The history of the Elder Scrolls franchise is a frankly bizarre one. For a franchise that has been running for three decades, there are surprisingly few games in total that have been released for the main franchise. However, one thing that the franchise has never lacked is the potential for great difficulties as players wander across some sections of the great continent of Tamriel.
From the early days of games like Arena and Daggerfall, which have all but been forgotten now to the great heights of Morrowind and Oblivion, and finally leading to the mega-hit that was Skyrim, the Elder Scrolls franchise has seen a vast array of difficulties over its time. However, there are some games in the franchise which particularly upped the level over others, having inspired so many other games in the genre.
6 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim was such a mega-hit because of the pure accessibility of the game. It wasn’t overly difficult, there are options that players can use to make it trickier, but in general, there is nothing that makes Skyrim nearly as difficult as any of the other main entries in the Elder Scrolls franchise. From the get-go, there is a reasonable tutorial section with some difficulty, but there is so much to do in the early stages that help players get their level up before they have to go into bigger battles.
Players are known in the Skyrim community for commonly modding the game to add difficulty in various ways, and new modes like Survival were added later by Bethesda to other versions of the game in hopes of giving new ways to play. The lack of difficulty hasn’t stopped players from coming back again and again, but there is a consensus that Skyrim is the easiest of the lot in general.
5 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Another easy entry is the infamous Oblivion, which managed to achieve such a high level of love and success for the Elder Scrolls franchise more out of the world-building and storytelling than the combat itself. While the difficulty of Oblivion is considered a generally higher level than Skyrim’s, it is definitely still easier than most of the games that preceded it.
Oblivion managed to have a reasonably constant difficulty throughout, which helped it a lot in maintaining players’ interest as they continued on their adventure. Oblivion was an incredible adventure and remains the favorite in the franchise of many fans, but the difficulty when compared to the early RPG style of previous entries wasn’t there.
4 An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
Released in 1997 as a lesser entry in the franchise following the success of Arena & Daggerfall, Battlespire was set in the training facility for battle mages shortly after it was destroyed by the army of Mehrunes Dagon. This Daedric force had to be contended with by the player character, a mage set for their final day of tests when the army arrives and massacres most of the population.
Battlespire wasn’t a long game, but it had difficulty to it. Unlike the previous main entries in the franchise, there was no gold to collect and no merchants who would sell anything to the player. The enemies were randomized across the map and were tough to fight against, providing a decent challenge without being absolutely insane.
3 The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
The older style of action RPG provided in the 1996 release of Daggerfall was a much more stringent challenge for gamers than the newer editions of Tamriel usually provided. While the dungeons throughout the game provided varying degrees of challenge, some, including the first dungeon in the game, were massive and labyrinthine in their challenge.
There is an uptake in the amount of grinding that players would have to do in-game to get enough levels for bigger challenges in older games like Daggerfall than in newer ones. This challenge, or attempting to win some of the bigger battles in the game without this work being put in first, is much more likely to frustrate gamers out of their playthrough than the more recent Elder Scrolls games.
2 The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
While many gamers today that love the Elder Scrolls franchise have never delved deeper into the history and experienced the first two games, the majority consensus among fans of the franchise is probably that Morrowind is the hardest of the lot. The challenge in this game, which is much more recognizable to fans of Skyrim and Oblivion as being in a similar vein, is massive at times.
The reason why Morrowind is so difficult comes down to the hefty challenge of the combat in-game, enemies are genuinely difficult to fight the whole way through from beginning to end. However, the open-world style of Morrowind does allow players to level up more quickly than in previous franchise entries, which again gives some leniency that can help them become more formidable before entering bigger battles. Still, though, Morrowind has one of the best storylines of any Elder Scrolls game.
1 The Elder Scrolls: Arena
Interestingly, the greatest challenge posed by the Elder Scrolls franchise remains the original. Arena was filled with challenges, and some of this came from the game being unpolished and an original idea from a company that had previously made almost exclusively sports games instead of huge-scale RPGs. Movement and combat controls for the game weren’t as good as they should be, and as a result players, especially playing it retrospectively today, find the challenge to be massive.
Players can struggle to escape the opening areas even with a well-built character, and the difficulty doesn’t evaporate once players begin leveling up either. Even once players figure out the controls, they can easily be murdered from behind by sneaky enemies because it takes so long to turn around. Players found Arena tough back when it was released, and find it even more difficult today when comparing it with modern games.