The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall review

Our VerdictThis is real life. (If you’re a sword-wielding dwarf hailing from the northern reaches of Skyrim, that is.)

Our Verdict

This is real life. (If you’re a sword-wielding dwarf hailing from the northern reaches of Skyrim, that is.)

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To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, we’re publishing our original reviews of each main game in the series from our archives. This review first ran in PC Gamer UK issue 35, back in September 1996.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

The map.

If you had to give a percentage score to your life to date, what would it be? Consider school, the worst ever jobs, parents, friends, sport… all the successes and failures that have been crammed into the past 25 years or so. Now imagine playing Daggerfall, and you’ll probably have to use a similar process to arrive at a mark.

I’ve been playing Daggerfall for about 70 hours now and have got absolutely nowhere. The feeling, as I have to say ‘enough is enough’, is one of those impossible-to-pinpoint ones of reward and satisfaction with a little frustration added to the emotional broth for good measure. It’s the sort that wanders your way after a few days of real-life time that have been challenging and passed enjoyably but, well, have achieved nothing that you’d give yourself a self-congratulatory back-slap for.

Need to knowDeveloperBethesda SoftworksMinimum system486DX2/66, 8Mb RAMRecommendedPentium 100, SVGASound supportAll major cardsRelease dateSeptember 20, 1996Check Amazon

Need to know

DeveloperBethesda SoftworksMinimum system486DX2/66, 8Mb RAMRecommendedPentium 100, SVGASound supportAll major cardsRelease dateSeptember 20, 1996Check Amazon

DeveloperBethesda SoftworksMinimum system486DX2/66, 8Mb RAMRecommendedPentium 100, SVGASound supportAll major cardsRelease dateSeptember 20, 1996

Check Amazon

So is it any good? Yes. Very. But it’s also very, very slow. It’s not quite as structure-less as Elite, but almost. At the start of the game you find yourself sitting in a dungeon and, you reason, Priority One must be escape. So, after duly hacking your way around dark corridors and large caverns for a few hours, the exit leaps out from a wall, and you emerge into the shining daylight. You look at your log book, that tome of events, quests and missions that Bethesda have kindly provided, and which will grow to a truly vast size within a couple of days of playing. And then you wonder if you just enjoyed yourself.

The answer would have to be yes. The combat you’ve just experienced is the same as in the original – to fight you hold the right mouse button down and swish the mouse around to move your weapon. The direction you swish in governs each blow’s power and accuracy, and therefore damage. It’s a system that works very well and keeps you in the midst of the action at all times. The scenery is varied and large, and the design of all the dungeons actually makes sense. Daggerfgall is packed with monsters, items, interesting room designs, an auto-map and everything you could wish for to make a good Ultima Underworld style adventure.

(Image credit: Future)

A page from our Daggerfall review in PC Gamer UK

But, just like those old DOS-based text adventures and ‘real’ role-playing games, Daggerfall’s heart lies with your character advancement. Your character has various physical and mental attributes, and 12 skills which are based on these. As you adventure and use them they improve, and you get better at them. Also, exploring, ransacking and general pillaging turns up new equipment that you can either sell or use. So, you progress along this path and, assuming you don’t get killed, control a mega-powerful character. Looking after the character and building it up is what makes the game so enjoyable, and thankfully the save game facility is now almost instant so it makes cautious dungeon exploration an enticingly dangerous prospect.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

A building interior.

Where Daggerfall scores so highly is the enormous scope of the world you can explore. The entire continent has again been created in mind numbing detail, with towns, villages, temples, and dungeons being listed all across it. Travelling around it, the people change to reflect the climate, and the whole experience seems even more authentic. Combined with the characters, this is what makes the game. Lords of Midnight 3, Frontier II and Privateer have tried to create a free, yet structured world but none have come close to this.

Our Elder Scroll reviewsThe Elder Scrolls: ArenaThe Elder Scrolls II: DaggerfallThe Elder Scrolls III: MorrowindThe Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Our Elder Scroll reviews

The Elder Scrolls: ArenaThe Elder Scrolls II: DaggerfallThe Elder Scrolls III: MorrowindThe Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Daggerfall’s only indisputable weakness is its presentation. With all the kit available to programmers and artists today, quite how they’ve managed to produce such an ugly grey look with Spectrum fonts is a mystery. It doesn’t affect the game at all – in fact all the buildings, monsters and equipment are drawn very well which just makes it all the more puzzling.

Daggerfall’s depth extends well beyond the 1400 words in this review. It’s about as large and detailed as a game could ever become without collapsing under its own weight. Despite all that, though, as has been the case with just about every sequel I’ve reviewed recently, it does owe a huge debt to the original. But as Bethesda have one of the best formulas here that’s no bad recommendation.

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall: Price Comparison

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The Verdict89Read our review policyThe Elder Scrolls II: DaggerfallThis is real life. (If you’re a sword-wielding dwarf hailing from the northern reaches of Skyrim, that is.)

The Verdict

89Read our review policyThe Elder Scrolls II: DaggerfallThis is real life. (If you’re a sword-wielding dwarf hailing from the northern reaches of Skyrim, that is.)

89Read our review policy

The Elder Scrolls II: DaggerfallThis is real life. (If you’re a sword-wielding dwarf hailing from the northern reaches of Skyrim, that is.)

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

This is real life. (If you’re a sword-wielding dwarf hailing from the northern reaches of Skyrim, that is.)

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Our Verdict#

Our Verdict