Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Hard to describe"

I would never call this a bad game. Quite frankly there are some people who will hate me for giving it a less that perfect review. Some gamers hail this as the greatest rpg known to man. Perhaps I did not play it "correctly" or perhaps I just can't appreciate it for what it truly is. I don't know for sure really. All I can say is I did not enjoy my experience playing oblivion. The world is large(really, really, flipping large). I found myself all too often traversing huge expanses of land with seemingly no end. I never got attached to my character and I never really cared what I was doing with him. The story is deep, but for whatever reason it just did not suck me in like some games I have played(mass effect for example). Maybe it was because I didn't care much about my character or maybe it was because too many of the characters I encountered in the game seemed lifeless and mechanical. I didn't enjoy conversations and I had trouble building up the desire to complete their quests. The quests were MANY and they were varied. Unfortunately I didn't find the quests to be all that entertaining. It actually felt kind of tedious. The combat was perfectly fine. My experience may have been altered by the fact that my character never became highly proficient with majic or ranged attacks. He was more of a close combat brawler. That worked fine, yet it was frustrating at times. The size of the game is somewhat overwhelming, not in a bad way though. The music is beautiful. The visuals are a little dated and at times bland, but I'm not knocking it too much on account of the age of the game and the sheer vastness of it. All characters were voiced, which is a plus. And you have limitless choices as to how you play the game and experience it. There are numerous weapons, spells, armors, clothing, and items to discover. You can purchase property and make a home place. You can take on jobs and have relationships. Most of the time it felt sterile to me. Once again maybe I just didn't go about it the way it was meant to be done. In the end I found myself losing interest in pursuing side quests and missions. After some time of playing the game I found myself compelled to just focus on the main quest so that I could "beat" oblivion and move on with my life.

Final thoughts: This is a very large technically proficient game with tons of choices and tons of things to do. Unfortunately I never was able to immerse myself in the story/experience. I did not experience a high fun factor.