Exploration is the most fun part of the game (at least around the castle), the story is pretty boring to me so far, the combat is average. I’ve stalled out hard on the game as I just don’t find it enjoyable. Harry Potter as a theming doesn’t really work well with the open world beat em up style gameplay that works for Batman Arkham X or Shadow of war/Mordor.
The story for this game is pretty fun and memorable. It’s a shame the gameplay itself is lacking, there’s way too much going on and there’s not a great gameplay loop. The open world bits are pretty bad, but were required to unlock useful spells and things for the battles. The battles were ok, but could have benefitted from more focus on making the transition smoother between modes.
Each game has their own little quirks and focuses. From what I remember sc3000 is best to start in a corner. You only get half the pollution from buildings on the edge, which is pretty big in the early game. You also get easier access to trade partners which is a good source of income later. Public transportation is also important, and very expensive, so you need to aggressively maintain a strong budget surplus to keep expanding.
There’s also some magic numbers to know as you get more familiar with the game. Airports, farms, ports, and subways all have sizes you need to keep in mind when planning.
Most the article makes no sense, but the Mac stuff is really weird. This 18 year old YouTube video is still accurate about the Mac part. https://youtu.be/2B-ekl_cEWk?si=xWJ43QEO48O9t2oY
Part of the problem is a lot of pokemon weren’t designed to live in a world, just be a sprite on a battle screen. It also got more egregious in later titles, but there’s always been some problematic pokemon. So not only do you have to make a ton of models, you have to fudge the scales a lot to make Pidgey vs Onix look remotely good. There’s really no way to make a decent looking game without drastically reducing the scope like pokemon snap did.
I’m saying pokemon. It’s still a dominant franchise today. It’s inspired countless spin offs and copy cats. It made gaming social and the connector for Gameboys a required accessory. Pokemon Go was a covid time revolution. The series is likely responsible for a sizable growth in the gaming market in the late 90s and early 2000s. People who never played a video game can identify Pikachu, and might even have a plushie. We are closing in on 30 years of pokemon being a dominant franchise.
You can be almost everything in Morrowind, just like Skyrim. If anything Skyrim actually locks a chosen play style in more due to talents. There’s a few more exclusive guilds in Morrowind, but they aren’t major for the most part. Just because you have spent the time to learn how to avoid the rough edges doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
The level up system was bad. The thrust/chop/slash system for weapons is awkward. Every attack costing stamina is bad for early characters. The excessive number of weapon categories, combined with short and long blades being the only ones that were common. The persuasion system was just bribe people to get what you want, or taunt them for free murder. Run speed being a skill, jumping being faster than running and being a skill as well (combined with the level system this can cause problems). Item durability in general. The encumbrance system, and containers having weight limits. The spell making and enchantment system had some cool things, but it was also trivial to break the game in multiple ways. The quest tracking and journaling was garbage. Alchemy was undercooked. Merchants had way too little gold so selling became annoying by mid level. The haggling quickly got annoying as you could sell at extreme markup or buy for nothing fairly easy. Magicka didn’t regenerate, so being a mage was annoying at early levels until you had sufficient potion access.
There’s also some things that are more bugs I think than bad mechanics. Stealing from a merchant flagged every copy of an item as stolen from them. I once managed to make every redoran guard hostile to me on sight, which got really annoying.
They actually made a game. These tools aren’t magical enough to just do it.