I was excited to get Oblivion, because my friend had it and he wouldn't stop raving about it. However, upon starting the game, I was introduced to the biggest snooze-fest of all time. The opening consisted of running down narrow-linear hallways and getting stopped every five minuets to answer personal questions. I thought the whole point of RPG's was to get away from all of this. So the main quest goes that the king of your country dies and needs you to deliver the symbol of rulership in the kingdom to his lost son or everyone is going to die in an obscure way they never really get around to discussing. They keep going on about how it's time-sensitive, but I had enough time to go loot an entirely different dimension before I even read the quest info. I want to talk now about the biggest problem with the opening and main quest. You start out in jail. And the king is running away from assasins through a secret escape route that is in your cell. This raises many questions. Who was dumb enough to build a potential escape route for a cereal rapist? And why are you in jail? I think it was probably for something really trivial, like swearing in public, because throughout the rest of the game, the guards will arrest you if you look at them funny. And furthermore, when the king dies, he gives YOU, an escaped convict, the symbol of rulership previously mentioned. If i were really in this situation, I would sell the thing to the nearest store and skip town.
Character customization is almost too detailed, you start by selecting your race, I decided to be cliché, and became a Wood Elf, which was a mistake because I got no good bonuses and became so short I often mistook myself for an eight year old child wearing combat armor. Designing your face is the aggravating part, it's so detailed that you could model your character after yourself, and your favorite baseball player, and your mom, and no one would be able to tell because YOU NEVER SEE YOUR FACE ANYWAY!
Combat is less than intuitive, it is little more than attack as much as you can with R1 and shield and eat herbs or something when your health is low. Bow and arrow combat is standard, but you pay dearly if you forget to equip arrows. Magic is the way to go, if you train your destruction magic high enough, you can obliterate any enemy with ease, but it's not easy to train your magic that high, so I just went with swords and bows.
Armor is good, the game doesn't do the old "you must be this tall to wear the orkish armor" (which is good because if that were the case, by elf would only be able to wear the cotton candy armor. I was skilled in light armor, and I was genuinely surprised when I realized the game didn't trade speed for protection. Not all Light armor sucked, I got a full Myth armor and it actually protected me!
You can also choose your class and birth-sign I became an assassin born under the sign of the Lord, which meant I could sneak around and heal myself. The selection was immense though, each class and birth-sign had advantages and disadvantages, it took me over five minuets to decide, which may be a little too long.
Quests are fun and imaginative, where bad RPG quests are little more that "go there and kill everything" Oblivion makes the goals and plots of the quests unique, although as I was writing that sentence it occurred to me that no matter how the quests are explained to you, killing everything is usually what it comes down to. So I retract that statement, the quests are heavily cliched with a unique lacing around the edges where there's no dungeon, wait...... Half the quests are in dungeons, so I subtract both statements and replace them with the quests being s&*^.
The most aggravating, difficult, and stupid part of Oblivion is trying not to be Cliché, I've brought this up in previous paragraphs, and it really is difficult to be what you want to be and unique. A Wood Elf assassin archer that wears a robe (my character) come on! I could have done better. The salt in an open wound part came when I made a second character that ended up being an imperial (human) knight that specialized in hand to hand combat. It's not really cliché, it's boring.
In short, I liked Oblivion, it just seems like it's trying to hard to be a fantasy RPG. Here's a hint, if you are making a Fantasy RPG, don't have elves, lizard things, and dwarfs, try to avoid the mainstream and be different. If this makes your game really good then I am a genius and deserve to work in hollywood, and if it bombs then it was all your Idea and I'm in the Green Party!
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