because I'm always short on lumber or limestone with no way to get more. I guess I could run the Abyss and pick up the materials one at a time, but I need like 40-50 of each. No thanks.

Then there's the difficulty spike, and the cost of repairs being more than we earn...

It's just kind of bad all around.

Echoing the sentiment here and around most the internet, it's a bad game and I've already uninstalled. The timers are atrocious and I still can't believe they go straight from a 5 Second chest to a 3 Hour chest. Between those and the all around time it takes for other actions plagued with the ability to just complete them with the real money currency, it's a horrible look.

I think even if those were "acceptable" it would still be a bad game though. The combat is just poor. The time between actions, be them a regular attack, skill or spell, is real bad. Some later enemies can just spam attacks at you and you don't have the time to really do anything outside chug potions, which I'm sure is by design.

I'd say it's a disappointment but seeing Bethesda's track record in the past year or two, it's not a surprise this seems like a gross use of their beloved property. It's just a bummer

I also expect this to be the general feel when Diablo: Immortal hits. I just don't have faith in big game studios making a mobile version of their IPs that isn't just a bad cash grab. Hopefully I'm wrong, a mobile Diablo thing could be fantastic if done well.

Even the main twitter account knows the game is too grindy

@acura_max: Wow. That is one hell of an admission that their game is pissing people off.

I just came across my first troll. Their health regen is OP as hell. It wouldn't surprise me if they were designed purely to drain you of your potions and revival scrolls so you have to make or buy more.

Maybe I was underleveled for the quest, but it was only a three-skuller so I don't think so.

Ive not played it but when i saw the quicklook i verbally went 'there is no defending this, it looks shit' seems like it wasnt just me being a backseat critic afterall

Just got a notification that they reduced the time for silver chests. It's down to one hour. It doesn't reduce the time on any silver chest you were currently unlocking.

I know there were some TES mobile games way back, so this isn't exactly a new thing for Bethesda, but nothing about this comes close to what I want from a TES game.