The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition Review (Switch / Switch eShop)

Yes, that’s right, it’s another slightly different version of the game that point blank refuses to crawl into a corner and die. Rejoice!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition has sneaked its way onto the Switch eShop, giving players the option to purchase a full version or, if you already own Skyrim, a less expensive DLC upgrade alternative. But what in the Todd Howard are we getting for our money this time around?

Well, seeing as the base Switch version of Bethesda’s RPG (of which you can read our review for the full lowdown on the non-anniversary content) already includes all three of the game’s official add-ons — Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn, which are cheekily highlighted as part of this upgrade in the AE press blurb — alongside a few Zelda-flavoured goodies, and given that this Anniversary Edition doesn’t benefit from any graphical/performance enhancements added to other ports, what we’re left with here is 74 pieces of Creation Club mod content.

Creation Club mods, those officially sanctioned by the powers that be at Bethesda, were an expensive bunch of add-ons to pick up separately, but here you get them all bundled in and activated for £17.99 if you already own the game. If spending that amount of cash on a bunch of mods seems a bit much to you, well, it’s hard to argue with your reasoning but honestly, there’s a lot of quality content to enjoy here with some strong quests packed full of sweet lore and lots of weapons, houses, wild horses, armour and all that good stuff.

We’ve been blasting back through the game to check out all the new quests. There are some right crackers from the get-go, big meaty chunks of fun to dig into with plenty of new journals and letters to pore over, and some very nice connections back to the likes of Oblivion for you TES buffs out there. You also get fishing, which is…well…it’s fishing innit, but it’s got its own questline too, and knocking around Skyrim collecting maps for good fishing spots and then ticking off the various types you manage to catch is much more fun than it has any right to be, really. There’s also a Survival mode which disables fast travel, increases fatigue, and adds lots of stuff like hunger, disease, and some horrible afflictions — basically turning the game into a sort of ‘Living In the United Kingdom 2022’ simulator.

Honestly, if you’re a fan of Skyrim, we reckon this is an upgrade that’s worth grabbing and it’s also worth pointing out that, although the full version is expensive, you can frequently catch the standard version of Skyrim on a deep discount during eShop sales and then upgrade that way. If you’ve never played the game before — and we 100% refuse to believe there’s anyone who hasn’t — this really is the best, most feature-rich, content-packed version of an RPG that, no matter how much we make fun of it, always completely sucks us right back into its world every single time we boot it up.

Now, when is the ‘Anniversary of the Release of the Anniversary Edition’ coming out?