Oblivion is the next chapter in the Elder Scrolls saga. It is widely considered one of the best RPGs of the modern era. I dove into this game having never played any of the previous ones, so apologies are due if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about!
Gameplay: 9.0
Oblivion is a 1st/3rd person RPG, involving swords, bows + arrows, magic and lots of other fun stuff.
When you begin the game you're given a variety of races to choose from to make your magic, strength, endurance and all sorts of different stats better or worse to suit the playing style you are striving for.
Oblivion is a rare game that gives you full ability to customize your class from top to bottom. There is a library of skills, such as combat, strength, alchemy, spellcasting, repair, armor-wearing, sneaking, persuasion and many others. You can choose several skills to be your "main skills" meaning you intend to focus on them and level them up as the game goes on, so they give you an initial boost to those skills to start the game.
Leveling up isn't as simple as running around and killing stuff, either. You level up in each individual skill, and as you level up your main skills, you level your character's health, magic and stamina up, too.
Along with leveling skills, you can also add boosts to those skills by wearing certain armor or using certain weapons. The beauty to this is as you work on your mage skills (and complete quests that are from the mage guild), you gain access to enchant your armor and weapons with a huge variety of different attributes, such as increased spell power, resistance to a specific kind of attack, ability to carry more items, etc. The range of character classes you can strive for is ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous is your ability to eventually craft your own custom spells. It can be a lot of fun, but actually this part really let me down. I eventually created spells that would make me turn completely invisible and slowly heal me as time went on. Coupling that with a paralysis + damage spell and making sure I leveled as much as I could in magic regeneration and max magic, I was invincible.
And that brings me to my biggest complaint about the gameplay - the fighting is just too linear. Most of the enemies are really similar. They are 90% melee fighters meaning if you have a good spell bank and can run away from them, you'll never die. But the other issue feeding into this complaint is that the enemies just have too much health! I found myself running backwards and casting spells for up to 10 minutes just to kill one enemy. Every single battle was a struggle, and if you turned up the difficulty even a couple notches, the battle was even more ridiculous! It wouldn't be any harder in the sense that I would have to be more skilled in order to win, it would just take me 3 or 4 times as long to kill somebody and I'd get bored of playing.
Presentation: 9.0
Oblivion looks really nice for when it was released. Most of the game is outdoors and they have great modeling of water, trees, scenery - everything.
The characters are actually pretty ugly though and it wasn't only due to limitations at the time. They all just look... odd.
Theatrics: 7.5
Oblivion's story is rather unspectacular. It's set in a fantasy world, so like usual, their story is about some ancient artifact being taken and a mythical enemy rising from the underworld to.. kill everyone, or whatever. Your quest is to repel the enemy and save everyone from dying.
I can't really take the story very seriously considering how sparse enemies are and how little I cared about any of the characters. Off the top of my head I only remember a few characters, but only by what role they played in the game, not for their personality or specific traits.
Their dialogue is all face to face via the typical "ask a question and they'll tell you the answer" selection menu in a lot of RPGs nowadays - no cut-scenes are in the game at all, making for a pretty unexciting game from a watcher's perspective. Besides, there are a maximum of 8 voice actors in this game and they try to voice act for hundreds of different people. It can get a little distracting.
Controls: 8.5
Oblivion's controls are pretty awkward. The jump button is mapped to a button that other games will typically not use for jumping, which can make for some bumbling battles.
Although I'm not sure this should really be classified under controls, but the speed at which ranged weaponry is fired (namely magic) is so slow, you might as well not even try to use it unless you're right in front of somebody. It makes for a slow game a lot of the time, and you'll likely get frustrated from missing a lot of ranged attacks.
Replay Value: 10.0
For whatever reason, this game actually brought me back for a second and third time after I played through the entire game and did almost every single side-quest in the game. I spent at least 75 hours on a play-through for the first and second, and didn't complete a third. One thing is for sure, Oblivion will provide a TON of gameplay.
Fun: 9.0
Overall, Oblivion is a pretty fun game. It has a lot of things that haven't really been done before in gaming and it's fun to experiment and explore their vast world. The battles can get tedious and take forever, making it feel more like a spitting contest than a physical fight, which is why I would have enjoyed more enemies with less health, making combat more chaotic and making your character feel more powerful.
My Overall Rating: 9.0
Appeal and Recommendations
If you enjoy RPGs and haven't played this before, you are missing out. It's a really good game, will provide tons of gameplay and is a classic in the minds of all RPG fans. I realize most of the review is complaints about what they could do better, but that's partially because of the time it was released, and partially because of Bethesda being really stubborn with their game engine.
I don't know that a casual gamer would be willing to pick this up and play the 40+ hours it takes to complete the game, never mind the 80 or so hours it would take to do nearly everything in the game.
Gameplay: 9.0
Oblivion is a 1st/3rd person RPG, involving swords, bows + arrows, magic and lots of other fun stuff.
When you begin the game you're given a variety of races to choose from to make your magic, strength, endurance and all sorts of different stats better or worse to suit the playing style you are striving for.
Oblivion is a rare game that gives you full ability to customize your class from top to bottom. There is a library of skills, such as combat, strength, alchemy, spellcasting, repair, armor-wearing, sneaking, persuasion and many others. You can choose several skills to be your "main skills" meaning you intend to focus on them and level them up as the game goes on, so they give you an initial boost to those skills to start the game.
Leveling up isn't as simple as running around and killing stuff, either. You level up in each individual skill, and as you level up your main skills, you level your character's health, magic and stamina up, too.
Along with leveling skills, you can also add boosts to those skills by wearing certain armor or using certain weapons. The beauty to this is as you work on your mage skills (and complete quests that are from the mage guild), you gain access to enchant your armor and weapons with a huge variety of different attributes, such as increased spell power, resistance to a specific kind of attack, ability to carry more items, etc. The range of character classes you can strive for is ridiculous.
Even more ridiculous is your ability to eventually craft your own custom spells. It can be a lot of fun, but actually this part really let me down. I eventually created spells that would make me turn completely invisible and slowly heal me as time went on. Coupling that with a paralysis + damage spell and making sure I leveled as much as I could in magic regeneration and max magic, I was invincible.
And that brings me to my biggest complaint about the gameplay - the fighting is just too linear. Most of the enemies are really similar. They are 90% melee fighters meaning if you have a good spell bank and can run away from them, you'll never die. But the other issue feeding into this complaint is that the enemies just have too much health! I found myself running backwards and casting spells for up to 10 minutes just to kill one enemy. Every single battle was a struggle, and if you turned up the difficulty even a couple notches, the battle was even more ridiculous! It wouldn't be any harder in the sense that I would have to be more skilled in order to win, it would just take me 3 or 4 times as long to kill somebody and I'd get bored of playing.
Presentation: 9.0
Oblivion looks really nice for when it was released. Most of the game is outdoors and they have great modeling of water, trees, scenery - everything.
The characters are actually pretty ugly though and it wasn't only due to limitations at the time. They all just look... odd.
Theatrics: 7.5
Oblivion's story is rather unspectacular. It's set in a fantasy world, so like usual, their story is about some ancient artifact being taken and a mythical enemy rising from the underworld to.. kill everyone, or whatever. Your quest is to repel the enemy and save everyone from dying.
I can't really take the story very seriously considering how sparse enemies are and how little I cared about any of the characters. Off the top of my head I only remember a few characters, but only by what role they played in the game, not for their personality or specific traits.
Their dialogue is all face to face via the typical "ask a question and they'll tell you the answer" selection menu in a lot of RPGs nowadays - no cut-scenes are in the game at all, making for a pretty unexciting game from a watcher's perspective. Besides, there are a maximum of 8 voice actors in this game and they try to voice act for hundreds of different people. It can get a little distracting.
Controls: 8.5
Oblivion's controls are pretty awkward. The jump button is mapped to a button that other games will typically not use for jumping, which can make for some bumbling battles.
Although I'm not sure this should really be classified under controls, but the speed at which ranged weaponry is fired (namely magic) is so slow, you might as well not even try to use it unless you're right in front of somebody. It makes for a slow game a lot of the time, and you'll likely get frustrated from missing a lot of ranged attacks.
Replay Value: 10.0
For whatever reason, this game actually brought me back for a second and third time after I played through the entire game and did almost every single side-quest in the game. I spent at least 75 hours on a play-through for the first and second, and didn't complete a third. One thing is for sure, Oblivion will provide a TON of gameplay.
Fun: 9.0
Overall, Oblivion is a pretty fun game. It has a lot of things that haven't really been done before in gaming and it's fun to experiment and explore their vast world. The battles can get tedious and take forever, making it feel more like a spitting contest than a physical fight, which is why I would have enjoyed more enemies with less health, making combat more chaotic and making your character feel more powerful.
My Overall Rating: 9.0
Appeal and Recommendations
If you enjoy RPGs and haven't played this before, you are missing out. It's a really good game, will provide tons of gameplay and is a classic in the minds of all RPG fans. I realize most of the review is complaints about what they could do better, but that's partially because of the time it was released, and partially because of Bethesda being really stubborn with their game engine.
I don't know that a casual gamer would be willing to pick this up and play the 40+ hours it takes to complete the game, never mind the 80 or so hours it would take to do nearly everything in the game.
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