The strengths, well, combat is nicer. I love morrowind but once you figured out how to play the game, it could easily devolve into a series of levitating daedric dai-katana attacks. Oblivion's combat was...Well...Yeah. I also really like the gathering of alchemy ingrediants. It was pretty horrible in morrowind, and pretty inaccurate in Oblivion. They did a fantastic job on that one.

...what I really dont like though? The stuff that is horrible. Like...Okay, theres no breath meter. Which is odd but..well then theres that theres a bunch of stuff yo ucan only really find underwater.

That is very starnge since you can no longer fight underwater. I mean, it woldnt be too big a dael, but they seem to have intentionally put slaughterfish in the water. This is all rather irritating. Honestly id have to say that is the most..aggrevating gameplay change. Because every single bit of it makes absolutely no sense and seems like an obviously terrible idea. That they didnt see the need to inform us of this, as i was desperatly trying to figure out why i couldnt even raise my fists underwater, annnoys me more than anything.. Not cool.

Aside from that, my biggest issue is the godawful menu. Not the layout, i svck at making interfaces so I cant really complain. its that its easier to accidentaly close it than it is to actually click on something you want. That irritates me. It is my hope that they fix this, and they likely will to a degree. The lack of any indicator about just how far your magic works is another hit, but since it only affects dragon fights, it doesnt mess things up too often. Forgivable, but id rather it fixed.

The biggest silly thing? In Oblivion, I never had to worry about the corpses of my fallen enemies teleporting above my head when leaving a building. I honestly never expected that to be a problem. Or a thing.

Imagine my surprise when a dragon skeleton fell on my head outside of the magic college. Did not see that coming.

I mostly like a lot of the changes. Its jsut there are some that are so...weird. They are weird to the point of distracting, and thats really sad. Cause I really like the setting (i grew up in wyoming, and I love that sort of of enviornment.) Skyrim did a fantastic job on the enviornment. Okay, sure, theres the weird shadow bug but that should be fixable. and I'd be astonished if they never fixed it. Im used to bethesda bugs and how they work in adressing those bugs, and even on my most cynical days I think they'll fix this. Like their sticky said, they are working on game-breaking bugs first. And thats fine; probably the best idea given the circumstance, the vastness of the game and all.

In short: there is nothing about the game that I find annoying enough to really scream about except that...I mean come on Bethesda, WTF is up with the water?! Im really really trying here but Morrowind already made me hydrophobic (I was going through medical trauma at the time. It just happened, not bethesda's fault. The dreugh...ugh...But not bethesda's fault at all.) and not being able to fight back kinda makes it a lot worse.

This^^

Not enough Beast Races. Too many generic humans.

Also: It's a bit too "Dark, gritty, depressing, and serious" for my tastes. This whole "Fun, colors, humor, and general happines = un'cool' game" trend can't end soon enough.

As a console player (haters gonna hate!) I had so much more fun and sank more hours into skyrim than morrowind, and the only reason why I have more hours in oblivion is because I had that game for years.
Saving for a good skyrim PC so i can haz mods.

It's a question of believability. Oblivion looked like a cartoon, especially after playing Skyrim. I love playing Super Mario Brothers, but I don't want TES to look like Marioworld. Also, most fantasy is going to be largely humans. If everything is fantastic, nothing stands out. If the common stuff looks like our world, it makes the dragons and whatnot stand out even more.

I wasn't really talking about the graphics, as much as I was the general FEEL of the game, y'know? In Oblivion, the fantasy world actually felt like someplace I'd fantasize about living in. Most people were happy (Making the "bad guys" seem even worse). There were lot's of fun characters. Magic was seen as somthing wonderful and amazing, Even "evil" people like the Theives Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood never took themselves too seriously, creating some genuinly likeable characters, and making the less light-hearted moments (spoiler) like having to kill everyone in the Cheydinhal Sanctuary, that much more impactful. It seems like with Oblivion, Bethesda never took themselves too seriously, always throwing in jokes and references. Almoast like Violition with Saint's Row (Though admittidly less extreme). When compared with the gray, dark, depressing world of Skyrim, it makes you wonder what happened at their studios to get them so serious? (Maybe it was creating Fallout: 3? I dunno)

P.S. Sorry for all the typos.

I Loved morrowind,loved oblivion but got a little bit dissapointed.
Love skyrim almost as much as i love morrowind.

I still consider the BG and FO (1&2) series superior to most western cRPG titles out there, even today. And I missend out on PS:T but otherwise it would probably be up there.

However, I've played Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and now Skyrim extensively. I do own a copy of Oblivion but barely gave it a spin.

I consider Skyrim, despite several glaring omissions (no spellmaking, no real speech skill, lack of variance in weaponry and monsters, tacked on guildquest lines, no attributes, no full control over companions) to be the best game in the series. The dungeons are FINALLY not annoying. I remember dredding Arena's en Daggerfall's dungeons. Not because they were so challanging but because they NEVER ENDED or so it seemed. And were bugged.
NPCs actually do stuff now. Yes you can still tell you're playing a computer game and yes NPCs repeat the same annoying lines (why is this?) but I finally get the feeling that I'm not talking to generic spawned citizen Dark Elf #22 who shouts "hail Imperial". They do have some character now, even though its still very basic.
You can actually have followers now. Unfortunately they're loot mules and dumb as bricks, but you can tell them to sit down once in a while. And some of them do bring a tiny bit of personallity. Which is more then in the previous games.
Combat is pretty good actually. Yes dual-weilding hotkeying is annoying but other then that its the best I've seen in TES. Still could use a lot of improvement though.
Level system is finally ok. I mean grinding certain skills to get a wanted "x-y" attribute, or not leveling your actual used skills just to avoid levelling, is really annoying. In fact it annoyed the hell out of me in Morrowind. Now I can pick up a sword, shield and armour and just go out there. Not worrying about a thing. I've seen a lot of posts where people said that armour and block levels too slow but really for me they don't.
Crafting is really powerful and you can craft anything. Just don't understand why spellmaking got axed and you can't craft silver weapons, but other then that anyone who wants to craft is going to have a good time here. But why can't we hire merchants if you don't want to craft?

As a final note, no TES game has ever been balanced. All TES games can be abused (or "OP" as they seem to call it these days). So why all the complaints about it now in Skyrim? People who started out with Morrowind should know you could really exploit the living [censored] out of there. One shouldn't be surprised after all these years.

In short just because its old doesn't mean its better or worst then current games. And in my opinion Skyrim is best of breed up to now.

I'm simply going to agree to disagree with you on the level issue, seeing as there is no point is arguing there. Neither of us will change opinion.

By bland I mean nothing that makes you different from others. When you have 100 in long blade you will be a copy of everyone else with 100 in long blade,with only minor affect from the strength attribute(I think it is 20% more damage at 100). And all blade fighters will get 100 strength and long blade skill, unless they specificly gimp themselves. And all mages only needed to worry about magica and skill level. And the attribute system in MW and OB does not only support maxing all stats, but make it rather easy almost without grinding. This is why I think MW and OB lacks character building dept.
In Skyrim a one/two-handed combatant can chose how deep he want to go in the skill, what moves to learn, what weapon(s) to specialize in and/or wheter he wants to max damage or put the perks in other trees. Mages can specialize in undead summoning, what elemental damage you prefer, better animal and/or humanoid controlling and the list goen on. Combine this with the fact that you cannot max out any of the stats or get all the perks in the game without using the console on the PC does make Skyrim less bland and more complex than the last two ES games IMO.

i'm finding that if i DO NOT roleplay a character in skyrim the game is quite boring, uneventful and repetative.

i DID NOT have to ever roleplay a character in morrowind or oblivion and the games were never boring, uneventful or repetative.