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Should you play this game even with Bethesda's typical pattern of not including basic VR features that then had to be fixed by modding? Sure, why not. Whenever it is on sale for at least $30 USD. Just be prepared to spend extra time downloading mods to make the video game more tolerable, as per usual.
Is it the best VR game out there even with those VR mods? No, not really. The community overstates just how good VR Skyrim is, and I say this as somebody who has over 300 hours on the original 32-bit version that was liable to crash after installing more than five mods, and then another 300+ hours on the 64-bit version.
With VR, I feel like Bethesda saw it as yet another opportunity to re-release Skyrim for the sixth time (instead of working on ES6) while justifying the premium price tag on a 13+ year-old video game probably because it's a more unique experience compared to the other versions of Skyrim. But it being Skyrim is really the superglue that deters it from crumbling, because playing it in VR, you are actually sacrificing a lot of graphical beauty that you can achieve instead with modding the special edition version and just playing how we have been since the 1990s on a monitor and with your mouse and keyboard. Even an RTX 4090 is put to quite the stress test for VR when you install graphical and texture improvement mods to beautify a rather old video game, and 'vanilla' Skyrim, especially as VR, does not hold up to time and looks ugly without those mods. I'm not usually one to complain about a video game not having good graphics, I quite literally play any type of video game, but I just don't know how much I'd be able to tolerate if I had to replay bland, outdated and unmodded Skyrim.
Bethesda, if anything, seemed to want to rush this out instead of making it a true VR experience like Half-Life: Alyx was. You don't get to physically reach out and watch as your character's hand turns a door knob to which you can push or pull on it. You literally just aim your hand at the door to see the prompt, and press the A button (or whatever the 'interaction' keybind is set to) just like you would if you were playing on a keyboard and mouse or a regular Xbox/PS controller. Sure, you can still pick up and throw (some) smaller items like the abundance of gross cabbage that no Nord wants to eat because it isn't meat, but the problem with Bethesda's design here is that VR controllers really don't have enough buttons and inputs built into the controllers, and so you're playing a video game that has far too many key binds and inputs for what you are given. Yet again, mods have to be used to try and create a more seamless experience with less menu browsing to swap between spells or arrows or whatever your character utilizes, as having to play a pause and menu simulator in VR sort of ruins the immersive expectation that comes with VR. But the lack of interaction with the world around you as you can reach out and try to grip things just makes it feel like you're playing a video game with an Xbox/PS controller while just wearing a VR headset. It's just pointless.
With the unique perspective that you do get to play in, spell casting is actually pretty fun, and archery is even better. As someone who never really had much issue with aiming a bow in Skyrim on the mouse, it's such a fun experience trying to use it in VR where you have to physically draw and nock the arrow. It's so much more challenging and actually really satisfying when you learn how to connect those long ranged shots. I was more invested in becoming an expert bowman than my usual playstyle: a warrior, and my build for Skyrim in VR focused primarily on archery.
The combat is still what you can expect from Bethesda and their outdated systems, though, so nothing has really improved here. It just seems more interesting because it's VR but if you are familiar with Skyrim then you know how to exploit the engine. You can literally walk backwards as hostile NPCs swing their weaponry at you and they can't even hit you. I think this might be from the movement speed being maximized by default, and you can make yourself slower, but that also makes traveling tedious until you get your mount and so the speed-walking is really ideal until then. I guess I will admit still that slapping someone across the face with a mace and watching them fall over is pretty satisfying, but Bethesda games have always had this sort of 'clunk' to its combat and that isn't rectified in the VR version. You can also cheese the fights with melee by just pointing your sword at an enemy and wiggling the controller as if you're an old person shaking your cane at annoying kids. Overall, it's still a pretty easy game even on harder difficulties as I don't think Bethesda ever figured out how to properly balance their game and VR just lets you find additional methods to exploiting their dumb AI coding.
Because we all know Skyrim by now, this is less about the story of the game and more about the VR experience of it. While it was fun exploring Skyrim in VR after last playing the game years ago, I just don't know if Bethesda was truly ready for designing a VR game or if Skyrim (and maybe even Fallout) are the franchises for it. There's so much more that could have been done given what we see of other VR titles that are built for VR from its very foundation. The technology for VR also might not be good enough for such large open-world video games where Skyrim is concerned. Skyrim, at its core, already has loading screens for pretty much everything so even modern technology might not be ready for video games that have seamless loading rather than pausing to load during a black screen with some gameplay hints on it.
While I wasn't disappointed with Skyrim's VR edition, I simply don't think it was good enough for VR and I don't think a game this old should still be sold for $60, VR or not. Fortunately, I think this is the last re-release of Skyrim that Bethesda will have.