One of the most blatant and painful problem this series has always had and returns in Skyrim is melee combat. It still is an exercise in running up to enemies and clicking until theyre dead. I hate drawing comparison to a game that isnt really comparable to Skyrim but look at Dark Souls. Granted, Dark Souls is a console game, but melee combat in the game is the most rewarding combat in an RPG I have ever seen. The hit detection is damn near perfect. Blocking is important. Dodging is extremely important. Properly utilizing stamina is extremely fucking important. Knowing how enemies would approach and attack you and how you should approach and attack them was everything. Honestly, much of the blandness could be solved by simply increasing the enemy variety and making the variation significant. In Dark Souls, being told that you were about to fight an undead with a sword would mean shit because there are so many types of undead you could be encountering that all behave attack and defend very differently. Yes there are different types of drauger but all of them fight exactly the same as long as they have the same weapon type (There is the melee types, the bow types and the spell types. This applies to humans as well), give or take some dragon shouts. I mean in Dark Souls, ones approach to a Hollow Archer was completely different from how one would approach the Silver Knight Archers that guard the castle interior. If youve played it, you know what Im talking about. Granted, Skyrim is a very different game with very different goals from Dark Souls, but there should at least be a little of that. That is a crucial part of what makes video game combat fun, and its clear that despite Skyrim primarily being a game about exploration, they obviously want combat to be fun. Throwing on a kill cam with some finishing moves doesnt fix the shitty melee combat, and it is very frustrating as Ive always been a sword and board type of player.