User Reviews (1 - 11 of 31)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Oblivious to everything else

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 29
Date: November 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The last time I played a game that took as much of my time, it was Diablo II: LOD. I played it the same way - that is, by myself. Although it was playable as a multiplayer online game (MMORPG), I don't often play that way. One of the most unusual things about Oblivion is that it was designed to be played by one person, alone. For that kind of game, it is just excellent. You can follow the usual paths, strike out on your own, interact somewhat with others, go at your own pace. There's no real point to 'leveling up', as the game 'levels' with you. I like that aspect a lot as well.

Altogether well thought out and a lot of fun to play. I have only played one game, in which I have become the Champion of Cyrodiil, The Grey Fox (head of the Thieves Guild), the Arch-Mage of the Mages Guild, the Grand Champion of the Arena, and the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood - and I'm still playing and having a good time.

It has sucked a great deal of time from my life.

You will have no life

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 24
Date: January 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

once you begin to play this game. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay engrossing. Seriously addictive. The only drawback is that you have to have a pretty powerful computer to play it. Even though my machine exceeds all recommendations for this game, it still crashes to the desktop on a fairly regular basis, and it took some serious tweaking to get it to run in the first place.

A step backwards fo TES and RPGs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 28
Date: September 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is terrible. It's impossibly easy and not really fun so much as you just want to beat it to see what happens. The not fun factor stems from four important problems with this game.

1. Leveled Items / Leveled Monsters - This is the worst idea ever. How they ever decided to include this and not alienate true fans of ES is beyond me. Hey lets make all the creatures in game be relatively the same level as the player. Let's negate any incentive to level up to have to beat anything. The funnest part of Morrowind was realizing you stumbled into an area that was too tough to handle and then either dieing or realizing you should come back. THIS CANT HAPPEN IN OBLIVION. The only things you cant do in oblivion at lvl 1 are the Daedra quests. Also, you cant get any items that are too powerful for you. Again lets point to Morrowind. The first time you discovered that you could break into the Redoran bank vault and get awesome stuff at a low level was like hitting the jackpot. Guess what, little treasures like that, that you may or may not ever find depending on if you read spoilers, don't appear in Oblivion, anywhere.

2. Fast Travel - Oh hey if ive been somewhere and I get the marker on my map I can instantly go back there again! Thats total crap. You basically never ever have to wander through the world and get to somewhere because youve almost always been somewhere close before. And almost everything is pretty close to a town (which you can go to from wherever without having been there). Way to eliminate the whole fun of exploration! The travel system should have been exactly like Morrowind. Why they changed it is beyond me. You should only be able to travel between towns instantly, and if you were so inclined use the bind/recall spells. You should not be able to go anwywhere youve been before from anywhere else.

3. Dungeons - All the dungeons in this game (except those related to a quest) are almost exactly the same. They have zero personality. Oh hey lets go into a random old fort that has 1 of 4 sets of different bad guys in it (animals, undead, or mages/necros, goblins) with a basically randomly generated layout. HOW FUN! NOT! None of these non-quest dungeons has anything interesting about them. Again, Morrowind, was 10 times better in this category.

4. Factions - In Oblivion, any player can join any faction. So if you are a mage character and all you do is cast spells, for some reason you can still join the fighters guild and advance all the way up to Guildmaster. You can even join all the factions you want to! In Morrowind, you had to get the right skills up and have the right skills to even get in to the faction, let alone progress through the ranks. I spent alot of time planning my characters skills at creation so I would get into the factions I wanted. Even then, once you picked one of the houses, you could not join the other 2. Also, in Morrowind, there were more factions to join so this lead to people to play the game over and over just so they could experience all the factions with different play styles. Oblivion is just so not fun in the regard. There is no reason why my player should be allowed to be head of the fighters/mages/thieves/and dark brotherhood without having extremely high skill levels in skills that are important to each!

This game is a step backwards for the Elder Scrolls and RPG's in general. That all being said, the game has spectacular sound and graphics, and the day/night cycles for the NPC's are a good addition but has been done before.

Just not my kind of game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: January 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I tried hard to want to play this game. Like all RPGs, you have to endure some measure of tediousness. You have to fight a lot of battles to advance your character. This aspect of the game doesn't bother me. What I don't like is the transformation of the RPG from a 2D turn-based genre into a 3D first/third-person shooter genre, of which Oblivion is by far the best example. While the physics in Oblivion are much better than those in Morrowind, I still don't like the feel of 3D pseudo-medieval, melee combat. Range and sneak attacks are fun and tense, but melee combat is block-hack-and-slash. On the contrary, I like the 3D action of shooters like the Unreal and Quake series. I don't know what it is, but something is missing from Oblivion, and I simply don't believe the melee encounters.

My PC is no slouch. I can run Oblivion with decent textures and effects and at a good resolution. But it bothers me that with a system beyond the recommended requirements, I still have to sacrifice to play the game: I don't get all of the pretty details, can't see to the maximum distance, and no matter what settings I use, certain vistas and battles always lower the frame rate noticeably. It's just not very fun to play a game that suffocates itself from time to time. I imagine I would like Oblivion much better on a console rather than on the PC, where the frame rate is more consistent and the graphics are much, much higher and cleaner.

Oblivion really is quite an achievement in gaming--the graphics, sound, voice acting, writing, and especially the music are all fantastic--but consider that it does suck large blocks of time out of your life. That kind of gaming isn't for me anymore. When I was a kid, time was unlimited, but as I have aged, I've become much more selective about the games I play. Oblivion is a serious game, and I'm no longer a serious gamer. I play for stupid fun, not immersion. Before you buy Oblivion, ask yourself what kind of gamer you are. The answer will be a more significant factor in how much you will enjoy the game than the high quality of the game itself.

oblivion

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: November 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a fan of Morrowind and was really looking forward to Oblivion coming out. It did not disappoint me. I really enjoyed playing it. However, you must have a really up to date computer to play it. It won't run on most older computers. Read the minimum requirements closely!

GREAT RPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: February 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Make sure you have the horsepower to run this visually stunning game. I have been a fan of this TES series and this game by far is the best in the series. You may want to quit your job...extremely addicting

Do not buy this game.................................. It'll consume all your time :-)

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is a game you could play for what seems like 20 minutes, but in reality 4 hours have passed by. I bought this game just under 3 weeks ago, and the in-game save says I already spent 80 hours on it. I'm not even close to beating it yet either. This game is so non-linear... you can do pretty much whatever mission you want, at any time, and your character can grow in numerous different ways depending on what you decided to be (murderous evil sorcerer, thief, heroic warrior or battle-mage, you can be a good guy or a bad guy at any time). Although, if you like something faster-paced, you can just focus on the main mission, but I imagine that's less fun.

You need a really good computer. I have an Core 2 Duo 6600, GeForce 7950GT, 2 GB ram. I tried the "highest" settings at 1024 resolution, but it gets too choppy when your fighting so it's hard to see what's going on. I didn't want to turn them down at first because the game is just so gorgeous like that, but I wound up running under "medium"-ish settings and it's pretty smooth.

I sorta wish I had my 80 hours back. I've got a cool C# project I'd like to finish. But I'm just too addicted that I'll probably spend another 80 soon :-)

Good but has many flaws

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 21
Date: April 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I played the game for around 300 hours so the game is fun but......
Bethesda game support is not responding to my questions.
Right now I am having a video problem that certain moving things in the game are almost completely frozen the frame rate is near zero yet I can do all the normal stuff like fight. Examples of frozen things are: the fountain of blood, the wisps of fire from the lava, the smoke trail from spells and the elevators in the oblivion halls.
I have had many other problems the worst being saved games not saving and game crashing on exit and right now the game exits to the desktop for no reason with no errors. I just played Fear with no problems so it has to be a result of poor programmers.

Here is a list of the flaws that I have found so far.

1. The worst omission of the programmers in the game is that there is no damage meter enemy for the enemy so you do not know the effect your attack is having.
2. The close up maps in the caves are not very easy to read because you can't tell where one level starts and stops when they overlap.
3. The icons that show what damage is being done to you via spells etc. are not very intuitive.
4. In the menus the scroll line is too close to the items so is is easy to accidentally push in item and active it instead of scrolling.
5. The menus show all items in one place but would be nice tom see what is currently being worn grouped together because it is hard to find since the list can get so long.
6. No option to delete some of the saved games.
7. Sometimes maps are not filled in.
8. No magic bags to lighten load as in most other RPG games.
9. Can't shoot arrows through obviously big enough openings.
10. Almost impossible to find certain flowers that are needed in such a large world and not much fun to try.
11. Zoomed out map needs to zoom out a lot more.
12. Enemies attack seems predestined to hit even though you move or try to move you can't get out of the way.
13. Raising your shield seems to procrastinate.
14. Hard to tell how much magic a certain item has on self or weapon. Which magic effects can compound?
15. Bodies and weapons dropped vibrate and jump when you are near them.
16. The whole bribe thing is hard to figure out.
17. Lock picking is way too hard and lock picks are hard to come by.
18. Sometimes enemy can hit you through walls etc.
19. Enemy keeps talking even after dead.
20. What good does it do to level up when enemies just level up with you.
21. Dropped items can get stuff in mid air and when you try to get them you just walk right through them.
22. Wraiths get stuck in walls and can not be interacted with.
23. There are no directions on how to cure vampirism.
24. Sometimes if you jump you hit your head on something that is not there but close by.
25. Items shot or thrown can change directions when you do.

Extremely Detailed Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: August 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is an awesome game, that you don't need to be into wizards and goblins and such in order to fully enjoy it. It's such a rich, detailed world. There's so many ways to play it, beyond the normal rogue, warrior, spell-caster approach, and it's so non-linear that you can pretty much do anything you want, or go anywhere you want.
The graphics are amazing and look almost photo-realistic.
This is a great game that I would recommend to anyone who owns a decent computer, an XBOX 360, or a PS3.

Boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 37
Date: December 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Its a beautifully rendered world. I saved many screenshots. But the game gets very boring after a few days. This game has everything, horses, individual armors, unique weapons, etc. But what it doesn't have is sustainable fun. You can sneak around and steal the world blind, but 98% of the things to steal is cheese, apples and clay servingware. Ok yes, that is what makes up 98% of the items in a RL house, but if Real Life was exciting we wouldn't be playing RPGs. The little pocket hells that you have to enter are repetitive, and have very little good loot (what it has is heavy and undervalued considering the items come from demons).

ESIII has poorer graphics (cuz its older duh!), but a better story and better NPCs. The problem is, I don't have an alternative to suggest since Gothic 3 and NWN2 are also disappointing. At least this still has the unrestricted travel.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 Next 

Actions