Beautiful scenery, interesting combat, but absolutely abyssmal menu/UI system
As the last year and a half has gone by, there have been some issues revealed, including soft shadow removal (seemed to be the biggest one people complained about). Now that I am playing, I can't really say I miss them. Graphics for me are secondary to gameplay, but it's worth mentioning that there are times when Oblivion is absolutely gorgeous. Landscape vistas are breathtaking, and it's only when you purposely set out to scrutinize every dot and tittle that you find problems. Most of these are attributable to how powerful your system is, to be sure. Thankfully, PC users got the upper hand in that the ini files are already being sorted out by folks at Bethesda's official forums. Tweaks are being done to prove that the PC is still mightier than the console.
HOWEVER, and this is where things get dicey, PC users are definitely paying the console price. In a "what in the heck were they thinking!?" nod to ION Stom's botched up PC version of Deus Ex: Invisible War, we're stuck with a user interface that reeks of console streamlining. It should be understood that streamlining on a console is done for a reason, namely a limited ability to interact and input information using a controller. A PC user has at least 101 keys, plus a mouse with which to interact with his game, yet Bethesda totally disregarded that. What exactly is wrong? Well, gone is the ability to customize the way your inventory/skills/spells/map screen looks. The UI is a convoluted tabbed affair filled with scrollbars and icons with no tooltips of any kind. It does not scale accordingly with your game resolution. If you're running at 1600 x 1200, the Menus will still fill your screen, while only showing you 6-8 items at a time. Morrowind's inventory wasn't elegant by any means, but compared to Oblivion's, it was sheer brilliance.
I could go on and on about this "consolization", but a look at any major gaming community will see that this is a common problem with PC users. Even the worst RPG in the history of man (Fable) had a decent PC port. Here's hoping for a patch.
In conclusion, I can't say that this is the "best gmae evar", but it is pretty good in places. I know I didn't touch the subject of quests or combat, but I'll just say I pretty much agree with the consensus on those. Better than Morrowind, to put it in a nutshell.