I have well over 500 hours in Skyrim (counting all platforms), 350 hours in Oblivion and probably around 350 hours in Morrowind in total...so far, and it is my opinion that Morrowind gives the best RPG and TES experience of this threesome plus Daggerfall (I am leaving out Arena as I haven't gotten around to play that properly yet). The main story of Morrowind (which is the only real questline in the game without the expansions) is simply many levels above what is presented to us in Oblivion and Skyrim as I see it. Even though the graphics are now very outdated, I still feel the game world in Morrowind feels more "real" than in the two latest games - the reason for this is probably that Morrowind is much more lore-rich and that no matter where you go and what you do you still feel connected with the main plot and the workings of Dunmer society (which you will be intimately familiar with in this game).

Morrowind's greatest asset is probably the sense of wonder and strangeness the game world instills in the player and its very rewarding exploration. Some have called Morrowind "the last real TES game", and while I'm not going to make that claim it is clear that the dumbing down of the series and the extreme hand-holding of the player in say Skyrim has not exactly made the series take a direction that I'm very happy with. In Morrowind you often have to read to discover what to do and where to go at times and at other times you will have to think - there are no quest markers in this game to ruin this part of the game.

Many people complain about the combat in Morrowind, and reasonably so if the game is to be compared to modern action titles - this was never the point however: this game is supposed to be an RPG with many mechanics taken from table-top RPG gaming. Seen in this light the combat system is altogether decent and in my opinion can be quite fun. In vanilla Morrowind for instance you can not manually block with your shield, something that probably sounds ridiculous to modern players - it makes perfect sense though seen from the perspective of old-school RPG-gaming where it is your character's stats and abilities that govern the outcome of an action and not the players own skills of reaction and button-timing and what not.

All in all I strongly recommend this game and I urge all fans of TES to try it out no matter their feelings about the lack of an action-oriented combat system, because in my opinion this game is simply a better RPG experience than we get in Oblivion or Skyrim. A far better one. Oblivion and Skyrim are games I will probably never play again (been there done that...), but Morrowind I will return to again and again.