[Too-DAMN-Much]

been playing quite a bit more and i am really enjoying skyrim but.... two things are really starting to get on my nerves to a point as well.

and oddly enough, it's not that it's a shitty port from derpsoles, that at least i expect from bethesda by now.

first and foremost:
there's a reason i'm pointing this out i should add, carry weight, yup it's back and dear god am i hating it and i've yet to find any single way to increase it at all.
I WANT MY FUCKING ATTRIBUTE POINTS BACK
yeah, it's quite a bit sad, there isn't even a real character sheet/page in the game at all, you can't ever view your numerical stats or attributes and from what i've seen, there's never a chance to increase/gain/buff them directly either.

so yeah, skyrim is a bit on the RPG Lite side, dear lord, what did we do to deserve this?

i still remember the amount of rage and hatred that abound when mass effect decided you didn't deserve to have armor anymore, guys? where the fuck are you? you can't even view your character sheet, why aren't we enraged here?

secondly, VATS is back.... ish anyway, a lot of the time you'll get a particularly good strike or somehow wind up doing a finisher type move when you attack, which.... i admit, seems a bit tacked on and out of place in skyrim in the first place but... i'm ignoring that, i feel forgiving today, i don't know why.

so, right, why is part of VATs returning one thing i hate about skyrim?
simple, because it's the fucking useful part, sure i admit damn near anyone could be a crit monster in fallout 3 and new vegas pretty regularly too if you used VATs targeting a lot, that's not what i'm upset about missing though, so what is it?
i could tell who i was trying to snipe with VATs, hit the VATs button when you see people/animals on the compass come in to view and there you go easy, simple, stupid, brainless way to see the name of the NPC you were about to shoot regardless of how far they were.

i've accidentally killed my own companion with my bow at least once or twice because of this, say she charges in for melee while i'm lining up my shot with the bow, she runs in front of the bow at the right time and takes and arrow to the wherever, or (this one is by far the more frustrating scenario FYI) she'll be a little behind me or ahead and catching up, ya know kinda off in the distance still (NPCs can't run as fast as players by just a tiny bit so it happens fairly often, if they were able to match PC running speed you'd never catch anyone running away is why it's done) or stuck on a fucking rock like the damn AI loves to do so much, just barely far enough away from me that with all this weather trying to snowstorm or monsoon my eyes to death all the time visual identification is just flat out impossible and to compound the issue? yeah, you can see an enemy's lifebar and name at the top of your screen BUT guess what, it ONLY ever shows up there after you've attacked and landed a hit on that character and it will not change by any means until you've landed an attack on some other character.

not only that melee combat while done well for the most part.... it's extremely hard to keep up with and since i can't tell my follower to use either ranged or melee only anytime i'm in melee combat so is she usually with the same enemy, melee fights with a follower often turn into quite a clusterfuck and it's incredibly hard if not nearly impossible to ensure that you don't accidentally hit your follower with a melee swing, it's amazing how easy it is to accidentally hit them in fact.

i could go on about how the perks system sucks a bit too, in fact, fuck it, i will.
perks from the last couple fallout games return in skyrim, really an obvious decision to keep them around to my eye, the problem though?
umm.... well... for starters there isn't a single "just because it's fun" perk in the entire game, fallout games did this miles better than skyrim where you'd be able to pick from perks like... finesse which actually gives a quite awesome stat bonus/modifier down to... bloody mess which technically does give a modifier but it's a small 5% one and if you take bloody mess for the damage increase you need to get your head examined in the first place, this perk has absolutely zero point.... unless you happen to really really love gibs and spilling them all over the place with every single kill.

now, what are the perks in skyrim like?
yeah, i hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but.... around halfish or so only exist to let you cast spells for half mana cost, useful? sure, it'd kinda have to be, but then again on the other hand the whole bragging about "15 perks for every skill/spell set in the game, massive amounts of choice" umm... yeah fucking right, half of the perks i'm eligible for (meaning i meet a skill requirement) are nothing but duplicates for other spells.... quite often the spells that i have no interest in.

so yeah, let's correct that statement "15 perks for every skill/spell set in the game, but you'll only ever take about 5 from each category most likely unless you like wasting points of buffing spells you don't have and may not even intend to get"

ok i know this is a lot of reading and you're probably reaching for a dictionary and some visine already as you struggle to make out the words but, i'm not done with my criticisms just yet, this next one is a bit of a major one too.

leveling up, oh shit.
first of all, experience points don't even exist in this game in the first place, the closest you'll ever find is skill points, none of which you can ever assign of your own free will, each and every skill in the entire game has to be leveled up with use, not the worst thing on it's own.

but, you can't even level up your character at all without gaining a few skill points first, what's the problem?

simple really, say you decide to fight one of those giants that are famous for one shotting people into skyrim's lower atmosphere with their club swings, maybe you manage to beat one by whichever leads you to beat one, but... you used your weapon that you're the most proficient with which means that you killed it one or two swings or shots and skyrim decides that you didn't work hard enough to be given a skill point for that weapon.

i will say right here that i'm saying this as a rhetorical question for the most part, but believe me i've had fights where i gained absolutely zero skill points fairly often but at least it doesn't seem like you have to connect much to be granted one, two to three solid hits seems to almost always yield a skill point for the weapon type used.

anyway, back to our scenario, you kill the giant, get no skill point and go to loot his corpse a pittance of gold and some useless armor later, you just fought him for nothing, you don't connect enough swings for the game to grant you a skill point? you don't get any experience of any type from that fight, sure you're a little closer to your next skill point, but.... FUCK is it really such a horrible idea to bethesda that killing things should give you some experience to get you closer to your next level?

it's a lenient system though to a point whether or not you get a skill point but.. damn, way to take the fun out of the end of a hard fought battle just because you had to change up tactics a bit during the fight.

and not only that, i've been playing for less than 10 hour and i'm already level 12.... i just can't help but feel like the game is happy to hand out level ups like freaking candy instead of making me earn them, it's eerily fast leveling up to a point and when you do level up, i'm still sitting on two perk points that i have literally no use for because i don't quite meet the skill requirement of the perk that i want, that's how you know an RPG is shit right there, you don't even give it a second thought when you level up anymore because you know there's no point in collecting it yet.