The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition

List Price: $49.99 Discount Price: $41.00

Features:

• PC Games Software; for Windows
• ESRB Rating: Mature

Customer Reviews:

Oblivion, Fun but Dumbed Down To Appeal to More Relative to Series [Posted on 2008-04-07]
Trying to be as objective as possible so let me explain why I'm giving this a 4/5 star rating even though I liked it a lot.

First, the game has a lot of 'improvements' which seem like they were put in place because they would make the game more appealing to the masses. These include things like the idea of fast travel (I wish I could do this to work every morning), the auto leveling of the enemies, and so on. I'll explain more on those subjects further on. Generally though these 'improvements' break the atmosphere of the game some and, while you can ignore the fast travel, don't seem realistic. Your character just ran into what could be the equivalent of hell for the Elder Scrolls world, he came outside and suddenly every single mercenary is wearing glass armor (really nice stuff) and using top of the line swords? Oblivion gates opening must have really boosted the economy.

The visuals are beautiful though and the voice acting really gets you engaged in the story. I also love how the NPCs all have varying looks to them (even if most have the same vocal track). It's a somewhat realistic environment.

Now my biggest complaint would have to be the auto leveling, as I mentioned above. The reason for this is that the enemy's levels are driven by a few things such as your level and the level of the magic in your inventory. This can noticeably become a problem if you play a mage, buy one really nice spell which drains all your mana in one use, and then notice while you can easily kill one enemy every other enemy in the world now is 10 times your own level to auto balance making it impossible to continue. You have to be careful about buying spells close to the level your mana can support rapid which seems weird being that you'd think you could just do whatever is in your capability. Also for a class like a thief you'll find yourself leveling up quickly using your main skills and find that many of the enemies will be way too strong for you so you have to focus on leveling up secondary skills and not using your main skills quite as often to stay on par which forces how you play the game.

The auto leveling somewhat removes the whole nature of the RPG aspect of leveling from the game if you think about it. What's the point of becoming super strong if the enemies are just as hard when you start as when you finish? Yes, it adds to gameplay and I'm sure with your new skills if you use them correctly you do become stronger than the enemy but it removes the ability to destroy a legion with a powerful spell or the chop through a group of weaklings once you deserve to have that power.

Regardless, it's a fun game though and the environment is interesting to explore. The story also is interesting considering many Action RPGs tend to have trouble tying the main character into the story because of the nature of them but Elder Scrolls has always been strong in this area.

The dungeons can be repetitive (besides the core ones) because often the auto leveling will cause the dungeons to just have the same enemies all around. The dungeons are auto respawning and while they do have treasure chests which also auto respawn they lack a real unique feel (although they are setup differently they generally will give you a similar experience as a whole). There are four types of enemies you'll generally find and they're usually exclusive to their own dungeons: animals, humans, the undead, and daedric beings. I have to give credit to the developers though in this area because unlike Morrowind there are a plethora of creatures to encounter which was one of its pitfalls Oblivion does not have.

I'll leave my review at this, and I'm sure most people have said everything else, but I'd say get this game regardless, it's worth buying and playing through. I'm only giving a somewhat mediocre review because I figured I'd point out where the series went wrong this time around. It's an all around great game and probably the best Action RPG on the market today but still has a lot of room to improve on which hopefully we'll see with the next iteration of the Elder Scrolls series.

Great expectations [Posted on 2008-04-21]
When I fist heard about Oblivion, I was totally hyped. Its little brother Morrowind was a game that had a lot of potential and good ideas, but it didn't quite pull them off. Right off the bat Oblivion impressed me, the graphics were excellent, and the combat had a nice feel, to top it off, the spellcasting is much, much better than it was in Morrowind. Bethesda has made an excellent successor that took advantage of Morrowind's potential, and the game has far exceeded my expectations.
For the more technical user, take a look at Gamespot's "make it pretty modpack". It makes the ui a lot better, and the graphics packs look great too at very little cost to your cpu+gpu resources

enjoy your game!

-S

Oblivian Rules [Posted on 2008-04-25]
I have really enjoyed playing this game. It has a feel of the MMOs and yet you can solo everything. Great graphics.

GOTY edtion = SecuROM [Posted on 2008-06-23]
Bethesda has done an unfortunate about-face on their DRM stance and slapped SecuROM into the GOTY edition of Oblivion. I would highly recommend you NOT to buy this version and to buy the individual stand-along versions instead if you really want this game - see also the SecuROM debacle on games like Bioshock and Mass Effect to learn more.

amazing experience [Posted on 2008-07-14]
If you haven't played this game, please do yourself a favor and buy it, it is def. in my list of greatest games of all time. I really can't say enough good things about this game, I could play it 10 times through again and again and still not be sick of it, my only complaint is that it doesn't last forever. I own it on p.c. and the playstation 3, and both are perfect.

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