One thing I'm rather glad of is there is fast travel in this game. With it, you have a travel cost and in-game time passing by. That last part would end up being far more important than I'd release and rather quickly.

The first place I decided to go was to a town. I ended up finding the actual Daggerfall. This place was insane. In fact, during the rest of the time I'd be playing in this game, I'd not find a bigger town. Sure, I'd find some massive towns just nothing like this one.

The town was so massive when I opened up the map to try and find some shops and other locations. I could not even see the entire town all at once. It also some time to walk from one end to another.

It also did not take me long to realize that most of the town was just a copy-and-paste job. They would change the name of a store and it would otherwise be the same kind of place. Sure, there were a couple of variants of different types of buildings. It however did not take me that long to visit the different types of merchants, guilds, and other types of shops.

I’m not disappointed by this. Assets being reused is a massive thing in the game development space. For how small the game was it was kind of a given for them to have such a massive map and locations as this game has. That it would be a thing. I was just hoping there would have been a little more variety.

As one might expect in an old-school game. I could not just offload all the stuff I looted at one shop and be done. Each shop had its type of items it was selling. I’d end up needing to visit a few shops to offload armor, weapons, and what else I looted while in the dungeon.

While clicking around on some shelves I found a possible solution to my inventory issues. While I love to loot everything in a dungeon. Once you leave that dungeon resets. Making it almost impossible to loot everything.

Expect you can buy a wagon. Then all you have to do is walk up to the exit of the dungeon and instead of leaving you opt to interact with the wagon. Kind of an odd way to go about it. Allowing me to offload my loot by heading to the exit of a dungeon. I’ll however take it.

The game even lets you haggle for better prices. There was even a skill you level up over time doing so. The leveling system in Daggerfall is based on how many skills you level up and some other stuff.

At least that is what I could gather while playing it. So, I kind of went out of my way to try and get as many levels into skills as I could. With doing things like selling one item at a time and haggling at a merchant. I ended up learning that gave more experience for the haggling skill than just selling everything at once and having it based on price. It seems like a bit of an oversight but I sure leveraged that discovery.

I’m the kind of player who would spend far too much time in other Elder Scroll games looting anything that was not nailed down. Then taking long runs back at max weight to offload at a shop. Just to then run back to the same dungeon and keep looting. The system they had in place in Daggerfall was going to save me some time.

While I did end up buying a horse as well which will save me a lot of walking time in towns. I ended up wanting to explore at least the first couple of times I was in by foot. At that point, I was not in any kind of rush to get things done.

I then went off to explore some new dungeons. That is where things turned sideways quite quickly. Turns out you can just contract diseases and poisons in this game. By the time you realize you have it unless you have a cure on you it’s far too late.

I ended up getting killed a few times over trying to make it to a temple or anywhere else I could. Turns out a bit of a drawback of playing a barbarian is how easily I could contract things like disease.

This would end up being my linchpin for quite some time. Causing me all kinds of issues even having to load an old save anytime my character got sick with something.

After a while, I ended up joining a temple. I then grinded faction with that temple till they would sell me potions to cure disease and poison. I spent a small fortune donating gold to the guild. Along with doing some rather long quests.

I also went around and joined some other guilds as well. It seems getting rankings in those guilds would give me some kind of reward like gear. At least one of them I joined gave me an armor piece and told me I could get more if I ranked up further. Sadly, I already had better at the time.

I’m the kind of player that while I could go do the main storyline of a game. I don’t mind getting lost and just going off and doing my things. Daggerfall however kept reminding me that hey I need to go do some storyline.

I was walking in one of the bigger towns at night. Then I got ganked by some strange shadows. Turns out that town was no longer a place I could travel around at night and be safe.

It seemed also many quests including the main storyline would have some kind of time limit. I for one hate having a time limit to get stuff done. I’d rather just go off on my adventure and if at some point I finished a quest. Well, then that should be good enough. Not so much in Daggerfall.

So, after quite a bit of wandering around, I found myself forced into progressing along the main storyline. To say I found myself in quite a few more dungeons that I felt lost even when I bumped into whatever I was looking for was an understatement.

I even found myself in situations where I had to work out different puzzles to advance further into a dungeon. Nothing like feeling like you are missing some kind of clue or hidden door that just never makes itself present for you to move forward.

This game also gets strange in some of its mechanics. Like you can walk right up walls. I don’t know how many times I'd find myself falling into some deep hole or needing to get over a fence. It would take me a moment to recall that I can flat-out just walk-up walls in this game like they are stairs.

Final Thoughts

After a while that charm a game has when you first start playing it started to fad. While I had lots of fun for some time. It just got to a point where I could tell my adventure in this one was coming to an end. I’d find myself more annoyed than the fun I was having.

I could also tell this was one of those games if I was left alone to wonder as I pleased. That I could put in hundreds of hours if not more into it. While I ended up even going to a different region of the game. After a while, a lot of it just felt like the same old same old.

This game is massive yes. It’s also quite barren. There is a reason they don’t make them like they used to. Granted, it is a bit of a shame most games today can’t hold a candle to such an old game like this despite the many things I could not stand dealing with after a while.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall.