Skyrim Special Edition Review: Still the King of Open-World RPGs

The Verdict

Skyrim Special Edition is the ultimate escapist RPG. It doesn’t just let you play a character. It gives you a second life, and the only real limit is how curious you’re willing to be.

The Short Version

If you’ve never played Skyrim, here’s what you need to know: it’s one of the few games where you can completely ignore the main story and still get 100 hours out of it. You might spend a whole playthrough becoming a master thief. Or a legendary blacksmith. Or just wandering the mountains absorbing dragon souls because that sounds fun. The game never really tells you no, and that’s exactly why people keep coming back to it.

The Special Edition in particular holds up well as the go-to version. It’s more stable than the original, which makes it a solid base if you ever want to dive into mods.

What Makes It Actually Fun

The freedom is the main thing. Not “open world freedom” in the marketing-speak sense, but genuine, go-anywhere-do-anything freedom that most games still don’t manage to match. You can lead the College of Winterhold, tip the scales of a civil war, or just wander until something interesting happens. Something always does.

The atmosphere pulls a lot of weight too. Jeremy Soule’s score is one of the best in gaming, and it hits different when you crest a snowy ridge and spot a new dungeon in the distance. That “what’s over there?” feeling is constant, and it’s what keeps sessions running long.

At its core, the dragon-hunting loop works really well. Tracking them down, learning their shouts, and gradually becoming a walking force of nature gives you a satisfying sense of progression that doesn’t rely on grinding numbers.

Where It Falls Short

The early dragon fights are underwhelming once you know what you’re doing. For enemies that are supposed to be legendary, they go down a bit too easily in the first few hours.

Bethesda’s signature jankiness shows up occasionally too. Physics quirks, NPCs doing strange things, that kind of stuff. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but it does break the immersion at the worst moments.

Bottom Line

Skyrim Special Edition earns a 9/10 because it’s the comfort food of gaming. The combat feels floaty and the AI is dated by modern standards, but the sheer density of things to do and discover makes those flaws easy to forgive. It’s the game every open-world RPG gets compared to, and most still don’t beat it.