I had a cool trans juggalette friend who used to play Daggerfall OG. We're talking within the "last few years" type recent. They spent a lot of time homeless and/or doing risky behaviour, but then they'd find a place to chill out and rest reliably for a while, and play oldschool eldarscrolls games. They were a lot younger than me, they thought the unity port was revisionist trash, and played the real original game (like what you'd find on GoG I guess.)
So that tells me for the right type of person Daggerfall is definitely a game that continues to be worth playing. In its best patched and most up to date but original form.
I played it when it was "new" and would stay up late into the night with my bestie, both of us playing Daggerfall riding our horses around from town to town, experimenting with crazy magic, treating some cities like a GTA server and trying to get 5 star wanted levels to be pursued thru the wastelands and whatnot. The game is way deeper than I even realised at the time.
Others have pointed out the only real pitfall of the game, which is the random dungeon generation. But the thing is that was cutting edge shit at the time and sometimes produces some really cool architectural accidents. At worst you can cheese most systems to get a deadly build and just get through the hard parts. Back when I played as a youngin I didn't do many dungeons, I just loved open world horseback riding, visiting the little walled cities and occasionally finding something adjacent to the various storylines.
Also being able to cheese the systems is another downside of the game. If you aren't a veteran player you obviously don't want to just "cheat" and become an untouchable working class god. Or do you?
I dunno. I haven't been back and I miss that person a lot and she had great taste in classic games. I know the unity port has had a couple of good years at least of development to improve it, but I bet she's still playing the original and having a blast.
Morrowind ultimately came along and I never really touched it again. That was the last good TES game (fight me) and it didn't even attempt random dungeon stuff. I remember being really sad about that. It's great for other reasons, and is super exploitable too for when you get bored of slogging through it.
I dunno I guess I'm writing this to contribute to the conversation, but also to speak for my homie who won me over with her position, someone who really felt that the original puro str8 from the sauce version was not only "worth playing" but one of the best and comfiest games to play and best in its most authentic form, properly patched of course, which likely includes community patches etc etc.
Play it and see?
lol I was complaining to my partner yesterday that they were using their "signs and sigils sourcebook" as a monitor riser when we have SO MANY OF MY OLD JAVA TEXTBOOKS to use. I was like "that should live on the coffee table in an ideal world where we had a nice home" and they were like "yeah it was okay but the author had a weird fascination about Harry Potter? Like kept harping on about how brilliant it was? seemed kind of childish and lame" I was like "I'm out. Trash."
They're also using a herbology book as a fucking coaster for their drinks. That has me honestly staying salty today now that I remember.
They also added a netflix nature documentary to our list to watch and we read the description "narrated by barrack obama" and I was like "I AM NOT WATCHING A FUCKEN NATURE DOCUMENTARY NARRATED BY A MAN WHO SHOULD BE TRIED IN THE HAGUE AND HUNG BY THE NECK UNTIL DEAD." Partner got a good chuckle out of that one.
(God, they put up with so much from me, for someone who's an "even less theory having MFer" than I am. I teach them bout important hexbear terminology and link them to stuff here and they think it's a cool site. At least now I can discuss doohickey related things without having to show my ass around all the digital surveillance.)