Dragons are ridiculously easy, giants are not. Dragons play a major part in the game, giants do not. It's just one of those idiosyncracies that display the disappointing lack of balance that's present throughout the game.
In example of how the game is sloppy, elves have the same voices as everybody else, in spite of being an entirely different race with a pretty major impact on the world itself. Not that the voice acting is good in general, but at least the Khajit and the lizards sound funny.
In example of how the quests are halfbaked, you only need to look at one of the final quests of the thieves guild. First you're thrown into a pretty unconvincing sequence of events supposedly surrounding a God, which is arugably not the finest among the games quest scenarios. You're then told that Mercer has achieved superhuman strength, and there's some discussion among you, Karliah and Brynjolf as to whether he'll kill you all before you even draw your blades.
Then you meet Mercer, as he's groping a Buddha statue, and finish him in something like three blows, with his biggest trick being to drink an invisibility potion. Impressive stuff, I can see why they were worried.
But then the combat itself is totally unremarkable. I haven't dabbled much in magic, but with the AI as stupid as it is, you can best pretty much anyone with a shield bash and some power blows. You might get overwhelmed by numbers at times, but then sprinting and using your puny magic will do just fine, because the AI follows you around like a puppy, leaving less in the way of challenge, and more in the way of sheer dominance.
I guess that's stimulating if you somehow want to be God and strike everything down without even a hint of thought in what you're doing, but it's not really a combat system. It's just comparing your level of gear and stats with their level of gear and stats, and then a resulting pounding/sprinting match that's going to end up with an easy victory at anything but the lowest levels. You're not actually doing anything, you're just pressing the kill button until they're dead.
Even if you should find yourself in a sitaution where the kill button isn't effective, you're still perfectly able to just chug potions until whatever you're punching is dead, although at the early levels, it's not hard to find examples of enemies that just cheese you to death, like Kvenel the Tongue early on in the game.
I do enjoy sneaking around and slitting throats, but it never really becomes a question of challenge or skill, it's all procedure, with enemies doing the very same things, dressed in the very same things, and even saying the very same things.
... And in the very same places. Granted, no cave, mineshaft, dwarven city or castle dungeon is the same, but it doesn't matter a whole lot, because they all look the same, and you'll always be headed to one or the other. The cities and forts are often magnificent, but most of the time you'll really just be passing through to deliver a quest or sell your shit.
But you're right. I probably haven't played the game and this criticism is really just a far fetched flight of fancy, meant to hurt some developer that you love with zealous devotion, and otherwise meant to tell you that you're wrong in liking it for yourself, and ought to stop doing so immediately.
And that's why we should only buy games that we love before we ever play them, and never challenge ourselves on the ones we might not. Right kids?
