YMMV / The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

• Awesome Music: The overcast theme, all the snow themes, and the setup music are awesome.
• Broken Base: Daggerfall is a mixed bag. It's glitchy like you wouldn't believe (even then, Bethesda games were pretty unpolished), but the good parts are really good, especially for its time. Even now, the sheer variety of what you can do has not been topped by any other game in the series. It also has the largest world in the series (Arena game world ended in an infinite loop; it didn't take much time to walk away from town/city and end up right back in), pushing procedural generation far beyond almost any game since; on one hand, this resulted in a large number of unnecessarily large complicated dungeons, but on the other hand, it gave the setting a sense of scale noticeable even in a series famous for large world. Fortunately, a number of the game's problems can be rectified by playing with the Daggerfall Unity sourceport, which is now considered by the Daggerfall Community to be the best way to play the game.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Magic. It's possible to play the game without using any, but it's very difficult. Certain spell effects, such as Levitate and Water breathing/walking are necessary for the completion of many of the procedurally-generated dungeons. Teleport can bring you back to the entrance of a labyrinthine dungeon to rest and unload your loot, or even potentially eliminate half of the travelling time for completing a quest. Certain enemies, such as ghosts and spiders, are difficult to overcome if you don't have a method of resisting or curing paralysis. Furthermore, there's virtually no disadvantage to using the class editor to make a non-magical class magical, since Armor and Magic Mix Perfectly Well in this game.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Liches and Ancient Vampires. Unless you're resistant to their magical attacks, they can kill you instantly.
  • Anything that can paralyze you, such as spiders, scorpions, or ghosts.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Daedric Princes were introduced in this game but unlike later installments, were merely background characters (except Sheogorath, who helps you retrieve the Mantella from Aetherius) in this setting. Fans loved them well enough to the point where they start making a greater presence in the story starting with Morrowind.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Big Stompy Robot, otherwise known as the Numidium.
  • The sheer number of bugs in this game caused many players to refer to this game as "Buggerfall."
• Fanfic Fuel: The game's world is massive, and has hundreds of thousands of minor characters, thousands of locations to visit, and dozens of factions operating in the Iliac Bay. Most of these things outside of those relevant to the Main Quest are never expanded on within the game itself, nor revisited in later TES games. Feel free to do write whatever epic adventure, detailed backstory, or gruesome fate you want for them.
• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Goddamned Bats: Nymphs and Lamiae are fairly weak, but drain two points of fatigue for every hit point of damage they deal. Unlike in the future games, running out of fatigue makes you pass out instantly, leaving you at the mercy of the monsters nearby, which is basically instant death if you're in a dungeon.
• Good Bad Bugs: See here.
• Magnificent Bastard: Gortwog gro-Nagorm, Warlord of the Orsimer, is a surprisingly skilled diplomat and political genius who sought to create an orcish homeland respected by the other races of Tamriel. Acquiring a letter revealing the ancient Numidium and the means to control it were in High Rock, Gortwog sent copies to all the rulers in Illiac Bay to create strife and a chaotic scramble for the artifact while making his own moves toward it. He aids the witch mistress of King Lysandus to put his spirit to rest to secure her aid in acquiring Numidium's power source, and weakens the nation of Wayrest by releasing a shocking biography that shames Wayrest's queen. Ultimately drawn into a cataclysmic event that warped space and time, Gortwog's schemes nevertheless came to fruition with the creation of the orcish kingdom of Orsinium and the recognition of his people as valued citizens of the Empire.
• Obvious Beta: Resulting in some unbeatable quests (including, prior to the first patch, the story itself), frequent opportunities to fall through floors and fly around in the Void, and some very confused monsters.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Melee combat. Like in Arena, swinging a weapon involves holding down the mouse button and dragging it in the direction you want to strike. Unfortunately, unlike Arena, it's far more clunky and unresponsive.
  • You cannot repair magical equipment in any way. Once their durability expires, you can never use them again. This includes Artifacts. This mechanic was introduced by a patch in an attempt to 'balance' overpowered magical items, but proved unpopular enough that methods to repair the items were re-implemented in a later patch.
  • You cannot purchase potions anywhere except for temples and even then the potions appear randomly. The only way to reliably get the right potions are to make them yourself. It is widely believed the lack of potions in normal apothecaries was due to the rushed production of the game.
  • Werewolves may seem like the best thing ever (superior Speed and Stamina and Attack) but if you spend too long in a dungeon, or even fast travel to a dungeon at a great enough distance, your stats will eventually plummet to zero making most monsters able to 1-hit KO you. Of course you could just fast travel to a nearby town, then return to the dungeon. Except that massively cuts into your time limit. The Ring of Hircine fixes this, however. There are essentially no drawbacks to lycanthropy if you have said ring.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Social characters who have all the monster languages and types of speechcraft as their main skills, 75 base Personality & Luck, can't wear any armor or use most weapons, etc.
  • Try to complete the game without using cheats. This is actually luck based, since you may encounter game breaking bugs and glitches at any moment.

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