Yeah, it was in a weird sort of Uncanny Valley for gameplay. It was a 3D game with real-time combat, but was still relying on the old school tabletop RPG mechanics that the series was built on. So when you attack, the game does some math to figure out if you actually hit. But that causes some cognitive dissonance because I just saw my character’s attack connect and yet it was labeled as a miss because the invisible d20 rolled too low.

Rolling for an attack is fine in a turn based game, or a 2D game where sprites are just bouncing around. But when I saw my sword phase through the enemy without hurting them, it made it hard to continue playing.

The game also requires a lot more focus and time than I have these days. As an adult, I typically only have a few hours a week to play. And that’s intermittent, while constantly getting pulled away for other things. And in a game like Morrowind, things like the quest notes just aren’t conducive to my lifestyle. No quest marker, because the game gives me a note with vague directions? That’s fine if I’m a kid who can spend 5+ hours wandering around looking for the right boulder to take a left at. But if I’m getting pulled away and distracted constantly, I won’t even be able to remember what the note said when I come back to my computer.

I actually really enjoyed replaying it recently after many many years. Other than the dialog, what bugs you about it?

By the way, the engine replacement is really good.

As someone who didn't even know it existed until like 2 years ago. It feels incredibly dated. I have 2 friends who love it and beg me to play with them with the multi-player mod but I just can't get into it. Controls feel clunky, combat is janky and graphics are meh. I understand it probably has great systems and writing and for the time it was great but it just doesn't hold up unless you have prior history with it. I'm not even hating on it, I understand it's probably a great game. I also played Mario 64 and ocarina of time way after their release (grew up a poor kid in a tiny rural town with no internet and 1 TV that had like 3 channels) and both felt pretty decent and like they held up while also being older than morrowind.

I'm so glad I went back and finished it recently. The MQ story is really good. I put on a mod to make magicka regenerate like in later games and played a straight mage, eventually crafting rings to be able to jump around town super fast and another to cross the continent.

What put me off of the game initially was that it had a nasty bug where the game would immediately crash and close to desktop after about 15 to 30 mins of play. So if you didn't regularly save, you'd lose progress.

This happened to me on multiple OSes (Windows 98, XP, 7 & 8.1), across different copies of the game and after trying various community patches to fix the problem to no avail

Bought the GOTY edition with the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions on Steam when it was heavily discounted and it works just fine.

Unfortunately this is one of those many instances where a game is released absolutely fucking broken and you have to buy the expansion to fix it. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is another such game where the base game has a game breaking bug can randomly plummet the stats of all your rides.