Ok, here comes the Better Late Than Never Bigass (sorta) oblivion Review.
Which means I finally beat the game. Yup… I had it since day one and never got around to beat it this month. The reason? Well… I burnt myself out on it the first days. Which brings me to the drawbacks of the game before even starting.
I usually play an RPG as a completionist, trying to do everything, see everything and have my character as badass as possible. With Oblivion this proves a huge challenge. Especially the maximized character. I can’t remember how many times I started over after doing a few sidequests because I realized I had the wrong major skills and that I levelled in the wrong directions. While I applaud the levelling system for giving skill in what you use, the way you get major stats (intelligence, wisdom and the like) is so completely fucked up. If you manage to botch up a level and gain it so fast you don’t have time to level up any secondary skills, that level is completely wasted… and this is what made me start over so many times.
The sheer number of sidequests available from start didn’t help me either since I originally tried to do them all before even delivering the Amulet of Kings to start the main quest chain. And this didn’t help to suck me in in the end.
I did come around though, and picked the game up again not so long ago, ignored the level system completely and focused on the main quests, just doing the sidequests that came in my way (plus gaining access to the mage’s guild)... and this time around I loved the game. The presentation is great, graphics great, even if playing Mass Effect gives me a lot to wish out of Oblivion’s ground textures. The animations in 3rd persion view are horribly lacking on the other hand… even Marathon 1 characters feels more attached to the ground than my cat (named Hobbes) did. But I seldom used 3rd persion view (partly because of this… partly because aiming sucks in it). Voice acting and facial animations and even storytelling leaves little to ask for.
Combat on the other hand leaves more to ask for though… magic system never felt that great (and then I played as a mage… per major skills that is… I killed most things with my sword), swordfighting never felt as strategic as Bethesda wanted to say it was. Sure it’s fun to block the enemy and slash him when he staggers back… but I usually found myself just hacking away with a 2-hander never letting them reach my anyway.
And then comes the NPC AI that seemed to have some shitty coding telling them to run in the way of your spells and sword as often as possible… I often found myself waiting for my “companions” to rush in and die so I could get a shot at the enemy. I never ever had any of them actually help me.
The storyline was good, even if it came from the standard create-a-tolkienesque-fantasy-rpg-story-generator, and I found it compelling and interesting enough to blast through the planes of Oblivion 473 times… no matter how repetitive it felt.
Overall I really enjoyed Oblivion, despite its flaws… but it didn’t give the lust to just continue doing sidequests or start over again like I did with Mass Effect. It’s one of the better western RPGs ever not made by BioWare though.
