With that said, it’s also a game that shows its age both in terms of how it looks and in terms of how it is played.
#THE ELDER SCROLLS GAMES RANKED SERIES#
It’s absolutely the game that helped to make TES one of the better-known RPG series in the West and it’s also a game that really helped to set the tone for what the modern iteration of the series would be. Not putting Morrowind in the third slot on this list is sacrilege to many. The MMO nature of the game doesn’t sit right with every player, of course, but getting a living, breathing Tamriel is more than worth the trade-off for other players. Setting the game this early not only allows the developers to ignore the branching choices of Skyrim, but it also allowed them to create a world that is just familiar enough to players to be recognizable while still being old enough to be unique.
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TES Online takes place a thousand years before Skyrim, thrusting players back into the Second Era to a Tamriel that’s only been seen by players in the series various in-game books. It did have a fairly rough launch when compared to the other games, but today it stands as a stunning example of what a live service game can become when the developer is willing to stick by it and pour money into its development. While the rest of the series is composed of single-player roleplaying games, this one is an MMORPG.ĭespite that, it has so much in common with the mainline series that it absolutely feels like it could have been its own numbered entry. The Elder Scrolls Online is Bethesda’s latest entry in the world of Tamriel as well as the most unique. Though it’s remarkably old-fashioned by today’s standards, going back to be exposed to some of the series’ DNA is worth the effort.Īt the very least, playing through Daggerfall makes a whole host of the books that are present in later TES games make much more sense. Not only does its admittedly rough open world nature line up with how the series would evolve, but it’s a roleplaying game that was always envisioned as just that. A buggy game that often seemed like it created an open world only to forget to put anything inside it, it was a controversial game at its release.Įven with that said, though, Daggerfall was a huge leap forward for the Elder Scrolls series and one that helped to further define what the series would become.įor all of its flaws, Daggerfall also feels infinitely more playable than its predecessor, giving it a clear edge when it comes to its ranking on this list.ĭaggerfall is arguably the game that has the most to do with the Elder Scroll titles that would really help the series make a mark. If Arena was a bit of a mess, Daggerfall is worse. Though Arena is positively archaic by today’s standards, it is nevertheless worth looking at if you love the lore of the Elder Scrolls. That content obviously was a bit too ambitious for the time, leaving players with the first entry in a beloved series. Instead, most of what players love about the series – the lore, the choices, and the world – were meant to take a back seat to the titular Arena content. One of the coolest things about Arena is that it isn’t the game that the developers set out to make. The Elder Scrolls: ArenaĪrena absolutely has to make an entry on this list, if only because it’s the very first Elder Scrolls game.Īn absolute mess by modern standards that features ancient graphics and a user interface that’s often more trouble than it is worth, this is nonetheless a game that kicked off an entire universe.Ī true spectacle for the time, Arena managed to not only help to lay the foundations of the future of the Elder Scrolls series but also to really push forward the idea of what a CRPG could be at the time of its release. Though you’re not going to see a lot of people clamoring for the re-release of this one, Redguard is nevertheless the edition that takes home the prize of making the top seven list. While it’s quite different from the rest of the series in that it’s much more of an adventure game than a true RPG, it features a fairly deep exploration of the themes of the greater series and makes a case for giving the player a set race, class, and character. With all of the rumors about the next Elder Scrolls game possibly taking place in or around Hammerfell, there’s never been a better time to revisit this particular game. Redguard itself was a fairly significant commercial flop for Bethesda, but it’s also one of those games that did a little bit of walking so that the games that would come after it would be able to run.
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The seventh spot is probably the most controversial on this list, not just because Redguard is such a divisive game but also because the spin-offs from the main series are just so weird.