Skyrim is almost certain to dominate the RPG landscape in the latter part of the this year, so it's time to ask the best in the series so far.

I've included Battlespire and Redguard but not expansions or portable titles.

iam glad to see that iam not the only one that found morrowind THE best.

For me it's defiantly Morrowind. It has the same elements of all the TES games (most of which I don't like very much) but it was a very interesting place to explore and visit. The art style is just fantastic.

I voted for Daggerfall, although I'm sure my memories of that game are mostly sentimental. Morrowind is probably the best overall I just got the most enjoyment out of Daggerfall

Morrowind for sure.

Oblivion for me by a hair over Morrowind. Played Morrowind for years and loved it, but prefer Oblivion's combat and voiced dialogue. I also enjoyed Arena. I played Daggerfall until the bugs defeated me, so I never finished the game. Redguard was all right. Never tried Battlespire.

Morrowind by a mile. It had a better story than either Daggerfall or Oblivion with better writing and better characters. It also had a more intricately designed world with interesting locations, lots of hidden loot to find and great atmosphere that veered from majestic to creepy and back again depending on where you were.

To be honest I have never really played Arena though, other than loading it up and messing with it a bit when Bethesda made it freeware.

I thought that Nehrim was better than all of them.

Where is the 'None of the above' option?

Morrowind was my choice. It had the right balance of game play, story, and exploration that makes a RPG fun to play for hours at a time.

Arena was okay, but it was a bit of a letdown too. I played it shortly after Ultima Underworld and I thought that was the better game.

Daggerfall was good, but buggy. The first time I played it I died before I could get to the first town. Once I emerged from the dungeon I would try to travel but always arrived dead. I am guessing that a rat in the starter dungeon poisoned me or gave me a disease, but I didn't see any indication of that. I had to restart and it worked the next time.

Oblivion wasn't a bad game, but I did not like the auto scaling of the monsters. I also thought the voice overs were poorly done - they could have at least got some more voice actors instead of using the same ones over and over for different characters. The lockpicking mini-game was fun the first dozen times or so, but it got old fast after that. Also, I greatly prefer a true expansion like Morrowind had instead of the shorter DLC in Oblivion.

Daggerfall & Battlespire & Redguard

Voted Morrowind, but I have haven't played any Elder Scrolls games before that though, so was only a battle between MW and Oblivion.

But that being said, my first and only completion of Morrowind is one of the best completions of any game I have ever done. I was so grabbed by that world and lore.

I am surprise that many peoples here liked Morrowind. Something changed?. There was time when anyone here (rpgdot) mentioned the game, a flame war would broke up very often. Hmm, where are the Gothic's fans

This was difficult for me… I played and liked them all.

I loved Arena because playing an invisible, fireball-toting wall smasher rocked (worried about those mighty undead? Well, tear down the walls to circumvent them).
I loved Daggerfall for being able to buy houses and ships, I loved to hate the Iliac Bay politics, and I loved how it gave an answer as to why the Dwemer had gone missing ( ).
I loved Battlespire for its portayal of Oblivion and its inhabitants, especially Imago Storm.
I loved Redguard for the tons of stilted dialog.
I loved Morrowind for the mild yet comforting world weirdness, for being able to invest hours in interior decoration and collecting light sources to illuminate my mansion.
And finally, I loved Oblivion because of the Imperial City guard detail, especially Cpt. Fanatic and Cpt. Straight Edge - these guys were hilarious.

What I didn't like about…
…Arena: all the places looked exactly the same. The world was huge, but it hadn#t been necessary. Besides, you couldn't travel the regular way and actually reach your destination.
…Daggerfall: The bugs. Well, my version already came with a 20 MB bugfix, but trying to explore dungeons without activated debugging keys was still suicidal.
…Battlespire: Once again, the bugs. How often did I have to repeat a level because some glyph didn't spawn? *shrugs*
…Reguard: that it was so easy to ruin the game by doing things out of sequence. Plus the 3rd person-exclusive perspective.
…Morrowind: that it was so easy to lose accompanying NPC due to mediocre pathfinding and worse AI.
…Oblivion: that it was too High Fantasy for my taste. Level scaling (though Tribunal had done this before). Psychic guards. And worst of all: no collectible light sources! Interior decoration was a real drag.

So when it came down to pick my least favorite, I'd say 'Redguard', but since this poll is about favorites… this is difficult.
Well, it took me 7 months to finish the Daggerfall main campaign, but I spent 18 months on Morrowind plus expansions (roughly 12 without expansions), and not because I got bored enough to play other games in between. So I vote for Morrowind.

Originally Posted by Jaz
but I spent 18 months on Morrowind plus expansions (roughly 12 without expansions), and not because I got bored enough to play other games in between. So I vote for Morrowind.

oh, thats is uh ALOT of time
Did you play one hour a day or something?

Regarding daggerfall, i really would like to try that one once more, but iam afraid that it will be still too bugfilled. Am i right?.

Uh, one hour a day is what I can afford nowadays if a game is interesting.
Back then I played about 2 hours on weekdays (right, not much) when I did not have to train for e-sports, and five or six hours a day on weekends without tourneys. That's an average of about 16 hours/week. A year has ~52 weeks, so that's still an enormous amount of time I spent with Morrowind.

I replayed Daggerfall for the last time back in '03 or '04 I think. As I was prepared for the bugs and knew what to watch out for it wasn't too frustrating… but some of the dungeons were just as irritating as they were when I got lost during my first play-through. Luckily, there's a debugging shortcut that cycles you through the important locations of a dungeon… that cheat is a necessity, because you WILL get stuck. If you don't fall through the floor first, of course.

EDIT

By the way, I completed Daggerfall (as in, actually finished the main quest) on my last playthrough (see above). My first end game fell victim to a bug - the letters necessary to trigger the final chapter never spawned. Probably fell through one of the holes in the ground like the Dwemer. Anyway, after erring through the states of Iliac Bay for weeks (real time) I called it a day and stopped playing.

Also, I greatly prefer a true expansion like Morrowind had instead of the shorter DLC in Oblivion.

Errr, did you never go through this door?

I think we can all the 2 votes for Battlespire proof that the ballot was confusing. That or maybe there were hanging chads.

…Oblivion: that it was too High Fantasy for my taste. Level scaling (though Tribunal had done this before). Psychic guards. And worst of all: no collectible light sources! Interior decoration was a real drag

Well sigil stones did throw off light - but unless you meant to decorate your interior with a hellish red glow they wren't suitable. Also the particle effect they generated did cause slowdowns on some machines back in the day

Luckily, there's a debugging shortcut that cycles you through the important locations of a dungeon… that cheat is a necessity, because you WILL get stuck. If you don't fall through the floor first, of course.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers who terrible the random generated dungeons could be. The innovative yet ultimately useless 3d map was part of the problem. The other problem was that the sprawling labyrinthian complexes made no sense and were sometimes generated in broken ways that did not make reaching quest points possible. I did have one case where a quest target was in a room that was not properly connected to the rest of the dungeon.

As many problems as Daggerfall had though I will always think well of it. It was the first non-ultima CRPG I had played at that time that really stole many hours of my life. I had lots of fun when I wasn't pounding my keyboard in frustration at forgetting to cast the mark spell upon entering the dungeon (something you should do even if you use the debug cheats).

Battlespire had some interesting lore thrown in but puzzles that seemed too difficult were often merely glitched requiring a reload to a previous save. Ultimately this one had me wishing I was playing Ultima Underworld instead.

Redguard was good in some ways - I appreciated the more hand-crafted nature of the NPCs and the locations. I was not a huge fan of their implementation of the 3rd person patformer style gameplay though. The same setting, plot, and characters but with another combat and control scheme could have made this a great game as opposed to an entertaining yet somtimes very frustrating diversion.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
I did have one case where a quest target was in a room that was not properly connected to the rest of the dungeon.

Was that Direnni tower? I don't think I ever figured out how to reach Medora, and finally succumbed to the lure of '[' and ']'. But I also felt seriously challenged by castles Shedungent and Faalem. It's been a while, and so I'm not sure about this.

As for the sigil stones and and other portable light sources in Oblivion (Welkynd stones etc. shed light as well IIRC): I put lanterns in the front porches of all of my Morrowind houses, no matter how honorable the way of acquiring the houses had been. I decorated roof terraces with lamps and candles and crockery and food and stuff, and I outlined the roof of my main stay with candles and the like just to be able to see it from a distance at night and know I'll be back home soon . It would have been really difficult to do this in Oblivion - just placing some food on a plate in an aesthetically pleasing way took 20+ attempts so I gave up quickly.

EDIT

Yeah, I also thought of Daggerfall as a very satisfying game. I liked the Daedra as presented in Battlespire, and Redguard… same feelings here.

Originally Posted by Remus
I am surprise that many peoples here liked Morrowind. Something changed?. There was time when anyone here (rpgdot) mentioned the game, a flame war would broke up very often. Hmm, where are the Gothic's fans

Here at RPG Watch, it's generally understood that Morrowind was the best TES game and thus far the voting reflects that. Still, some of the supporters of Oblivion are quite vocal.

And oh yeah, Gothic tops even Morrowind, but this poll is not about Gothic.