Customer Reviews
All things considered, one of the best PC games in history 
2008-04-21
There are plenty of do-your-own-thing style games out there, but none of them offers a world as large, detailed, and beautiful as Oblivion. If you're a gamer like me, then the thing that keeps you playing a game is some kind of purpose beyond getting stronger and richer. Oblivion delivers big time in this regard with an innumerable number of quests to be gotten from countless unique and believable NPCs. And I'm not talking about the typical fantasy style quest, which is to say the "Kill X number of Y monster, then I'll reward you with Z gold (... World of Warcraft ...), which gets boring fast.
These quests are short plotlines in themselves and Bethesda did not skimp in thinking them through. They're all different and interesting. Sometimes involving fighting through mobs, sometimes using your persuasive skills, they can be scary, challenging, and sometimes very funny. Of dozens upon dozens of quests I've completed, I count exactly ONE instance where the objective was to kill a certain number of monsters and then return for your reward. And because it was the only one, it almost seems like it was included as a joke by the developers.
And all this is in addition to a highly interesting and exciting main plot with a deep storyline and fantastic voice acting.
And as far as graphics go. Breathtaking. You better have the hardware if you want to get the most out of this game. But you'll appreciate it when you're stalking a deer through the tall, blowing grass while trees sway in the wind above you and the setting sun washes the mountains in a red glow.
To top it off, if you play on the PC and want to turn the best game ever made into something infinitely replayable and customizable, Oblivion has a HIGHLY active and HIGHLY skilled modding community of people who tirelessly provide tweaks, new quests, new armor, new places to explore, new spells, new races to play, graphic tweaks, new monsters, and even complete gameplay overhauls.
It can't be said enough that this is one of the greatest achievements in PC gaming history.
GREAT GAME 2008-04-05
OBLIVION IS ONE OF THE BEST GAMES I'VE PLAYED,THERE'S NO END TO THE GAME.AWESOME GRAPHICS.THE DELIVERY WAS FAST. THANKS.
Excellent game!! 2008-02-29
i like everything on this game story and graphics, sometimes i dont do my my quest anymore i just go around the whole map and enjoy the landscape.
Incredible. That is Oblivion. 2008-02-23
Amazing graphics and gameplay. A rich world to explore and fun quests to undertake.
Excellent Game 2008-02-13
The best role playing computer game I have ever played. If you buy this game just make sure you don't want to leave your computer screen for hours at a time. Once you start playing it is very hard to stop.
AWESOME 2008-06-25
I have never played and RPG game on computer before. I used to make fun of people who did. They look boring and slow and really pathetic. After trying to play Oblivion, Ive been hooked from the start and everything about it is just amazing. I would want everyone I know to try it even knowing im being a hypocrit.
Not quite an action game, not quite an RPG 
2008-06-03
I tried very hard to enjoy this game. I put a lot of thought into character building, would come up with something, but ultimately, no matter how excited I would get about the character build I would come up with, all in all the game is just not satisfying to play.
-The Good-
The graphics are simply gorgeous. Walking around, especially outdoors, is a thing to behold. The sound is equally brilliant although there are a limited number of voice actors. Making your own class and spells adds some customization. Unfortunately, that is about it for the good.
-The Bad-
The gameplay itself is lacking. This game tries very hard to do everything, and in doing so, the gameplay suffers. The combat is just not very satisfying. The melee combat is its strongest suit, but only because of some good physics as it is pretty much block, counter-attack, repeat. Sure, you can mix it up and add some magic in there to make combat more interesting, and the game encourages that in some ways. No matter what your main skills, you will have a magicka bar, for example. However, there will always be a weakness in your character that will be exploited by certain foes due to the fact that even though the game encourages a multi-skilled character, thanks to the leveling system with its attribute modifiers it is quite tedious to grind out skills to achieve it. If you are a tank character (heavy armor and melee oriented) you will be frustrated by chasing down fleeing enemies and summoners as their creatures beat on you and they deftly pepper you with spells and arrows. Also, in general the character movement is very rigid and mechanical, and enemies lead you with inhuman precision with their ranged attacks.
Stealth can be fun, especially mixed with alchemy and illusion. You will most likely be using a bow and not be wearing heavy armors though, which will make you very vulnerable to warrior-type enemies, and makes fighting multiple melee enemies a huge chore. Aim, shoot, run away, aim, shoot. Its not much fun.
The magic system has a lot of potential, and making your own spells is extremely fun! However, the one thing that completely killed the magic-using experience in this game was the interface, which is obviously very console-oriented. 8 quick slots. That is all you get. And you blindly select the item by pressing the corresponding keys on the keyboard... how fun. Otherwise you will be pausing to bring up the menu, navigating to a spell, selecting it and unpausing, casting and repeating. It completely kills the immersive flow of the game. Also, compared to the beauty of the rest of the game, the spell effects (sound and graphics) were just plain bland and not at all impressive.
Another thing that this game lacks is direction and purpose. There are a relatively limited number of quests available, and the main quest is so brief it is almost shocking. When it ended, that was it. There was nothing left to do but wander around aimlessly, going through random dungeons for no reason besides hoping to find some interesting or useful loot, and thanks to the utterly ridiculous level scaling, bandits will be in full deadric armors, and you will not feel much of a sense of becoming more powerful within the game world.
Overall, there is just a certain tacked on shallowness to the feeling of all the elements - magic, stealth and combat. Fans of RPGs will likely find it shallow and pointless, action fans will likely find it boring and simply not much fun to play. Oblivion sits in the grey neutral area, trying to lure you with its beauty.
I'm Finally Back 2008-05-14
After months of playing I'm finally back from the world of Oblivion. A good title for a game since after starting I became oblivious to everything around me. The graphics were amazing. I loved standing in a field watching the wind blowing across fields of grain. Several interesting story lines and many side actitives kept me engrossed longer than any other game I've played. My family welcomed me back after my quests, not fully understanding where I had been, but it was worth the trip.
Severely Overhyped 
2008-05-10
I really wouldn't call TES 4 Obivion an RPG. Hardly. It's more like an FPS that caters to the desires of 1337 n00b pwned hax0rs. This is a massive slash at the rep of Bethesda for me.
First on the agenda is the main storyline. It is ungodly easy, and can be completed in under 30 hours if you want to. Remember Final Fantasy 7? Even so, the storyline isn't that good, and is so trite and predictable it's not even funny.
The side quests are just as bad,or even worse. These are definitely even more trite, being so unbelievably cliche. They're unoriginal, even sinking as low as to take the Lovecraftian story "Shadow over Insmouth," copy and paste it into the game.
The world in oblivion is minature, yet they have fast travel. Literally, I could travel from the southernmost city to the northernmost city in a few minutes. But who wants to do THAT? Nooooo. We can FAST TRAVEL! I just can't see it in the Oblivion world. it's way too small. But of course, people complained over and over about in Morrowind you had to run everywhere. I can see fast travel in Daggerfall, but the world in Daggerfall was mega-massive. MEGA-MASSIVE.
Periodically, over the small map, you'll see "Imperial Forts" and "Caves." For God's sake, every fort is the same as the next, and same with the caves. In Morrowind, you could enjoy yourself exploring caves, but they were different. In Oblivion,I've seen one cool cave. Thats it.
Everybody remember how there was one set of Daedric armor in Morrowind? NOT IN OBIVION!! Since theres LEVELED MONSTERS...you can get DAEDRIC ARMOR off of a MARAUDER! Come on. Seriously. Daedric weapons? Armor? That stuff should be rare, or at least mega expensive. And if you gant Glass armor(Alien Green UFO suit.) All you have to do is kill a few bandits. It really makes me sick.
I could ramble on and on about this.
It's way overrated.
So if you enjoy actual storyline instead of hack n' slash, avoid this.
Swords, Magic, Pointy Ears, and Lag - It's All Here 
2008-04-25
If your graphics card came out before 2005, forget this game unless you enjoy endlessly changing the graphical detail to achieve better performance. If you have a console, you'll feel much better playing Oblivion on it, frame rates don't stagger, everything is nice and clean. I started playing this game on a 2004 ATI graphics card, until I upgraded to a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (Which, by the way, is pretty powerfull). I still can't achieve perfect frame rate and high graphical detail at the same time! You will not notice the slightest thing while walking through the woods, but you certainly will notice if something attacks you. Even if it is one single rat, the frame rate will take a considerable dip, more than some hardcore gammers will like.
Well, of course, the graphics are great, but some of the grass polygons could use a little more work. I don't know why, yet there seems to be some graphical corruption with the most common grass polygon. I ended up just dissabling grass altogether.
Want sound? Well, this game features some unrandom and repetitive music (not bad just repetitive), and all physic relating sound effects sound like bottles for some reason. Think string intruments, bottles, and wood and you pretty much have the game's sound lined up for you.
Physics? UNREALISTIC! Couldn't Bethesda at least try more, it feels more like an afterthought. By the way, many times, you will see dead ragdoll models losing their parts, streching across a town, or phasing through a solid door.
I would say there are about nine different vioce actors in this game. Each one takes care of a multitude of races, or just one. You have nine people voicing what I say would be about two hundred NPCs. As you guessed, pretty monotonous.
Artifical Intelligence is pretty standard, people walk around, eat and sleep. If they do more, I have never seen it. It is not revolutionary, but acceptable. Combat is not ground breaking but it is not bad, you can perform a quick attack, a heavy attack, and a block at the begining of the game, and by the end, you get an arsenal of other cool attacks.
The length of this game is good. It lasts pretty long with about one hundred interesting side quests plus the main quest. It lasted me about a year of replay and fun. Yet, now I think I have depleted that last of what was once my addiction to Oblivion. Just one pointer, if you find yourself going around towns killing NPCs, your Oblivion streak is probably at its end. If you do not have a lot of time to pour into this game, DO NOT BUY IT. You need to be at least a level five to have fun.
The stories of the game are very well writen with player imersion kept in mind. After the main quest, there are four guild quests that are equally interesting and time consuming (The best is probably the Black Brotherhood). Then there are random ones which are also great, if not as long.
What the game really focuses on is player customization. You can be anyone, a sneaky assassin, a powerfull magician, or a hack and slash warrior. Oblivion also boasts a unique and fun leveling system, that forces you to chose skills, that when improved, give you benefits and experience.
Sadly, there is no multiplayer in existance, would it really kill Bethesda to at least consider it?
Ultimately, this is a great game. A pleasing break from conventional RPGs and contains an element that is essential to success; fun.
Graphics 9/10
Gameplay 9/10
Story 10/10
Sound 7/10
Presentation 9/10
Length 10/10
Stability: Minor Problems, Minor Lag
Score 9/10 - Great
