Last month i posted a review of Oblivion for the CGUK.com Replay show which i've also posted below. At that point i'd almost finished the Knights of the Nine DLC and part way through the main story quest line. Now 8 gaming hours later i've finished both and have decided to come up for air.
Until Fable 2 i'd always steered away from the RPG but having enjoyed and completed Fable and more recently fallout i was excited about giving Oblivion a try for the replay. Looking back over my time in the mythic lands I am glad that I had this experience before plunging into Oblivion.
I'm sure everyone will agree that the game has an ambitious scope and complexity to match and i barely feel i've scratched the surface of the game after 14 hours. Graphically the game easily stands comparison with today's titles and the music and dialogue are of the highest quality. However, if i had come to this as my first RPG I would probably have put it down again after a few hours not really understanding what it was i was supposed to be doing. The sheer volume of options open to a new player can be intimidating and felt for the first few hours that I was missing something vital piece of knowledge and the game doesn't help you in understanding some of the more interesting features like spells and alchemy. What kept me going in the first couple of hours was my experience with Fallout and the belief that eventually my investment in time would start to pay off. Which it did after 2-3 hours of play.
Before heading of to the Knights quest I completed a few of the main story line quests and side quests. I liked the way that the locations appeared greyed out on the compass for you to discover and cresting some of the environments hills to look down into luscious green valleys never failed to amaze me. The quests themselves were enjoyable and challenging, but the levelling system of enemies never made me feel at a disadvantage.
overall as the purpose is to review the game with hindsight, playing Fallout and then playing oblivion you notice how the developer has learned from Oblivion and implemented changes. In my opinion Fallout simplified Oblivion's leveling system and options and made it more accessible to non RPG fans. They made the quest system just a little bit tighter and I think at least held your hand a bit more through the early stages (although i know some others would disagree on this). I think if they released Oblivion now with VATs it could easily be seen as a natural development of Fallout into fantasy rather than the other way around. That's not to say Fallout is a dumbed down Oblivion, just that Bethesda tweaked the right areas enough to make fallout accessible to more players and in turn have led more of us who perhaps missed out on Oblivion last time to try the title. The first few hours aside i have really enjoyed playing it and fully intend to finish the main quest as well as the Knights. The game has such a rich lore, as most fantasy titles do, I did tend to push through the dialogue on the background to quests not really appreciating some of the story but i don't feel that this spoiled my enjoyment of the game in any way.
After completing this, I continued my quests and finished up the story a few nights ago. In the end it I was pleased with the game and glad it was chosen. It has it's faults, as every game does, but as an immersive comprehensive world experience on the XBox it easily stands comparison with other open world games like Fallout and GTA. The Fallout comparison is obviously easily made, I do believe that Fallout is a superior game but Oblivion surpasses it in it's depth. If you wanted to complete every side quest I do not doubt you are talking 100+ hours Fallout 3 is probably 40-50 hours.
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