But this post was not about 8, it was about 9, so...

The best thing about 9 was its careening story line. It was sooo gloriously unpredictable, right up until the end! That alone makes it stand out from 6 and 8 (I haven't yet played 7 - I need to figure out how to install it on an XP system). Except for fighting the dragon, I found it much more difficult than 8 (because I play with a dragon on 8), but not nearly as hard as 6. MM6 dragged a bit for me because some of the fights were just sooo hard they became boring. And I agree with Peter2 that the dragon in 9 was much, much more impressively huge than the ones in previous games.

Besides the obvious unfinished game faults, what I liked least about MM9 was the graphics (yes, I know, "GASP!"). Sorry, but all those games with the 3-D look graphics just make me nauseous to play for longer than an hour. So whereas I used to be able to play MM6 or 8 for hours, I can only sit and play 9 for an hour at a time without feeling sick. That's a serious drag on the entertainment value of the game.

An addition: I've been playing Morrowind lately (also for only an hour at a time!), and it's only after playing that that I realize how much MM9 really was part of MM. I'm so used to the control system of MM (even with the mouse - of course I reset 9 to the keyboard commands of the previous MM games), that I tried to set Morrowind that way and it just can't be done. SOME can be done, but the characters just don't move the same (unless I want to slide to the right or left the whole way I'm going instead of turning and then walking straight ahead like a real person as in MM).