The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The Good
This is the best RPG I have ever played, and I am an RPG nut. The expanse covered in Oblivion, while not as big as the world in Morrowind, is still quite sizable, and the game developers used the space assigned to them to the maximum. This means that, while there is less land, there is more to do, and more to have fun with. Also, you can spend hours just trying to customize your character and his house - I spent an hour and a half trying to put my armor on display the right way! I used to be a Morrowind fan, but Oblivion definitely puts it to shame, not only expanding character customization, but allowing for a world that completely immerses the gamer. One could sit down and start a game at nine A.M., and the next time they look up, they will see it's night time. A surefire way to enjoy your PC or 360.

The Bad
...? not... like... oblivion???

The only problem was that it froze a few times, and that is not a problem if you save a lot.

The Bottom Line
This game is possibly THE best game I have ever played. It has consumed my life, and will continue to do so until they make an Elder Scrolls V.

The Good
2nd Update

I remember the vastness of Ultima VI: The False Prophet, one of the few games that made an impression on my childhood. Now we have Oblivion that is like 1000 times bigger than the world introduced by Origin and their motto was "We create worlds". Boy, technology sure seems to go way fast.

Anyways, before I start there is something I need to say. I played Morrowind and Daggerfall (since they're one of those you love it or hate it kinda games). I wasn't quite too fond of the others, regardless playing those dang games for weeks/months. And most people I know don't want to touch Oblivion because of those bad experiences: Too big a world, but monotonous, linear, etc. When I heard about Oblivion, I wasn't too excited. Another Morrowind? Hah. Booring.

Needless to say, I was wrong. Dead wrong. And probably Oblivion was supposed to be what the developers had in mind in the first place, but were technologically speaking insufficient. So here we go. The good stuff.

Big IS Better
OK. This world is big. Huge, enormous. But being big is also boring for some games. Not in Oblivion. The level of graphical detail is amazing! You DO NOT GET BORED walking around without a purpose. You could stumble across ingredients for your alchemy, monsters (of course), undiscovered dungeons and temples. Or you could just watch the sun and the moon and be amazed at its beauty. Better still, if you watch it by the sea. Now if there's a place I would want to take my girl out, its at sunset in Anvil (a seaside port city in Oblivion). Geeky me!

Non-linear
Well, every game is technically linear. Especially when it comes to RPGs. It's as linear at the primary mission. What makes a game un-linear as so introduced by games like Final Fantasy is the choice to do something else BESIDES the primary mission. This is what makes Oblivion fantastic! There are Guild quests, Side quests, didn't know that was a quest - quests. Boy, this game has a lot of quests. And a lot of those quests take a looong time to complete, but it's not just about defeat this and take that item. A lot have stories. Which is why this game is very good. This game has a lot of dang stories. Weird stories, funny stories, sad stories. All embedded in those multitude of quests.

Options in how you want to finish a quest is also plentiful. You can kill the dude, steal from the dude, ignore the dude. Depends on how you want to finish the job. Though some aren't that optional, but there are other ways. I play Oblivion with 2 other friends, we all have different tastes. And for a game like Oblivion (and other game for that matter) is to have other people you know try stuff you would never even think of trying or is against your "rules of engagement" in playing games.

Graphics
Mentioned it before. Not a particular fan of eye-candy. The game doesn't have eye-candy. The game does have "graphical detail" which to me is different than eye candy. Eye-candy doesn't astound you. Graphical detail does. Graphical detail makes you respect the developers that spent months creating something that made you "feel" the atmosphere of the world of Oblivion. Even more amazing is that I played Oblivion at the graphical minimum settings. I can't imagine what more settings would make the game feel like.

Artificial Intelligence
This game rocks! All the beings in Oblivion have a standard of going places, doing things. Needs work though I tell you, but you know the AI is very beneficial when you're running to the city gates being chased by Ogres and Goblins and the City Guards run to help you fight them off. If you're pissed at the Guards, you can hit one of them and run to the nearest guild (of which you're a member of) and see everyone fight each other. This is anarchy in the making!

Personalized Voice-overs and Dialogs
Though you tend to notice sooner or later that a lot of dialogs are repeatable as well as the voice-overs. The magnitude of those that aren't repeated is incomparable though.

Many dialogs also have very funny stories/comments, which apparently was created out of fun by the developers. Here's one of my favorites:

Dark Elf Shopkeeper: "Do you know what the fine is for Necrophilia?" My answer: "Is this your first time offence?" Dark Elf: "Let's say, yes?" My answer: "Then its around 500 gold coins." Dark Elf: "That's much cheaper than in Morrowind! Thanks!"

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game has a lot of irritating factors too. Among others but in no particular order.

Game Difficulty
About 38 hours later I discovered that you can adjust the game difficulty (doh) - in game. Which is fine, what is not fine is that the enemies don't really adjust to your abilities. The default game difficulty is somewhat too easy. You need to adjust the difficulty a bit more to the right (although adjusting the difficulty to maximum means you couldn't kill that rat no matter what you do).

Another thing is that most of the game difficulty heavily relies on your armor and theirs. Daedra are difficult only because they wear Daedric Armor. If they were naked, they are a little easy to kill. There appears to be an unbalanced use between armor/weapon and skills.

Horses
Oooh, you can ride a horsey. Yay! Er, but that's about it. You can ride them but can't do anything on them. Can't fight on horses, can't cast spells on horses. The driving mechanism is lame (can't move it like your walking). In fact for me, horses have no use what so ever in Oblivion. Can't even get horse meat if you kill a horse (Alchemy reasons). So personally for me I just walk all over the place. Takes longer, but at least you get have time gathering herbs. This is of course, subjective taste...and I wasn't referring to the horse meat :)

Sound and Music
The sound and music in Oblivion isn't one of its strong suits in the game. If I were to say so far, it doesn't fulfill the magnificence the game represents. Oblivion is an "epic" kind of game. While the music for example is almost always the "prologue" kind of music. Never does it hit the "epic" level you hear in epic movies. The sound is so-so. Standard nothing worth mentioning. When it comes to sound and music, nothing ground-breaking happening here.

3rd Person Perspective
You can change your perspective from 1st person to 3rd person. 3rd person is somewhat fun when you're travelling. But when it comes to combat. You always go to 1st person. Why, because the game mechanics weren't made for 3rd person combat. You can't fight very well in this perspective. You can't target you're spells for example, unless you're right in front of the enemy. Even that, you can still miss since you're assuming the direction the spell is going.

Note: I finally realized that for melee special attacks, its actually easier in 3rd Person Perspective. Doesn't work very well in 1st Person Perspective. Now this is quite confusing since now both perspectives have pro's and con's. Someone obviously forgot to mention a combat tutorial somewhere...

Character leveling up
Hmmm, I recall in Morrowind even Minor skills can help you level up in the game. In Oblivion only Major skills effect your leveling up. Pretty stupid from where I'm standing. I'd like to think every little detail effects you. Oh well. This also means there's a faster level cap for Oblivion than previous games...something I'm personally do not like.

Where's my teleport spell?
Mind you, I haven't installed any mods or patches so the version I got didn't have a freaking teleport spell. A game this big and no teleport spell? Hello, what were you developers thinking?

Useless Skills
There are a lot of useless skills in the game however. Speechcraft, Security, etc. Since these can be replaced by certain magical spells. In fact a lot of skills can be replaced by magical spells. In fact come to think of it, you cannot survive this game WITHOUT magical spells. This game is too heavily dependent on magic. There's no way you can defeat an enemy fast without casting a spell or two. This is self evident when you increase your level and try comparing between melee skills and magical skills. More than often, magical spells tend to kill the bloke faster than whacking the monster with an over-sized tree branch.

Re-spawning Items
Well, most of you may disagree, but I personally like that fact that the house I just robbed should REMAIN empty!!! This only applies to items in chests, drawers or any storage object. Items here apparently re-spawn after several days (around a week, I think).

Fan Mod Dependent
If you check out the fan mods created for this game, you'd be surprised at how creative our fellow gamers are. What saddens me is that a lot of those mods should've been minimal standards for the original game release. You really need to do a LOT OF DOWNLOADING to fully appreciate the experience this game has to offer.

Inventory Chaos
Yep. This inventory in this game is somewhat chaotic. The screen isn't very nice, somewhat needs to be more user-friendly: The fonts, the quick linking, etc.

Alchemy Chaos
Yikes, creating Alchemy Potions here is a complete nightmare! My kingdom for an in-game recipe feature, easier filters for ingredients, etc.

Quick-Button Limitation
Now this is the most stupid feature in Oblivion. For a game that has a lot of weapons/spells/items, you really need to switch between one item to the other fast, right? Right. The thing is, you only have 9 Quick Buttons. What? Only 9? You need 2-3 for weapons, 2-3 for potions, at least 20 for spells (hehe). This limited Quick Button feature really is bad, since there are a lot of buttons on the keyboard waiting to be assigned. They shouldn've learned a thing or two from Neverwinter Nights about Quick Buttons.

The Bottom Line
If RPG is the name of your game, this game is the best PC RPG game since Fable. This game will keep you busy for weeks if not months.

Note: If you require low-level intelligence RPGs (hack and slash RPGs) then this probably isn't the RPG for you...

The Good
I see a pattern in the elder scrolls series, while I know some people will disagree, I felt the series got its start on the wrong foot. I just didn't care for Arena, the first game in the series even if the ambition of the project got some respect from me. Then Daggerfall came, and provided one of the most epic RPG experiences of all time, garnering my game of the year and quite possibly my favourite CRPG next to Fallout. While there were a couple good spinoffs, such as Battlespire and Redguard, it would be a long 6 years before we were given a true sequel. While I know some people feel different, Morrowind was a disappointment. To me, it lacked what made Daggerfall epic and I just couldn't get into the game. Yet when I started noticing the pattern of "Bad, Good, Bad, Good" I knew that the next entry had to be great.

I was right. When Oblivion came, I was treated to another incredible Elder Scrolls game. While it may not have been as awesome as Daggerfall, and it was definitely smaller than Morrowind and Daggerfall, but it was still an ambitious, beautiful, and incredible game. The first thing one notices when entering Oblivion are the graphics. The game came out 4 years ago and it still looks wonderful. The world in Oblivion is a paradise, and there are various locations that look and feel different. Many towns and places to explore. Exploring an Elder Scrolls game is always a treat, and Oblivion provides plenty of surprises for explorers.

The music is beautiful too, wonderfully composed and always fitting the mood and tone. The sound effects are decent, and it is nice to have full voice acting this time around, which means that if someone is giving a long, 3 minute speech it no longer requires you to read a novella to know what they are saying. There are some problems with the voices though, which I will list below.

The gameplay is definitely Elder Scrolls, you play from a first person perspective and you get various weapons of your choice and you can cast spells, pick various races, traits, and skills. The role playing system has been improved in some areas as well, such as the fact that you now learn skills not by picking them, but by doing them - much like in real life. Walking the wilderness, hiking, jumping will increase your agility and speed, simply swinging a hammer in battle, hit or miss, will slowly build your knowledge of blunt weapons. It is an intuitive and unique way to learn skills and helps the immersion.

The game is very easy to pick up and play, even those who shy away from RPGs or have no prior knowledge of the series can pop Oblivion in and get straight into the action and have fun. While there are some negative side effects of this, which I will list below, it means that Oblivion has something for everyone even casual gamers.

Freedom is another large aspect, your character can be a peace loving alchemist that makes and sells unique potions, or he/she can be a dark mage that has a nasty habit of melting your face if you stare at him wrong, and so many other possibilities. Most quests have choices to make and they can be done in your own time or style. As large as the game world is, the amount of quests is even bigger. There are enough quests that it could take a player a year just to see half of them, and as always, new quests and objects are found through the reward of exploration. You can join guilds, too. My favourite was the mysterious dark brotherhood, who make you an assassin. There is a quest for the Dark Brotherhood where you must kill a bunch of guests in a house as they search for a fake treasure, and you must mingle and slowly pick them off, you don't get your bonus unless you kill them silently and unseen, which raises panic in the group. Its like being the killer in your very own murder mystery, and its a helluva lot of fun. The Dark Brotherhood also gets rep because they can make you a vampire, and vampires rock.

The titular world of Oblivion is also a very memorable part of the game, coming across as a marriage between Hell and Mordor. Lots of freakish demons, mazes, and strange things await you in Oblivion, and each time you enter a gate its sure to give you a spooky feeling and a fight for your life.

The Bad
Although the game can immerse you at times, there are many bugs and problems that can sometimes break immersion. Animations are poor, characters literally freezing to talk and stiffly staring at you. Its somewhat creepy. Speechcraft is also a lame element, as it always has been, and makes little sense and simply isn't fun, on the contrary its a nuisance but the game forces you to use it a lot if you wish to get your desired result.

The voice acting is also often poor, while there are moments that the voice acting is decent, you will run into tons of people who have no interest in what is going on and just speak their lines in a dull manner, and you will also run into tons of people who all sound the same.

Scaled leveling doesn't work here, although it worked in Fallout 3 due to the small monster roster as well as other elements, in Oblivion scaled leveling is an annoying feature, and it'll take you ages before the action truly heats up and the best of the monsters appear. Leveling up is also somewhat confusing in Oblivion, you have no idea how much experience you have and you will level up at random, long intervals and sometimes you won't even know it, its also annoying that when you level up, you cannot tweak your skills until you go to sleep.

The graphics, while great, can get repetitive. The land isn't nearly as varied as previous Elder Scrolls games, maybe excluding Arena, and as lush and pretty as the greenery is you will want to see more and very few areas truly deviate from that look and many places you stumble upon, excluding ruins/caves/etc. that are run by humans have little to differentiate from other such places and feel incomplete.

The Bottom Line
Overall, Oblivion is yet another vast, gorgeous and ambitious game from Bethesda. Its easy to pick up and play even for those who don't like RPGs or don't play them that often, such as myself, and it improves on Morrowind in gameplay and has a buttload of content which will last you a long time, giving you tons of bang for your buck. Its not as good as Daggerfall, but it is easily the second best game in the series.