Difficulty:

Very Easy

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Disastrous"

Since my previous review was deleted for no reason, I'll make this quick:

Story (May contain spoilers):

The story is simple and offers the player no choices. In other words, it's linear. You start in a prison like with all other TES games and then you find out that you're special because you're a hero that a prophecy spoke of. This is the same as all other TES games and that includes the recent Skyrim which also contains a generic and depthless plot.

Anyway. The Emperor is killed and you have to find his son - and crown him Emperor - to stop the invasion from demons. With him found, you proceed with the steps to make him emperor by collecting a few things needed for the ritual. Meanwhile, you may come across a few Oblivion gates which take you to bland and generic dimensions - which look the same as the previous - which you can close but closing Oblivion gates is optional and isn't needed. Near the end of the game, you need to open an Oblivion Great gate and if you had previously saved towns from Oblivion gates, they will have sent you troops and that's when you will realize that saving towns was pointless because each town only sends you two guards and in the end, you have an army of 10 people vs an army of 15 demons. If you avoid closing Oblivion gates for towns, you still get troops but they are simply militiamen.

In a pathetic battle, you get into the Oblivion Great Gate, steal the stone that is keeping it open and then get sent back to your world. With that done, you find your way into Cameron's paradise (he's some elf who is worshiping the demon antagonist) and defeat him.

Anyway, with the emperor's son gaining everything to complete the ritual, you head back to the capital to find that everything you've done has been in vain. Martin - the emperor's son - suddenly comes out with a deus ex machina and saves the day. Game over. There's no alternative endings. No choices. It's linear and it offers no role playing.

Moving onto the combat and expect combat where the enemy AI is dumb. Power attacks can't be controlled once initiated and attacks seem unresponsive to enemies. Combine that with the fact that enemies level up with you - defeating the point of you leveling up - and you'll soon find yourself being hit to the ground every now and then by enemies who can now perform knock down attacks. While that makes combat sound like it's hard, it's not. Enemies are easy to kill and nearly every enemy uses the same tactic which makes it easy to know when they are going to attack and block.

The world? It's generic. Bland and boring to explore. The caves are all copied and pasted with random treasure which makes most worthless to explore.

Oblivion fails as an RPG due to no choices and it fails as a sandbox game due to the boring world. The game boasts that you're free to do what you want but the immortal NPC's that you may encounter only disproves that claim. If I want to murder the Archmage of the Mage's Guild, why can't I? Because he's important to that quest line? What if I don't plan on doing it? What happened to choices with consequences? Oblivion doesn't offer any consequences.

Avoid.

1/10