Summary

This a great game. Can't stop playing this game. It's a buy.

Sound

2-5 years

Summary

The first thing that I thought when I really took in the landscape, was WOW. The graphics are simply stuning. The game play was very nice; easy to understand. Same goes for fighting. One of the other things I like was all of the different paths and quest you can take. You can chose not to do the main quest, and just do all the other quests. Pure freedom.

Strength

Oblivion had many strenghts; the graphics, the fighting style, and the quests. One thing I liked: the people you meet had personalities! They wern't all robots saying the exact same thing the exact same way. Also I loved the alchemy. You can litteraly make hunderends of different kinds of potions!

Weakness

The only weakness I really found is at some times it can be a bit slow loading. That's it.

Summary

i wrote long post about this so here it is!
People who should buy this= RPG fans. Elderscrolls Fans. People who like games with good graphics. People who do lots of modding. General Gamers.
People who shouldn't buy this= People who play shooters, wanted specific guidlines, care a lot about combat, don't lie rpg's.

Strength

Ok. Deep Breath.
Oblivion.
Why is it the best rpg of they year.
1. Modding. This is a feature that is present in most of the elder scrolls games, and many other games, but here mods are especially common, good, and easy to make and use. You can seriously make whatever you want. Who would expect a star wars academy in oblivion! That must have taken a lot of work, but it was done. If you come up with a great idea, fool around a little with tes construction set and then build!
2. Graphics and Sound. Oblivion has very high quality graphics and sound making the game visually and sound amazing. It is enjoyable to look at the screen, and you don’t think “my god I can see a meter around myself” or “I can see every pixel in that person”. Download the high quality official oblivion trailer and look at the emperor robes. http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/media_movies.htm. or look at the imperial city (fake) view. That’s what I call amazing. While this isn’t the point of the game it makes the game enjoyable while you are playing it.
3. AI. Oblivion is famous for its AI system. Not in very many games. Anyway, unlike older many rpgs npcs don’t follow your schedule. Unlike many games where npcs would be in the same places everyday and said the same things here npcs change over time. They can buy, sell, eat, work, steal, kill and so on. Here is an example of interesting AI. Guard needs food and goes to hunt a deer. Guard supposed to be on duty, other guards get angry because no guard and start following him to bring him back. Then townspeople start looting because no guard. If you are wondering why things like this rarely happen this is why. The developers very early into the game announced they had to make the npc more stupid. This was because they were constantly being killed and robbed. When they tried to buy armor, they found out some rich npc had already bought all the armor in the town. Such smart npc’s would have been a crisis, so they were toned down. And yet if you spend time for example eating dinner with some npc’s it is more interesting than eating dinner with your parents. Although it may look fake it is still funny. Or trying different things on npc’s to see what effect it will produce. For example people actually go to bed at night so it is realistically easy to rob, at a time when real robbers rob ….
4. Size. Although physically smaller than many games oblivion has thousands of npc’s, and huge amounts of land and quests. It takes hundreds of hours to do everything in the game, and then you can download thousands of hour’s worth of mods.
5. Combat, although not good combat like in combat games, oblivion has improved a lot from morrowind with some actual strategy because of block, or magic, potions and so on. Hack and slash combat, simple yet fun.
6. Difficulty in many games, like morrowind, when I was lord nerevar and defeated dagoth ur, I had so many weapons I could kill anybody, even with my fists. For example for about 80,000, if I just sold I nice sword, I would be able to make 50 area 100 damage for 2 seconds poison amulet. I did in morrowind. I enchanted clicked twice and everyone in mages guild dead. Went outside, 10 clicks wiped out all the guards in the city, just too easy. I think I was level 4 second time I did this. With oblivion enemies level up with you so there is till some challenge even when you are a very high level. And there aren’t so many glass swords worth thousands lying around in ditches for you too pickup at early level and sell. That is no fun.
7. Guilds. Oblivion has some new excellent guilds like dark brotherhood and arena, and old ones like fighters, mages, thieves …very, very fun and lots of quests!
8. Oblivion has a score sheet saying the amount of different things you have done. The amount of jokes told, necks bitten, and people killed and so on.
9. The main thing about oblivion. Do whatever you want. Seriously, I’m not kidding. You can do whatever you want almost no restrictions. That is one of the best parts of oblivion but for some one of the main problems with oblivion. Many people get bored doing quest after quest and don’t know what to do. I had this problem to, suddenly, and I hate admitting it I felt bored. Once I actually stopped playing! That was the only time though. But soon I understood what the problem was. This was too realistic. Real life would be a stupid videogame, because it isn’t interesting enough. And you feel like you have to stick to typical things. But once I understood what the problem was I did what I wanted to do on the spur of the moment. Some fighting, walk to a dungeon and fight, some buying and selling go to a merchant, want something unusual download a mod, or maybe just want to watch people and creatures. Maybe buy a house, companion, furnish it with things, get a pet, because an expert mage, steal something important, kill everybody in a town and so own. If you don’t restrict yourself to what you think people do when they play games oblivion is very fun. The reason why many liked morrowind more, was it was more straightforward, it was clearer what you could do not as many choices, you don’t have to set goals for yourself all the time. For me Morrowind to Oblivion was kind of like SWBF 1 to 2. I missed the easiness, the small clans, the organization, of SWBF1, but SWBF2 made up for it with astounding combat, units, game play and so on.
uf long

Weakness

Often long load times. high reccomended system specs. maybe to open ended. For some, Oblivion is boring because there are virtually no guidelines and people are lost concerning what they should do. Just playing quest after quest is boring, so if you have to have goals already set for you, you might not like oblivion. Crashes can be common.
Personally, i don't see any major cons in Oblivion.

Summary

Let’s get one thing straight. I’ve had Oblivion for almost eight months now, and I’m still on my first run. I could have gone faster, but why hurry? The joy of Oblivion is only partly in the length and complexity of the core quest lines (main story, Fighters’ Guild, Mages’ Guild, Combat Arena, Thieves’ Guild, Dark Brotherhood); there’s so much more non-linear genius alongside it.

Admittedly, it’s not an easy game to get into. Instead of a control tutorial that tells you what the “A” button does (it’s contextual action, if you want to know), you get a set of menus with words you don’t understand and a high-definition mugshot. Thus does the epic begin; you’re choosing your race, gender, and exactly (EXACTLY) what your character looks like. You can spend an hour or two fine tuning every detail. Once that’s done, you find yourself in prison, only to learn that your cell contains a hidden passage to freedom. This tunnel is serving as the Emperor’s escape route, as mysterious shadow forces have killed his surviving sons and are after his head next. He informs you (in Patrick Stewart’s unmistakable voice) that from your humble beginnings, you’re destined to save all of Tamriel. Then the tutorial begins, as you fight your way past rats and goblins, getting an idea of your own fighting style and eventually choosing a class. You can take a pre-fab class like a knight or battlemage, or (nearly everyone does this) make your own class, with a custom skill set. All these choices can be overwhelming; there’s no shame in playing for a couple days, then restarting with a new race and class if you don’t like your original choices. Once you make it out of prison, your options are virtually endless.

As I mentioned above, there are six main questlines. The main storyline sends you in pursuit of the Emperor’s illegitimate son Martin, and along the way, there are dungeons to find, fanatics to kill, and a world to save. The quest will take you to shattered cities, crumbling forts, underground sewers, secret shrines, ancient temples, and more. More than a few times, you’ll be charging the fiery gates of Oblivion itself, risking life and limb to strike the very heart of the beast. The assault on the Great Gate outside Bruma even gets emotional; it’s not the very best storytelling I’ve seen, but I’ve rarely felt a such sense of mortal urgency in any other game. It’s good and properly epic, in spite of being as generic as fantasy worlds come (Bethesda owes a huge debt to J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson). No one’s forcing you to be the hero, though. The Arena has you killing people for public entertainment, and the Dark Brotherhood is a legion of contract murderers. If it’s just not enough, you can download Knights of the Nine (the most noble and heroic of the lot) and The Shivering Isles, a beyond-trippy visit to an otherworldly realm. Technically, nothing’s keeping you from joining both KotN and the Brotherhood, but it’s more immersive to have a moral standard. My current guy is noble and pure of heart, but my next character will have a heart like a poisoned blade. You have other options in the form of side quests, which range from sniffing out thieves to finding ancient artifacts to smiting goblins to turning in crooked guards to picking flowers (that’s right). You can take as many or as few of these as you like, and some of them give you a lot of non-linear options. Or if you're not into following orders, there's joy to be had from searching/looting random dungeons and closing every Oblivion gate you pass. Or just explore the mountains and see what you can find.

The gameplay in Oblivion is astoundingly complex. There’s melee combat, magic, archery, alchemy, stealth, personal relations, and so much more. Admittedly, in building the controls around everything under the sun, Oblivion doesn’t do any of these as well as games dedicated to something smaller, but everything works pretty well. Melee combat, for instance, is more elegant than two buttons would normally offer. You can choose a one-handed weapon and a shield to defend yourself, or you can take a more powerful two-handed weapon and crush your enemies before you need to block. You can dance around your opponent, while a slower, stronger fighter is free to bash first and block later. Human interaction, though, is basically a silly minigame involving arithmetic more than tact. It still does its job.

The Elder Scrolls series is unique in its approach to leveling; the more you use a skill, the faster you get better at it. If you kill an ogre with a sword, you get better at Blade, even if you’re a mage. A berserk-happy fighter with a mace will probably fall hard on healing magic, so he’ll gain fast in Restoration as well as Blunt. Intstead of experience points, it’s a matter of practice. Improving in your chosen major skills (selected when you create your class) leads to leveling up, boosting your attributes (like strength, willpower, etc.- not to be confused with your skill stats). When you level up, your enemies get tougher and better equipped, so the feeble bandits you start out against give way to sturdy brutes with godly weapons. This has been a thorn in a few reviewers’ sides, but it doesn’t bother me. On the other hand, if you’re leveling up frantically in non-combat skills like Sneak and Mercantile, your enemies will get touger and you won’t. Thus, you need your major skills to be combat-related so you’re on an even playing field, or in techniques you don’t use so you never level up. Just a hint.

The sound and graphics are stunning. Voice acting is good as games go, and the clank of a weapon against a shield or body gives you plenty of intel on how that blow connected; you can almost fight with your eyes closed. The visuals aren’t as amazing now as they were when Oblivion came out, but in spite of repetitive midrange textures and clunky facial models (they’re still pretty spectacular, but Gears of War makes it look old), they can still leave you speechless. You can stand in awe and watch every blade of grass wave in the wind. Climbing snow-capped mountains is almost like climbing real snow-capped mountains (I’ve bagged a few myself in Colorado and California), without the wheezing. Marble columns in Elvish ruins look old in a realistic way, and the glowing-embers aesthetic on Daedric weapons is just plain awesome. When you kill a person on a high structure, you can push the corpse off the edge and watch it fall in glorious detail, with the best ragdoll physics I’ve ever seen. As spectacle goes, Oblivion is plenty gorgeous enough to distract you from the occasional flaws.

I bought my copy about a year after it came out, and I’ve been playing for most of another year. It still costs the same as it did at launch (some of its contemporaries are down to $20), and it’s still worth it. Oblivion’s hundreds of hours of gameplay make it the best value since the Louisiana Purchase, even at the full sixty bucks. You’re looking at ten more for Knights of the Nine (a little on the short side) and thirty for The Shivering Isles (ask me after I create my evil character), if it’s just not long enough. Oblivion’s hugeness is more than enough to justify the purchase price, but the open-endedness would do the same with a quarter this much material. Heck, spend two hundred hours playing through it, then create a new character with a different fighting style and do the same things over again. I’m not even a huge RPG fan, and I’m smitten with Oblivion. I can buy Halo 3 in two hours, and I still say that Oblivion is the reason I got my 360. (Okay, so Halo 3 would have convinced me anyway, but…) It belongs on every gamer’s shelf.