Anyone wondering if OpenMW is good enough to play: the answer is very much a yes.
A year or two ago (it was shortly after they fixed shadows in the engine, which is what I'd been waiting for) I played the entire main quest and a good chunk of the side quests in it, plus the whole main quest of Tribunal, and started Bloodmoon (got distracted and stopped there). I cranked draw distance up quite a ways (nothing crazy, but way longer than the default), played at 4K resolution, and ran it through Mod Manager 2 with maybe 8-12 mods—don't remember exactly how many, but I've gotta have my herbalism mod, at the very least, or I'm not playing :-) I think I even had Twin Lamps (anti-slavers "guild", think Underground Railroad) in there, and it worked fine.
Zero crashes the whole time, which makes it far better than the original engine. No quest glitches or difficulties. It was perfect.
The only downside is that you can't use mods that directly modify the engine itself because they're all written for Bethesda's executables, specifically. This includes most of the more extreme "pretty" mods that make the graphics look better.
However, OpenMW is already a little better-looking than the original, and you can still install better textures, which helps a lot. I even got a replacement pack for the loading screens, to make them widescreen and HD.
I also played through OpenMW last year, the first time I ever beat the game. When I played as a teen, I would find Cassius and then never advance the main quest, becoming distracted by the guilds and all the other things to do.
A year or two ago (it was shortly after they fixed shadows in the engine, which is what I'd been waiting for) I played the entire main quest and a good chunk of the side quests in it, plus the whole main quest of Tribunal, and started Bloodmoon (got distracted and stopped there). I cranked draw distance up quite a ways (nothing crazy, but way longer than the default), played at 4K resolution, and ran it through Mod Manager 2 with maybe 8-12 mods—don't remember exactly how many, but I've gotta have my herbalism mod, at the very least, or I'm not playing :-) I think I even had Twin Lamps (anti-slavers "guild", think Underground Railroad) in there, and it worked fine.
Zero crashes the whole time, which makes it far better than the original engine. No quest glitches or difficulties. It was perfect.
The only downside is that you can't use mods that directly modify the engine itself because they're all written for Bethesda's executables, specifically. This includes most of the more extreme "pretty" mods that make the graphics look better.
However, OpenMW is already a little better-looking than the original, and you can still install better textures, which helps a lot. I even got a replacement pack for the loading screens, to make them widescreen and HD.