Games

Don’t run everywhere (keep fatigue bar at least half full). Don’t use weapon skills that are less than 40 (train them - there aren’t restrictions like in the later games).

It’s closer to D&D than an action RPG. Your swing is like a “to hit” roll. The game cares about your character’s skill - not yours.

I like Morrowind a lot mechanically - I like that the game will happily allow you to kill anyone you want (and with Taunt - you can do it legally!) You can complete the main quest after slaughtering everyone on Vvardenfell bar one person (the thread of prophecy might be broken - but a larger theme in ES lore is that we make prophecies happen).

I like that the game is designed around the lack of fast travel. When I complain about fast travel in Oblivion and Skyrim, I hear “just don’t use it” but it isn’t really feasible (playing a Survival run in Skyrim and life just sucks if I have to go to Morthal).

Morrowind’s world is just real and thought out in a way that I haven’t seen in a game since. The towns are designed around food sources, there’s a lot of thought into to the economies of plantation slavery, and it’s all used to enhance the world building.

Other than the roll to hit mechanic (which would be pretty cool if paired with parry and dodge animations), which mechanics were "absolute shit"?

The absolute shit mechanics had some kernels of gold though. I loved my Fortify Strength 100 Jump 100 spell and my 10 chaingun lightning amulets. Very few games let you do properly weird stuff with magic.

the mechanics were absolute shit

Levitate on up to the top of my Telvanni tower and tell that to my face—oh wait, you can't!