I've been playing a lot of Skyrim lately. It's my first time playing it, but I understand it's pretty popular?
I initially had some mixed feelings, but now that I'm deeper into the game, I do like it. It's easy to compare it to Breath of the Wild, with that being my most recent open world experience, and in a lot of ways I can see how Nintendo perfected some aspects of the open world design.
Early on in the game, I felt constantly lost and finding myself in situations where I'm seriously under-leveled. Quests would send you across the map, and along the way you can find caves and dungeons with bosses that are level 30+. Not all of them have bosses, but traversing a dungeon only to turn back because the boss is too strong feels like a waste. Once, I came across a mid boss and just had to flat out run away from it. I used my "shout" to knock it off its platform and then just ran to the exit. The main boss was waiting for me up some steps, but I guess the game glitched and I just arrowed it to death without it moving or attacking.
I think that was my frustration with the game. It felt all over the place, whether I was ready for it or not. Once I got attacked by some "cultists" and they whooped my ass until I was able to run away. I eventually returned with some vampire lady, and she basically killed them for me. I literally couldn't go back to that particular town for a while because I knew I couldn't kill those people. That kept me from some quests.
The other frustration was the lack of explanations for most things. Everytime I see a new shrine I accidentally activate it and get a new "blessing", but I don't know what they actually do, so I just kinda don't care. Then there was the time when like 8 different NPCs told me that if I was interested in magic, I should go to the college in Winterhold. Winterhold was so fucking far, I thought this had to be a mistake. I tried going once, but got killed along the way too many times. The story eventually led me there, but that felt like so many hours later.
Now that I'm deeper into the game, I'm liking it a lot more. Actually reading through the skill trees (constellations?) and saving some "perks" got me a few that I actually make me feel stronger. I find myself more equipped to take on stronger bosses, and I've actually killed a dragon (almost) by myself.
One thing I've learned (finally) is which mechanics I feel comfortable ignoring and which I wanna get into. The number of things you can develop in the game is tremendous and was actually overwhelming intially. But now that I've decided that cooking, alchemy, and forging weapons aren't for me, I can just ignore anything related to those activities, which saves me so much carry space. I enjoy enchanting my weapons and armor, and that's also a good way to make money in the game.
One other thing I like/don't like is that my quest list feels long as ****. I have no clue what moves the actual story though. I guess there's multiple stories going on? So I'll go down the rabbit hole of a few quests, and then it'll just end. So, I'll move to a new one, but that reintroduces the leveling issue.
I finished one recently and felt about right, level wise. Then I went back to one I had skipped for a while (because the quest told me to go far out to the middle of nowhere, and I had to climb a mountain, traverse some waters, and fight several packs of wolves to get to), and felt pretty op. I killed most enemies with one or two blows.
The lengthy quest list does make me feel like there's a lot of game left to play. The structure also makes for some good, focused play sessions where I can just focus on or or two things and clear a quest or two in a shorter play session, or I can get comfortable and play for a bunch.