Bethesda's Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for PlayStation 3 launched with notorious lag issues that affected large game files. Bethesda has struggled with the issue, both from a technical perspective and from a PR viewpoint . Now, more than three months after launch, a patch (1.04) has been released to fix the issues. Does it work?

City+Life

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Dungeon+Questing

Horseback+Riding

Dragon+Slaying

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The+Fus-Ro-Dah+Effect

Overall

To give this patch a test run, I played with a platinum trophy and 13mb save file in tow, and once again began journeying across Tamriel to compare its performance with my pre-patch experience. I tried several commonplace elements of the game as well as ones had specifically hung up or crashed my PS3.After installing patch 1.04, I arrived in Whiterun, outside Dragonreach. I was greeted by my item menu that popped up as though I was searching a bookshelf. Worried, I backed out of that and continued playing. I examined the finer details of the city – the irrigation system, the sky, Heimskr's Talos sermon, blazing torches and smoke plumes puffing their way out of buildings – and they all ran more smoothly than they ever had before. I sprinted around town, urging my game to hang up. It didn't.I fast traveled to Riften and then Windhelm, Markarth and Solitude. In every city, except Solitude, I encountered very minimal framerate issues or slow-down. Solitude, with its vast population and building count, still suffered a couple skipped frames every three-to-five seconds or so. Before the patch, every large city in Skyrim Skyrim life-after-patch 1.04 is a major improvement in cities. Merchants don't hang me up anymore and neither do kids playing tag. City life feels good.I queued up a miscellaneous quest to find a Shout word in Valthume. I fought as many as four Draugr at a time and used every destruction and conjuration spell in my arsenal to tax the game as much as possible.I encountered the occasional frame skip in some battles, but it was way better than pre-patch. In earlier fights, I'd found myself being attacked and missing a quarter of my health before I even knew I'd encountered an enemy, so I usually saved in dungeons because of life-costing bugs.Now everything ran much better. Even the 'shout-learned' animation ran with noticeably smoother animation.Riding on horseback was a constant source of trauma before the 1.04 update. Every gallop was bugged with hang-ups that lasted upwards of 10 seconds. It suffered from a frame-rate that was inconsistent at best and nightmarish at worst. There were delayed sound effects and even regular system crashes.When I climbed atop Shadowmere, my noble steed from the Dark Brotherhood, I expected the worst. But I was pleasantly surprised.On the one hand, riding a horse was still my most troubled experience post-patch. Much like my time in Solitude, there were frequent frame skips and little hiccups as I traversed even simple plains. However, like every other aspect of the game, riding on horseback has been greatly improved over its previous iteration. Gallops and neighs were instantaneous, the ride was easy to follow and the whole experience was entirely playable.Next I made my way to Dragontooth Crater to find a winged beast to kill. As soon as I arrived, an elder dragon swooped in and started talking trash about my mama. During most dragon fights before Bethesda's new update, I'd found myself prepping my wards several seconds in advance so when the inevitable fire breath came – and the equally inevitable brief freeze on my system – I'd be prepared instead of burnt to a crisp. This time, the elder dragon fell to me and my flame atronach without so much as a noticeable lag.As I earned my new shouts throughout my pre-patch original time in Skyrim, I tried them all and found the most performance-hindering one to be Unrelenting Force. Every time I'd shout some unsuspecting orc or draugr across a room, their flight would be laggy and interrupted by frequent hiccups, which really ruins the badass feeling I got from knocking them off ledges and into far walls.In combat post-patch, all those hang-ups were completely absent, but I wanted to really challenge my PS3. So I went to the abandoned house in Markarth and picked up every kitchen utensil, every pot and pan and bowl and basket I could, and dropped them in the front room. I gathered food and weapons and potions from the house and added them to the mix. I even dropped stuff that I needed and found myself wading through over 100 items. I equipped Unrelenting Force, crouched in one corner of the room and let it rip.It was a sight to behold; every item within range flew up and away from me in a smooth sea of chaos. Beforehand, this would've looked like 1990s convenience store security camera footage, but here it might as well have been a Pixar movie.Several miscellaneous factors that reduced performance before the patch have been taken care of as well. I noticed significantly better-running experiences with fighting trolls, swimming, looting, third-person play, jumping off cliffs and talking to NPCs, and all without any noticeable sacrifices being made to the world of Skyrim.Previously, my game reached the point where it would crash my PS3 every hour or so regardless of what I was doing, and after spending several hours with the patch, I didn't encounter a single crash.Overall, Skyrim is a much, much better game now than it has ever been on PS3. It will never run like Wipeout or Modern Warfare, but my takeaway with the 1.04 update is that this is the Skyrim that Bethesda meant to deliver over three months ago. Through my time testing the patch, I often found myself saddened that I didn't get this experience on my initial playthrough.Any first-time players who pick up Skyrim from now on will enjoy a much better experience than those of us who bought it closer to launch and suffered through all the issues that came with it before this update, as will any early gamers willing to give Skyrim a second run. For myself and many other gamers, however, my 160 hours with my first game pre-patch were enough effort and ordeal that I can't bring myself to start fresh. Furthermore, I'll likely wait to buy any more epic Bethesda titles until I hear that the PlayStation version doesn't have significant problems.

Jonny Lupsha is a freelance journalist living in Richmond, VA. He has spent over 160 hours playing Skyrim.