With a great story, amazing gameplay, and huge amounts of immersion and depth, Oblivion is among the greatest RPGs ever.
Graphics - The graphics, which is the first thing that becomes apparent to you when you first turn on the game, are to say the least amazing. As one of the earliest games for the 360, we were all blown away by next generation graphics, but Oblivion still continues to amaze me. Not only is it technically proficient, but it's also very artistically amazing. There will be many times when you will cross a bridge or pass an opening in a forest and find yourself in awe of the panorama that spreads before you. The best thing about it is the knowledge that when you witness these breath-taking views, you can easily say to yourself, "I really want to go there." And guess what, you can. Oblivion is an open world game, and it's a huge one at that. Sure, it may not technically be as expansive as Morrowind, but in my opinion, Morrowind wasn't the kind of game I wanted to run out and explore. Frankly, it was too daunting and treacherous. Oblivion is much less haunting; instead of trying to make you look over shoulder half the time, it wows you with breath-taking views and gorgeous effects. The sunlight's glare off of your enemy's armor and weaponry, the leaves and grass swaying in the wind, and the eerie, greenish ambiance of the dungeons serve to distract you from the game itself. Furthermore, to remind you all of the advantages of the PC version, with the PC version, you can obviously tweak the graphics to suit your computer's abilities, which can exceed a console's power, thus making the PC's graphics superior. And others can even mod the graphics for amazingly detailed textures for those of you with power house computers. All in all, Oblivion hasn't yet ceased to amaze me with its artistic design, great graphics, and ceaseless attention to detail.
Gameplay - What would a game be without its mechanics? Sure, a game can look great, but many games are only skin deep. With annoying camera issues, wacky controls, and poor intuition during gameplay and action, the way a game is engineered can make or break a game. However, Oblivion definitely makes no mistakes here. The controls feel just right on the Xbox 360, and they even feel more at home to the hands with a keyboard and mouse. A mouse has precision for aiming and selecting than does an Xbox controller. Thus, the sensitivity flows better, and more buttons are available to you to customize your experience with the controls. But gameplay is more than just controls. Of course, being a generally first person game, Oblivion doesn't really worry too much with camera. However, you do have a third person option, which is probably one of the only reasons Gamespot didn't give this game a perfect 10. Honestly, Bethesda has always had a tough time making third person cameras. From Morrowind to Fallout 3, the third person perspective is pretty lame; avoid it if you can. The player in third person never really looks human in his movements. However, every other character, the NPCs, are extremely fluid in their motions. They are quite convincing in fact, except for a few select animations, such as bending down to check dead bodies and eating or drinking. Other than that, action animations and the like are amazing. The action itself is visceral, and you can manually change the amount of blood if you want. It's always intense fighting enemies, just because of the way the game is designed. The art of swinging your sword around, dodging your opponent's attack, coming back in for another swing, or implementing some magic. Magic is an extremely deep system that features many spells and effects. Especially when you're fighting a sorcerer with your own magic and using something fast like lightning, the battles can become very intense. Add in the possibility of archers and other melee enemies, and the battles have a lot of variety. There are multitudes of enemies, from creatures to NPCs, and because of the many possible combinations of these, you'll never get tired of regular fights.
Not to focus just on combat, there is a whole other side to Oblivion: non-violent, urban areas that comprise the cities. The NPCs follow regular patterns and schedules, and the result is a living breathing world that unfolds right before your eyes. They carry on conversations with each other, although after playing for at least 400 hours, I've heard the conversation possibilities so much that I can recite them. And one time I heard someone say, "Hello" only to hear someone else respond, "See you." However, most of the time this conversation works fine, even though it's always limited to two people. And when you interact with the NPCs, the conversation works very well, giving plenty of choices and persuasion options to keep you busy. However, while in conversation with another, time is frozen. So in certain cases, such as when action is going on in the background (or in the foreground even), you will talk with someone, and you can see enemies and allies stuck in mid-animation in the background. Kind of humorous.
And of course, there are three main paths you can take as you progress in the game: combat, magicka, and stealth. I don't need to explain each individual one, as they're pretty self explanatory and I've already discussed combat and magicka. Stealth works pretty well, although of course it's not completely realistic when your stealth skill is 100 and you can follow someone one foot behind them and remain undetected. When coupled with archery, stealth can be extremely powerful, as you get sneak attack bonuses, up to 8x! In other words, you'll end up taking off about half the average enemy's health when your stealth is really high. But don't forget about the other paths, and the best thing is, the huge number of combinations between these styles and their attributes are nearly unlimited, and they all work flawlessly together.
Sound - This is a really important part of any game, even though it is often overlooked or at least dwarfed in comparison to other aspects of a video game. The composer's score really hits the mark, and not just some of the time, all the time. When you're in battle, he has a good many tracks that really bring out the action and increase the intensity of the experience. And of course, when the battle is over, the music does an amazing job of emphasizing the beauty that is already so powerful in this game. When you are simply walking among the trees, admiring the beauty of little particles in the air and detail in the atmosphere, the music adds so much to the ambience of the game, it is simply awe-inspiring. I simply cannot describe how beautiful the music score in this game is; you really must experience it for yourself. As for the sound effects, there are so many in this game, simply because it is open world RPG, and one of such high quality and reputation, it is often overwhelming when you step back and look at the big picture. Everything matches together, from the sounds of walking on the sidewalk transitioning to walking in the grass. The clashing and clanging of sword against shield is extremely convincing. But not only is it the little details that Bethesda clearly pays so much attention to, but it's also the big picture as I've stated before. The sheer scope of this game and sounds and music that accompany are too amazing for words, and must be experienced to be fully appreciated.
Story - Honestly, this is one of the most important parts of a video game to me. Being drawn into a character and seeing how my decisions and actions can influence or further his life and the life of others around him is extremely satisfying to me. I love it when a simple video game can manipulate your emotions. So when I look at Oblivion and see a character customized intensely by you taking part in an epic struggle for survival to save mankind from an evil demon, I see an instant classic in my books. Even though the story may look cliché, there is so much depth in this game (just like everything else in the game). There are many good characters that are heroes themselves, not including you, but there aren't so many that you are overwhelmed and can't follow along with what's going on (cough, cough, GTA IV). You feel drawn into each character as events unfold. And don't worry about the other characters stealing your glory; you'll get plenty of attention as the story progresses. I'm definitely not going to ruin the storyline if you don't know it already, but events unfold in a way that builds tension extremely well, and you'll be surprised many times. The game features just enough big battles to keep you satisfied, and of course these battles are quite epic. Sometimes, though, when the tension is in the process of building, you will like you are running errands for certain people. It would have been better if some of the characters assigning these quests would assist you with their company or at least send some troops with you, because NPC battles are so much fun. It's really fun to watch NPCs battle in Oblivion, because the AI is pretty smart and the deaths are amazingly satisfying. But there isn't so much of this that it gets too tedious, as all of the quests are pretty interesting. Whereas in Morrowind, you would sometimes have quests that were simple and straightforward, Oblivion always has something deeper under the surface. Most of the quests have the appearance of something simple, but there's always some plot going on in the background that makes completing these quests that much more interesting. Probably the only other (minor) complaint I have besides running errands is the factions. The factions seem shorter; however, all of the factions seem better thought out, as many times something you think is an errand is actually very valuable to the faction's storyline. So factions are shorter but more in depth and more personal, but I guess my complaint would be that there is an evident pattern that develops. Let me go ahead and brake it to you: you eventually conquer every faction. Whether it's becoming the leader or grandmaster or whatever, the factions' progressions become predictable after you beat the first couple of factions. After I beat the Thieves Guild and the Mages Guild, I guessed that I would be able to take over the Fighters Guild and the other guilds. And sure enough, I guessed right. But really, that's not a huge complaint, because after all the work that you've done, it is very satisfying to finally achieve these goals, even if you know where you're headed from the start. Because you put so much effort and time into these guilds, it's nice to finally see yourself on top after the end, and most of the time, these endings are crafted very well. So, other than these very minor annoyances, the story really does complement, if not highlight, the game and its more creative side.
Replay Value - If I haven't already communicated to you how huge this game is, and how much fun it is to play and replay again and again, then I have failed as a reviewer. Like I said before, I must have clocked in over 400 hours into this game on both the 360 and the PC, and thus this is probably the best video game you could purchase for a mere $30 dollars (for the Game of the Year Edition). I cannot describe adequately how huge and how amazing this game is; it must be experienced at least once or twice to fully appreciate how awesome this game is. You can play through again and again, and each character you choose will be different than the next, and thus you will have a different experience. For $30, this was probably one of the best choices for a video game I've ever made.