The Elder Scrolls: Chapter II - Daggerfall

The Good
...if you like non-linearity. That's the name of the game in Daggerfall, whose landscape is twice the size of the UK. Plenty of versatility: you can do almost anything imaginable and certainly just about anything you'd ever want to. Tamriel is a second home to many, and for good reason.

The character creation system is wonderful. So many options to choose from, you could literally spend hours tweaking your character until he was JUST right. Fortunately, for the most part creating a character goes much quicker than that. It's easy enough to quickly slap together a generic character with a pre-made class, but so much more fun to spend some time learning the nuances of the custom class generator.

The game itself plays out in the third-person perspective, using the mouse quite a bit, as you can move and look around with, as well as the all-important feature of swinging your weapon.

For those who LIKE that sort of thing, there is a storyline to follow, but for those who prefer to chart their own course, Daggerfall is very generous in that category. Become a warrior striving to uphold justice in the land; become a thief, preying on the rich merchants of the Illiac Bay; become an asassin, creeping stealthily behind your enemies to deliver a crippling blow. In Daggerfall, (just about) anything goes.

The Bad
Buggy, buggy, buggy! That CAN be gotten used to, though. However, if you're not using the latest patch (2.13), you're in for a rough time. The game overcomes this with all its other features, though, and redeems itself in the long run.

The Bottom Line
VERY non-linear! Excellent role-playing game, for those who like to experience life in another world. Not the tightest story, but that allows the player to create their own history as they adventure through Tamriel. A true world simulator, if there ever was one, wrapped up in a tasty CRPG package.