Late to the Party #2 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I purchased Skyrim on Switch back in and it just sat there in my backlog for years. I finally started playing Skyrim on 10/2/21. From 10/2/21 through October 2026, I had only played about 30 hours of the game.

Me and Skyrim did NOT get off to a good start at all.

In that inital 30 hours, I found the gameplay to be very limiting. I couldn’t do ANY dungeons during the day time and I often ran away from combat during the day. After awhile, I would just skip the clock 12 hours to play the game exclusively at in-game nighttime. I knew I was missing sometihng… but in the bitesized chunks I used to play the game, I just chalked it up to the game not being for me.

And then, after I beat Dark Souls last summer, I decided I would give Skyrim one more effort. This time, I made a serious effort to get into the game instead of just playing passively. I was still having a frustrating go of it - with all the issue I mentioned above still being a barrier to enjoying the game.

Now you have to understand, I am a gamer that does not look up solutions or use guides. Figuring things out on my own is one of the most enjoyable experiences I have with gaming. But I KNEW something was wrong with how I was experiencing THIS game. So I had to look it up.

So I went to google to figure out why my HP, MP, and Stamina were halved every single time the sun came up in game. I had NO IDEA I was a whole vampire damn near this whole time!

So I went through most of those first 30 hours being a complete vampire and I didn’t even know it! I also learned that this particular status is part of a DLC for the game. I had absolutely no idea. I just knew this made the game really not fun to play in the early hours of my playthrough and I almost gave up on the game but I’m glad I didn’t

I google how to cure myself and went on that little side quest to cure my vampirism.

Once this happened, I began to play the game normally, not having to skip to night time all the time, which prevented me from doing a lot quests during the day because I couldn’t speak with certain NPCs without them being scared of me; the game completely hooked me in. I played Skyrim nonstop from September until I beat it late November.

I can see how much Skyrim influenced Breath of the Wild now that I’ve had a lot of time with the game and completed it.

I’m not the best a following storylines, especially the main storyline because I do a TON of sidequests in games like this. I didn’t join with any of the waring parties at all, but I did join the Theives Guild and the Dark Brotherhood. The amount of player choice and how the world is interconnected is really impressive. This game would've blown me away if I played it back in 2011.

I had an absolute blast with Skyrim. The Switch port was awesome, despite being buggy as all hell - no other Switch game crashes like Skyrim does. I hate when it would happen and I’d lose progress between auto-saves, so I learned to put a hard save down regularly. I really enjoyed my experience with it. I was hooked doing so many sidequests. My character, which is typical for me in an RPG, was completely OP by end game. And I had no problem with the Dragonborne DLC either.

I was tempted to pick up the Switch 2 enhancement but I was pretty much done with the game by the time it dropped. Plus I’m a bit disappointed that it doesn’t run at 60fps.

Here are my final stats for the game:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Switch)
Started: 10/2/21; ended: 11/24/25
-time: 231:53:04
-level: 76

Dragonborne DLC
started: 11/24/25; ended: 12/13/25
-time: 270:46:20
-level: 83

I’m glad I came back to Skyrim. What once felt like a very restrictive and frustrating experience became quite an expansive and absorbing adventure! Even with its bugs and crashes, the game really hooked me. I couldn’t put it down. It was pretty much the only game I played from September thru mid-December in 2025. I’ll certainly check out the Oblivion remake if and when it gets a Switch 2 port. I’ll play through Skyrim again with someday - try a different build, and maybe even commit to one of the factions I skipped this time around. Now I truly understand why this game has endured for so long.