How does the DOS version of Daggerfall hold up?

Daggerfall Analysis playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM_F6ru-Us2y8zBjqpQWo18yCoWYrwaT8

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Timestamps, click to skip ahead!
Introduction 0:00
The DOS Version 2:00
The Unity Version 8:15
Series Conclusion 11:27
The "Age" of Daggerfall 15:41
Future plans 16:57

The Age of Daggerfall - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall Analysis | Part 8 in-text form:
In the mid-1990s, the personal computer market was still niche. Large strides had been made by devices like the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and the Amstrad CPC here in the UK, among many others. These all attempted to market PCs to a wider and younger audience, and while their attempts were met with some success, the market was still one dominated by those most interested in the medium.

Hence, software – of any kind – was rarely designed with ease of use in mind for mass-market adoption, instead, coming with huge manuals and the requirement of some basic early computing knowledge.
Computer RPGs then? They were just as complicated. These were games for PC enthusiasts, and specifically, the kinds of enthusiasts that were also into tabletop role-playing with complex levelling systems, stat checks, combat multipliers, and other in-depth systems. The audience expected complexity.

It’s not surprising then that RPGs from the DOS and later Windows 95 era tend to be bewildering to anyone with modern sensibilities. Early Elder Scrolls titles, Arena and Daggerfall likely intimidate the modern player from the off with their in-depth character creation and relatively high difficulty from an era where a souls-type game was just called a game.

This series so far has utilised the unity port of Daggerfall, an ambitious project that took an ageing relic straight into the 21st-century boasting capabilities that would’ve blown the minds of gamers back in 1996.

And while I made it clear back in that first video that the Unity version is by far the superior way of experiencing the game, until these last few years, the Daggerfall experience was not so simple. It would be unfair of me to analyse a game for so many hours, and mostly ignore its original state.

So let’s take a journey back in time to play the original *cough* emulated version of The Elder Scrolls 2…

#elderscrolls #daggerfall #jwlar