The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall Unity Review

 I played on: Windows PC
I paid: £0 (Both Daggerfall and the Daggerfall Unity mod are free)
Available on: Windows, Linux PC, MacOS
Notes: You can find the Daggerfall Unity mod here!

The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall was released over a quarter of a century ago in 1996 by Bethesda Game Studios. It’s a follow-up to The Elder Scrolls Arena.

Daggerfall was originally released on Microsoft DOS, which is an operating system that predates graphical interfaces. What this means for the original release of Daggerfall is that while you can run it using DOSBox, it doesn’t run very well. Daggerfall Unity is a fan project that aims to take the original DOS version of Daggerfall and move it over from its original XnGine engine to the more modern Unity engine. Thanks to a lot of hard work from some very dedicated and talented fans, headed up by the blindingly passionate Gavin Clayton, this project was completed at the end of 2023. This is without a doubt the easiest and most effective way to play this classic today. While it offers a more stable way to play Daggerfall, it also does so much more. The resolution settings now include modern display resolutions which even output in widescreen. This means you can now play Daggerfall in full 4K! Other little settings help to move the game into the modern era, such as customizable controls and switched health and fatigue bar colours to match the newer Elder Scrolls games. You can also opt-in to a shorter dungeons option which after a couple of hours playing without, I was glad to have. All-in-all Gavin Clayton really deserves all the praise in the world for bringing this retro classic back to life!

Without further ado, let’s dig into the game itself!

The story starts with a live-action version of Emperor Urial Septim VII tasking us, their loyal agent and member of the Blades, with travelling to the Iliac Bay. We’re to investigate claims that King Lysandus’ ghost has been haunting the streets of Daggerfall at night. Lysandus was a close friend to the emperor and so he wants to know what’s troubling the spirit of the once-king. While we’re there, we also need to track down a personal letter from the emperor that was sent to Queen Mynisera and apparently never reached her. After creating our character we’re then sent off to the Iliac Bay. En route our boat is caught up in an unnatural storm and we’re thrown overboard. Eventually we wash up in an old cave known as privateer's hold. After a quick but effective tutorial we escape the dungeon and begin our investigation into the death of King Lysandus and the disappearance of the emperor’s letter.

While Daggerfall is set in the same world as Arena it has very little to do with the story from its predecessor. This is its own plot, set in the Iliac Bay area of Tamriel, a vast region that includes the southern half of High Rock, and the northern half of Hammerfell. The writing, characters, and general lore and story of Daggerfall was one of the things I found myself surprised by. After playing Arena, I went into Daggerfall expecting a similar sort of story. A simple affair that exists to set up the world and gameplay more than anything else. To my pleasant surprise a rich deep narrative is exactly what I got. I’d go as far as to say that this story is the best within the numbered Elder Scrolls entries. We have medieval political drama unfolding before our very eyes as the courts of Daggerfall, Wayrest, and Sentinal all fight over control of the region. That’s to say nothing of the dark secrets that lay at the heart of each of these powerful families. We have everything from filicide, incest, affairs, and so on. Honestly, at times it starts to feel like we’re playing through a high-fantasy version of Game of Thrones, in the best possible way!

The gameplay of Daggerfall is where modern Elder Scrolls fans will have the most trouble adjusting. While Daggerfall Unity improves things dramatically, without extensive modding, the core 1996 design is still alive and well under the updated game engine.

Let’s start by looking at the combat, which uses a dice-roll system to determine if your attacks hit your opponent or not. This can feel very frustrating to younger players or those who have allowed themselves to become comfortable with modern game design.

So, what do I mean when I say that the combat uses a dice-roll system?

Simply put, each time you swing your sword, fire an arrow, or cast a spell at an enemy, the game will perform a calculation in the background to decide if your attack hits your opponent. This is based on your weapon material, how damaged your weapon is, your skill in that weapon, your strength or other relevant ability score, plus a random number. If this calculation equates to a number higher than your opponent’s chance to dodge, then you will hit them. This is based around the systems found within table-top RPG’s like Dungeon’s and Dragons. Once you understand what’s happening it starts to make sense, but if you’re not used to these systems then it can feel like you’re swinging your weapon around uselessly. Ultimately, I came around to the combat after I understood what was going on with it.

I can’t say the same for the dungeons. Dungeons within Daggerfall can be split into one of two categories. The ones connected to story quests and the ones connected to miscellaneous quests. While the story dungeons have been designed by humans and all remain the same during each playthrough, the miscellaneous dungeons are procedurally generated. Both types, however, are awful. They will wrap around themselves creating a three-dimensional maze complete with dead ends, random traps, and secret doorways. It’s an absolute certainty that without a guide you will get lost within one of these nightmarish hell holes. Daggerfall Unity comes with an option to enable shorter dungeons. This is a godsend. I started my first attempt at this game without shorter dungeons enabled, and after a few hours trapped within one of these abominations I restarted my playthrough just so that I could enable the shorter dungeons. I urge anyone thinking of playing Daggerfall Unity to enable the shorter dungeons. The bad news is that this setting only affects the miscellaneous dungeons, so if you’re here for the main story then I’m afraid that you’ll need to suffer through at least a few of the horrors. The good news is that because these story dungeons are the same for everyone playing, there are plenty of guides available online. My advice is to use them; there is no shame in it.

What makes it worse is that these dungeons don’t even make sense. Within Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim’s dungeons you can follow the logic of how they were used by the people within the world. You can tell what each dungeon is used for within those newer games. Perhaps you’re exploring an ancient tomb protected by the undead, or an old cave being used as a hideout by bandits, or the secret lair of some necromancer. There is none of that logic within Daggerfall’s dungeons. You can find a secret door, that leads to a locked door, that itself leads to a corridor that’s nothing but a dead end. Sometimes you will find a room with torture equipment in it, or some old coffins, or maybe even a temple, but these are placed without any logic as to why they’re where they are. That’s if the room you find even has any furniture at all. Most of the rooms within these dungeons are barren, empty, with nothing but a randomly placed enemy.

If the dungeons are so bad, then what else is there to do within Daggerfall?

This is where the beauty of Daggerfall is. This is easily the most open and ambitious Elder Scrolls game. You can become a sell-sword, travelling from tavern to tavern, taking any jobs that offer enough coin to make it worthwhile. Then again you could take out a loan with a bank, purchase a ship and raid any towns along the coastline, making a name for yourself as a fearsome pirate. Maybe you want to become a noble knight, that’s possible too, just join any knightly order you happen to like the name of and dedicate yourself to rising in rank. There is so much to do within Daggerfall that it’s honestly a little daunting. The scale of this game is simply sensational!

Then you have all the little features that just bring the world to life in a way that even the modern Elder Scrolls lack. You can collect and read 90 books that all add detail to the world around you, then when your done you can hoard them in your home or ship. Talking to everyone will be difficult because not everyone speaks Cyrodilic, so you may need to learn some of the 9 languages within the game. You might be lucky enough to visit a town or city during one of the many seasonal holidays which will come with certain benefits and drawbacks. The first day of each new year is the New Life Festival which comes with the benefit of free ale at any tavern to celebrate. There are a lot of these holidays but not all of them will be celebrated everywhere within the Iliac Bay. Scour Day, for example is celebrated within most of High Rock but not very much outside of that area. This helps gives certain parts of the map their own culture and identity beyond what the graphics already do. Then you have the seasons. Daggerfall will be surrounded by lush green grass most of the year but during the winter seasons the ground will become coated in snow. This really helps to show the passage of time in a way that no other Elder Scrolls game has since Daggerfall.

The one drawback to all Daggerfall’s ambitious ideas is that to get the most out of the game, you’re required to use your imagination. Sure, you can roleplay as a noble knight, a dangerous pirate, or a well-meaning adventurer, but most of the actions you take will be played out via menus, fast-travel, and dialogue boxes explaining what you’ve just done. The majority of NPC’s are not animated, those that are will most likely only have attacks animated. Any actions they take will be described to you via a text box. The randomly generated nature to the miscellaneous quests means that you will see the same template reused a lot with only the names and locations different. If you want to travel around the map then you click on the region, search the name of the location you want to travel to, and then you will fast travel there. This also counts for the ships that you’re able to purchase. You can explore the interior of the ship, but if you travel via your ship then it’s just a means of fast travelling. The comparison I made earlier to Dungeon’s and Dragons is rather apt because, like table-top RPG’s, most of Daggerfall unfolds in the theatre of the mind. If you can get into it, then there’s really nothing quite like it in my opinion, but similar to most TTRPG’s, it won’t be for everyone.

The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall is one hell of a game. It’s dated, that’s beyond a doubt, if not for the quality-of-life changes made by the Daggerfall Unity mod, I doubt it would really be playable by modern standards. Under all those pixels though, is something truly special. It’s an Elder Scrolls game with more ambition and scale than any before or after it. That breadth is held back by troublesome dungeons, an overreliance on the players imagination, and procedural generation. If you can look past all that, then there is a gaming experience here that’s truly incredible. Daggerfall Unity is an outstanding remaster of one of gaming’s most interesting, flawed masterpieces.

Recommendation Rating: 8 out of 10.