The magery definetly seems very dumbed down as opposed to the previous games. For instance, as a conjuror, for my first 15 levels the only thing worth summoning was flame atronarch. Now the only thing worth summoning is the frost atronarch. Even outside of what is useful there very few options. I can raise a zombie, or summon one of three atronarchs. Same for destruction. Not many choices. The previous games had tons of diverse magic. This one, not so much. Starting to regret making a mage at all.

They took away spell creation, and everyone in the planet thought this meant there would be natural spell-scaling.

Guess what, they forgot to put that spell-scaling in

its just like duel wielding, they had to make sure it wasnt op so you dont have an unfair advantage over all of the other players in the game

Using magic in skyrim requires you to use the quick swap (Which is not a devolved version from oblivion, as it PAUSES THE GAME IN A VATS-ESQUE WAY).

To get the most fun out of it try approaching each encounter differently, use frenzy often with runes of your choice, only use your conjured beings when you absolutely have to.
As with other TES games it's up to YOU to 'feel it' if you don't like it, you can change the way you are playing to the extent where you do like it, trust me.

I was getting absolutely destroyed as a High elf mage dual wielding magic until I began using frenzy and reanimate to my advantage along with a little stealth. You can actually make 8 enemies into 1 with this method, without any familars/atronachs/ect.

Good luck!

Magic is way better than it was in Oblivion but for PC the terribad UI makes it a pain.

The way overarching structure for magic in this game is great and better than oblivion could ever be.

The mechanics under this system are stupid as hell: Destruction spell damage doesn't scale past level 40, all schools have less spells than ever, you are required to take the half magicka perks to actually use any spell in practical applications, and there is no crafting of your own spells.

Because of how they created the magic system it is possible that mods will make it much, much better, but currently it is quite lackluster in my opinion.