Okay, please don’t hate me for writing this second line of the review. I have never played Skyrim. So, there it is, out in the open. Yes, I played a bit of Morrowind and Oblivion, but I’m generally awful at the Elder Scrolls games. I also did not have a PC that could run Skyrim for most of the years. It was at the height of its popularity. Neither did I feel the urge to pick it up when it was ported to the Switch for the first time, mainly because I was busy playing other games from Nintendo IPs. So when the Anniversary Edition dropped in our inbox, I took an arrow to the knee to become an adventurer like yourself. Yes, yes, 2011 called; they want their joke back. Let’s dive in.
Skyrim!
So, Skyrim is the fifth installment of the Elder Scrolls Series (main games) and is set 200 years after the events of Oblivion. It takes place in Skyrim, the northernmost province of Tamriel. Its main story focuses on the player’s character, the Dragonborn, on their quest to defeat Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon prophesied to destroy the world. Throughout the game, the player completes quests and develops the character by improving skills. The game continues the open-world tradition of its predecessors by allowing the player to travel anywhere in the game world at any time and to ignore or postpone the main storyline indefinitely. So what was this about a dragon? I’m too busy hopping around a mountain looking for some weird stone to bring back to the random villager in town x.
Gameplay
Let’s do a quick rundown of the gameplay before I dive into the anniversary part, okay? Bear with me. So, the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing game, playable from either a first- or third-person perspective. I always preferred the latter when I was younger, but I tried the first-person mode on the Nintendo Switch (both docked and handheld), and I must say, it works pretty well! The player may freely roam over the land of Skyrim, an open-world environment consisting of wilderness expanses, dungeons, caves, cities, towns, fortresses, and villages. Each city and town in the game world has jobs, such as farming, for the player to engage in. In addition, players may navigate the game world more quickly by riding horses, paying for a ride from a city’s stable, or utilizing a fast-travel system to move their character immediately to a previously discovered location.
At the beginning of the game, you get to select their character’s sex and race, with ten choices for the latter, including races of humans and fantasy races such as elves and orcs. I played as an elven race from Morrowind (Dunmur), with the special skill named Ancestors Wrath. This means I can surround a character in the fire for 60 seconds; pretty neat, no? Next, I choose a route specializing in bows and thievery since I like stealthy gameplay. Then you get to choose the character’s appearance, which takes way too long since you have so many options. Like in most RPGs, characters have three primary attributes: health is how much damage the character can take before dying, Magicka is depleted to cast spells, and stamina allows the character to perform heavy “power attacks” or sprint. A status bar for each attribute appears onscreen when the attribute falls below its maximum value. Attributes regenerate over time and can be refilled faster by drinking potions or casting regenerative spells.
“Took an arrow in the knee on my way through the Eld three summers ago. It gives out every now and then.” He grimaced and said wistfully, “It’s what made me give up the good life on the road.” He reached down to touch his oddly bent leg tenderly.”
Characters gain experience indirectly via leveling up skills. The 18 skills are divided evenly among the three schools of combat, magic, and stealth. Each skill has its own experience bar, which increases when the character acts in-game related to the skill. For example, crafting a dagger increases the Smithing skill, and dealing damage with a bow increases the Archery skill. When a skill’s experience bar fills, the skill levels up, and the bar is reset. After enough skills level up, the character levels up, enabling the player to increase the maximum value of one of the three attributes and providing a perk point. Perk points can be spent immediately on a skill-specific perk or stored for later use. The skill tree is enormous and confused me for a bit; luckily, it’s 2022, and there are pretty good guides to point a novice like myself in the right direction.
Nintendo Switch
The game runs surprisingly well on the Nintendo Switch. And yes, I know, the game is already eleven years old. But it’s a big game with a lot of content (read the next paragraph if you still have doubts). And it shows that the Nintendo Switch can still run some big triple-A titles. Sure, I could have bought this on the Steam store to play on the Deck, but I like that I can play this on my Nintendo Switch when traveling on the train or a plane. Mainly because the Nintendo Switch is a bit lighter and less big than the Deck (even though I love the Deck). I don’t mind that the graphics might be a bit less crisp; I had a ton of fun with this on my Switch – and am not even done!
Anniversary Edition!
Anniversary Edition you say? Yes, I sure did. The Anniversary edition is basically an upgraded version of the special edition of Skyrim and includes the three major expansions Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn. The Anniversary Edition also contains 74 Creation Club mods, all 48 currently available ones, plus 26 new, unreleased ones, adding up to around 500 new gameplay elements for Skyrim. That’s a lot! The Creation Club is an addition to the Skyrim Special Edition and Skyrim Anniversary Edition, which allows users to purchase mods that Bethesda Softworks have officially sanctioned, often called “creations.” Players can use the Creation Club from PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, so sadly no usage for those, like me, who play the game on the Nintendo Switch. These additions include backpacks, armor, and weapons, but they also offer extra side quests and other cool stuff. Enough to keep you entertained!
Conclusion
So, to conclude! From a novice Skryim player’s viewpoint, this is probably the best edition. It offers a ton of content for a great price and caters to the needs of players everywhere. Oh, and you get to brush up on your meme game from the 2010s; that’s also a plus for me. The anniversary edition offers good and solid gameplay on the Nintendo Switch that can rival the other systems it runs on. Just don’t expect the 4K HD texture mods or Thomas the Tank Engine instead of a dragon; it’s still the Nintendo Switch, after all…
