I admit, I was rather skeptical of the game, and not too optimistic about many things, and in the end that was for the best. As usual, their lore and world building are great...but they aren't earning any points for that from me...as that is to be expected from them.
I am disappointed in the lack of dialogue options, quest/moral complexity, and lack of follower personalities. I suppose maybe I was spoiled....coming fresh from finishing Fallout: NV, but it really is glaringly sad to see how poorly the much touted radiant story quests compare, to hand crafted questlines, that had real substance and lasting consequences. I was also disappointed at there being a lack of even one single opportunity to actually engage the antagonist in dialogue of any kind.
The dragons, also quickly lost their greatness, when I realized they only ever came in two varieties with one type of repetitive AI behavior. There are 20 shouts in the game and they couldn't bother to spice things up by giving dragons more than 1 shout each? Really? The dragon priests are harder and more complex than the things they worship.
As is typical....it is also poorly balanced, and the claims of actual difficulty do not extend past the lower levels, which were likely tested more than the upper end...and the whole blacksmithing/alchemy/enchanting blunder...which is almost about on par with 100% chameleon from Oblivion in brokenness is more than a little disappointing.
And how could they possibly not account for mages becoming so weak at upper levels? Mages were overpowered in previous games, but the correct answer was not to gimp them, that is not balance either. I mean, how could testers not possibly catch some of these things?
Despite that though, I am enjoying the game, and think it is likely one of their best works by far, but I am still saddened at what could have been, if they had put more time and effort into the areas that would fall short. The game's compression is quite good, so why did they not feel the need to better polish, and add even more things to the already small disk size?