A spur of the moment playthrough as a break from playing Dragon's Dogma turned into a full main quest playthrough. I found that (with a bit a of light modding) this game stands up better than people give it credit for.

The art direction is actually stunning looking back. The world is well realised and each area of Cyrodiil feels unique. The biggest let down with the art is the character models and animations but they stand out in a very well made fantasy world.

The voice acting is actually quite good most of the time, it's just an obvious shame that they had so few actors but they all really sell it, especially in The Shiver Isles. So when everyone sounds the same you pick up on the idosyncracies of their performace and it starts to wear thin.

The repetivitveness of the Oblivion Gate dungeons was the nadir of the game for me but eventually you learn how to speed run them so it didn't really matter after a while.

The Knights of the Nine questline was very interesting and the set piece moments in that are very well done and had a big impact on me.

The Shivering Isles stands out as a great DLC especially for the time. A whole new map, new items, an interesting quest and writing that leans into the weird tone of the base game.