The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Sorry, but I couldn't help myself from posting this video. It's Dutch, but it should have English subtitles.

It's.... decent.... The missions are great and fun, and the story is good too, but I feel it's very short, and a very small part of the experience. When you will finish with the main quest and get in to the side mission, the guild missions and dungeons, you will probably forgot that you ever played the main quest. (You will remember when everyone calls you the hero dragonborn, and hail you, but when you kill a chicken, they will attack you with no mercy... Friendly advice: DO NOT KILL A CHICKEN. EVER)

I haven't played Skyrim in a while. I just can't get into it that much (some parts are too slow, especially quests that involve dungeons). But I did really enjoy it when I was playing.

Luckily stealth can be made more efficient using perks and wearing the Dark Brotherhood clothes. The way I prefer to kill enemies is sneaking up behind them and doing the double weapons heavy attack. Also there's a stealth meter while sneaking. When you're completely undetected it's a straight line. When you do something to make enemies suspicious it becomes a long oval. And when they detect you its an eye.

I've had some fun being stealthy, especially on bosses. For example sometimes I would attack with a bow from far away, and when they search for me, I wait till the stealth meter goes down. Plus I think if they lose sight of you they have to search for you.

Well, it's been a week since I started playing. I thought I'd let you know what I think of it.

In general, I like the game. I'm still not used to everything, but I'm getting there, I think. One of my friends has played it too, so I have a good help in him.
One of the things I can't get used to is the names. I forget nearly all of the names of characters, gods, Daedra, whatever. The quest stories have been decent so far, bit predictable sometimes. What bugs me is that I have too many pending quests to remember the background story to each and every one. But that's my own fault, really.
My highest skills are Sneak and Archery, I think. I use them a lot and I like those. It makes a good pair, in my opinion.
As I expected, I don't use magic that often. Apart from Dragon Shouts, I only use healing spells and sometimes Clairvoyance and Detect Life. Enchanting doesn't really interest me, but when I get bored I might just give that a try. Same goes for Alchemy.
Also, some guards are really starting to piss me off. That's because of the repetetive things they say. "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll?", "You're the new member of the Companions? So you, what, fetch the mead?", etc. etc.

But, despite a couple of negative things I listed here, I like it. Again, thanks for your reviews and advices.

Anyone here playing the re release for current gen consoles? Figured I'd give it a shot after watching a video series called "Five Things You Didn't Know You Could Do in Skyrim", which I highly recommend.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLw6jr9nSJazEQCXIOUFWCxgBIYHyKKEL
So much attention to detail; Bethesda really put their hearts into the game.

Another thing I've been looking into is console mods. The PS4 is more limited than the Xbox One in what kinds of mods can be put because of restrictions made by Sony (no external assets), however there are still a ton of cool things that can be added, and so far I'm having a blast just looking up mods to download.

For anyone who doesn't know there is the Creation Club, which are mods made by Bethesda that you pay for, and are not really worth it; but then there are regular mods made by players that can really enhance or improve your game experience. The screenshot below shows my current character, a snow elf race mod I named Aurelia (I gave her white hair, but there appears to be a glitch that makes her hair dark after loading a save). The dragon behind her isn't actually a dragon, but an equipable item I gave to a follower. Cool stuff.

I started playing in 2013 (as documented in this thread) and I still pick it up to play for a couple weeks from time to time. It still holds up very well (especially with mods) and I like that console players can experience that joy too.

It's been half a year since I last played, but I'm close to a big milestone. Skyrim is easily the game I put the most time in, ever.

I've been having an itch to start playing this again. I mainly just focused on mods like "Every kill is a finisher" and leveling up faster (because I've played it a ton already). I'm sure there are even better mods out there now.

.... I never finished this game ... I think I played probably about 100 hours way back in the day.

I think my character just met the greybeards.

Probably about as much time I spent playing the whole Ac franchise so far. Any great stories to tell?

I never beat the story on my original playthrough. After getting far in the story I stopped progressing when reaching a mission that required me to travel to an otherwise inaccessible location. I think I planned to level up more first. Also because I started playing shortly after the game came out, there were a few glitched quests I couldn't beat, one of them being "Striking the Heart" for the companions guild. After a few years I picked the game up again to play the DLCs, but lost interest after beating Dragonborn and getting close to the end of Dawnguard.

Assuming you play on PS4, check out this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdljobuRMWjPu36vM9v4ApApPs08As9r0
In short there's a wide variety, such as aesthetic improvements to cities, different playable races, alternative ways to start a new game, cool houses, the creation club even has an armored mudcrab follower currently free.

A few mods I would recommend:

Think it was called "Craftable Anything". So many more items can be made at smith forges, especially things that are normally hard to get or even unobtainable in the vanilla game.
"Change Your Race Anytime"
"Resurrect". Brings a character back to life. Unlike reanimation spells, the NPC is alive again, not a walking corpse.
A few recent mods that improve combat, such as better sound effects and more blood spatter.
There's also a mod that lets you change a character's name and another one that lets you change their default gear. A lot of fun can be had with those.

I like roleplay playthroughs every now and then. One of them was a savage non-civilized Wood Elf that somehow ended up in the cold, unforgiven Skyrim. I installed a bunch of hunting and survival mods and took shelter in a cave and went outside to forage and hunt, craft my own weapons and so on. Never made any contact with civilization, if I saw an NPC on a road nearby I'd either retreat, hide and observe or ambush and kill them. Eventually I gathered supplies to move south to a more moderate climate. I nearly died on the trek but I made camp near a small creek and there was a lot more food around. Then the memories get foggy, I think I wanted to follow the creek and ended up killed by a bear or by a fall from a waterfall.

Sometimes I make up a character to roleplay with some bad attributes that will make playing harder, but more interesting, like not being able to read or swim or being afraid of spiders or Khajiit, you name it. One character was an evil Nord ice mage who was obsessed with becoming the world's strongest mage and dominating the world. He hung around the northeastern provinces raiding settlements and camps and looking for spells and enchantments to grow his power. Everything about him was ice-themed, and he was afraid of fire.

I did some challenge playthroughs as well. I basically randomize all character creation variables and then pick three skills at random, and those are the only skills I can gain XP in. I beat the main storyline with a Dark Elf mage who only used Lockpicking, Conjuration, and either Alteration or Illusion (can't remember). Those runs are more interesting when using a skill tree overhaul mod, which makes certain skills more viable, like Speech now enabling you to talk to animals or become a war-bard, buffing allies by beating a drum and charming enemies by playing a flute, or unarmed combat perks under the Light Armor skill tree. I also fondly remember Heavy Armor, Smithing & Destruction (imagine a Redguard woman in full Dwarven Armor blasting fireballs like she was a tank) and Restoration, Alchemy & Block (imagine a cowardly Nord hiding behind his shield at all times, chugging his self-made potions and casting healing spells, and occasionally swinging a punch).

I even dipped into modding. I looked at some tutorials and managed to make a really basic mod, where I imported the appearance of some earlier player characters, made them into an NPC with the gear they used to have, and putting them down in the world. A lot of my 'retired' characters all have a tavern in Skyrim where they live on. They don't have any lines apart from basic greetings in a voicetype that I picked for them, but they automatically move around the tavern from whatever the game has designated as seats or hangout spots. So when I play a new character and I visit a tavern, I see one of my old characters drinking at the bar, or leaning against a wall. I really like it because it fills up the usually empty taverns, it's sort of a tribute to the hours I spent on playing those older characters, and it's something that I made myself from scratch.

That's fucking cool!

Speaking of modding, that has looked interesting ever since I started playing again. In contrast to the overwhelming amount on PC and XBox One, the PS4 desperately needs more. Of course if you get a computer just to make console mods, you're better off playing on PC anyway, which explains the lack thereof.

The Creation Kit is a great starting tool, but you'll need other programs, such as Photoshop to modify the appearance of equipment. And that's the only way to get different types of clothes and armor on the PS4 since the "only vanilla game assets" restriction won't allow you to import anything made from scratch.

Many people hate this, saying that the PS4 doesn't have any true mods, but on the contrary I think it forces you to be more creative. I've wanted to see capes and cloaks make it into the game on PS4, but as far as I can tell none yet. They technically do exist in the game, but attached to another piece of clothing, such as a shirt or hood. What I want are for capes and cloaks to be made into their own item with a separate equipment slot and given a bunch of recolors.

So if anyone wants to make any mods for Skyrim and has a big enough heart to make them compatible with the PS4, let me know and I'll give off a list of inspired ideas.