The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Personally I'd put this down as the best game I've ever played. Yes loot is sometimes dissapointing, but if your a bit canny about how you play you can turn even the most dissapointing raids into decent profit. True the combat system was a bit weird and clunky, but you get used to it and after a while it even starts to feel like it makes sense, and yes, the main quest is big as f*** but the story is compelling so that should push you on. Ok, it's only fair to add that Oblivion improved on all three of those things, but it also lost some of that depth, incredible scale, and some of the real feeling of connection with the game world that Morrowind gave you. You get used to the games faults and believe me it has a few but for a game that size a few bugs (most of which are fixed by patches) and few a things that would have been really cool but were'nt considered can easily be overlooked, but the games strengths will have you coming back time and time again. Believe me I've spent hours, and hours, weeks probably if you joined all the hours up, playing this game, and there is still stuff I havent done and want to, and still things I'd happily do all over again. Plus what with a massive, massive modding community, graphics upgrades, additional if unnoficial content and added features are really, really easily to come by. So much so that some people end up with a completely different game by the time their done adding mods, although personally I tend to stay faithful to most of the origional content, a few graphics upgrades here and there.