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It’s not a controversial opinion for someone’s favorite Bethesda RPG to be Morrowind. Having gone back to play it on a whim, and not having liked Oblivion nor Skyrim all that much – and definitely not having any love to give for the Fallout Franchise, I’m blown away as to how hooked I got playing Morrowind and ended up finishing my first, largely unmodded (MCP) playthrough at around 60-ish hours. This does include finishing Tribunal and Bloodmoon; As well as the entirety of the Mages, Telvanni and Temple Factions.
On the technical side, Morrowind, after applying the ‘Morrowind Code Patch’ ran fairly decently but did have a penchant to crashing when quitting the game, as well as on rare occasion during gameplay. Even then, this was not a big issue as the game tends to create a save right before crashing. I have no complaints about performance, nor did I encounter any blatantly broken quests. That being said, I did encounter a somewhat common recurring bug wherein upon jumping, I’d fall through the world only to be swiftly reset. With some more troubleshooting, I got the game to not crash even on exiting; Having since started another playthrough on OpenMW, I would consider it to be essential due to the raw quality of life it brings to running the game.
Gameplay isn’t quite as smooth. On a reasonably vanilla set-up (i.e. w/o OpenMW), the player struggles to not slide off even the softest slopes. NPC’s often get stuck and block your path. This is particularly bad with flying enemies, who seem to struggle lowering their altitude to attack the player, with the result being clown-cars of Cliff Racers behind me only to randomly swoop down to actually attack me. I encountered invisible “walls” in certain dungeon architecture that I needed to console command through to progress. This seems to relate to your movement speed and/or the Levitate effect.
A big point of contention is the player progression and how the game handles combat from the start: Unlike newer entries like Skyrim, where the only factor of actually hitting the enemy, is your actual hitbox connecting, Morrowind functions more like a CRPG, in which each strike – even if it physically connects with an enemy model, still rolls a dice dependent on your skill and factors in your current fatigue. The same is true for any other skill in the game; Spell Failure, Bartering prices etc. - In the early game this can often result in weird moments where the player stands still for half-a-minute, just waiting for their fatigue to recharge to squeeze a little bit of power (or drakes) from their current situation.
On the flip-side, despite a rough start where every encounter is incredibly dangerous; Travel is long and methodical; The game eventually switches to becoming an incredible power-fantasy. This is largely due to many mechanics being “broken”; Or maybe more aptly: Exploitable. It is incredibly easy to generate endless gold through merchant restocks; To create incredibly broken spell-combinations; Or to kill seemingly impossible enemies through the fact of stat buffs of consumables stacking infinitely.
The game is, inherently, broken in so many ways that any player will sooner or later stumble across a way to become powerful. Brokenly so; Just by virtue of the raw numbers the game is dealing with. It’s stupid but also stupid fun that somehow still manages to feel largely ‘balanced’. For me, when I was going through the expansions of Tribunal and Bloodmoon, I started to get burned out by the trivial encounters only to get shredded during the final dungeon of Bloodmoon and having to fall back to pull exactly all these broken tricks I had learned, to figure out which was the appropriate way to get through it. And it kinda works. It allows you to focus, truly focus on whatever you want your character to be good at – to roleplay, and to support that playstyle through the myriad of peripheral systems that help make you powerful.
I have fewer good things to say about the quest-design, which thins out substantially towards the latter half of the main quest; And more so during the expansions. Whereas in the early- and mid- game, where travel is not yet trivial, working with your journal to figure out where to go for your quests, and traversing Vvardenfell is an incredibly immersive experience, the game quickly devolves into what *feels* like filler quests. The best non-spoiler example is the obscene backtracking that is required during Tribunal and the apparent struggle of the game to anticipate the PC doing objectives out of order. I frequently had to backtrack to talk to an earlier NPC, just do trigger a quest-flag even when I had already figured out what I was supposed to do, or where I am supposed to go.
Another good example is a series of late-game main story quests, that send you all throughout the different factions for a diplomacy plot – only for each of them to send you on varying levels of utterly petty sidequests, like finding a ‘dating partner’ – for a relevant NPC. This is a problem that is simply not avoidable. It is Oblivion’s Oblivion Gates. Or Skyrim’s Civil War. The part of the game that is supposed to give a feeling of grandeur, but is in effect just obnoxious fetch-questing.
Quests, in terms of roleplay choices, tend to be rather straightforward – with the more sophisticated ones usually being a choice from siding with A or B in a given conflict. This is sufficient, as roleplay in Morrowind is better focused to your characters personal development, playstyle etc., but can at times be fairly sophisticated, such as two different factions’ storylines overlapping with one another and thus forcing the player to pick a side to avoid locking themselves out from the other; Or getting, once again, creative with the games’ systems.
Naturally, as with most semi-modern Bethesda titles, Morrowind is extremely moddable – especially for graphics and sound-design. Furthermore, Morrowind’s modding community is extremely active and provides an incredibly amount of tools to make the process of modernizing Morrowind a surprisingly smooth endeavor. That being said, even out-of-the-box Morrowind has a decent look to it, helped by its unique setting. The music is among the best that I’ve heard, easily competing with entries like Daggerfall/Unity.

TL;DR
+ Unique setting that is supported by sublime writing; Unafraid to tackle themes that would not be acceptable in modern games.
+ Incredible support of emergent game- and roleplay: Factions naturally competing with one another; Rewarding the player for engaging with peripheral gameplay systems (Spellcrafting, Alchemy etc.)
+ Thoroughly moddable; Thus offering an easily customizeable experience for any player.
+ Spears. Very important.
+/- Combat- and Interactions are closer to what may be expected from a CRPG: Any action is inherently tied to both dice rolls and your current fatigue which may hamstring your enjoyment until reaching higher proficiency in any skill.
+/- Extreme freedom: i.e. persistent plot-critical items, and all NPCs being non-essential, means that it is possible to softlock your progress.
- Recurring, albeit non-game-breaking glitches; Falling through map-architecture, getting stuck; Crashes under specific circumstances.
- Lackluster and repetitive quest design during the latter half of the main game and both expansions; No anticipation of the PC doing quest(-steps) out-of-order.
Morrowind is an amazing experience. If you can put up with its quirks; How the games’ combat works, it will provide you with the best synergy of Bethesda’s modern Open World design and an incredibly immersive setting. Despite feeling burned out myself by these same quirks, the raw charm keeps me having it installed and excited to play through it with a modded set-up, or a fresh character fantasy.