Morrowind with shiny wallpaper, a crappy interface and no advancement
Graphics, despite the oddities and weak points and the high system requirements, still 10/10. The landscapes and architecture is artistic and beautiful to behold, even at medium grapihcs settings and all the tiny details inside homes and such must've taken ages to hand-craft.
Sounds are great, 9/10, voices are generally well done, though the dialogue got repetitive and annoying after a few hours.
Now that that's out of the way, I gave a 6 for gameplay, 6 for value, and 7 for tilt. I think that Morrowind is a tragic failure and a symbol of what seems incresingly to be going horribly wrong in game design these days, especially where RPGs are concerned.
Besides the shiny graphical upgrade, the game remains identical to Morrowind, with all of that game's problems and glaring shortcomings. Morrowind has always been a game of breadth more than depth, but having seen all that Morrowind has to offer, I find that there's nothing new to explore in Oblivion as it seems literally nothing has changed.
Let me put it this way: If it weren't for the graphics and voice-overs (which are really more of a shortcoming than an advantage, as it limits the variety of dialogue considerably), this game would be a large expansion to Morrowind (with a painfully crappy plot somehow made more painful by the inclusion of star voice acting, it's like they think players are getting dumber... or younger...).
If you ever played Thief 3: Deadly Shadows or Deus Ex 2: Invisible War and thought those sequels sucked by improving nothing, taking away some good things, and featuring annoying console-style interfaces and clunky, unresponsive movement then you'll know exactly why Oblivion was such a huge disappointment.
That, essentially, was the short version of my review.
Now for the long version:
First off, this game seems to feature no advancement, as all loot and difficulty is scaled to you. You gain a level, automatically find more coin to get a stronger weapon to kill an enemy that just got that much more resilient. Net result: nothing has changed. This results in a whole slew of horrible, horrible problems:
-I've heard stories of people just staying at level 1 for most of the game, and that it can actually be easier that way
-Advancement now has no tangible benefits
-Odd bugs/problems, for example if you try a quest when you're higher level, your NPC allies won't scale up with your enemies and will be cut down imediately
-Randomized, tailored-to-level loot removes all exitement and interest from it (which compounds the fact that it's useless)
-No feeling of accomplishment from completely outclassing a challenge, and by the same token, no cool fleeing from fleeing from enemies completely beyond your power, only to conquer them later.
-Contributes massively to shattered immersion, as the artificiality of scaled loot and challenges makes it PAINFULLY obvious that the world revolves around you...
-Which led to an odd and creepy thought: I found myself wondering why I had to travel to find enemies when (since they were put on in Tamriel by the gods for my benefit), it seemed natural that they might as well come to me! Everything else revolved around me! It seemed odd that space (instead of just time and matter) didn't contract around me as well.
-I remember in Morrowind going to the capital city and trying to rob the great house vaults, which were guarded by multiple layers of gates, unbreakable locks and guards watching nearly every point of entry. After spending hours trying, I finally accepted that I couldn't do it, but breaking in became a mad obsession and constant focus for improvement to me.
One day, much later, I finally managed to get into the vault undetected only to discover (to my surprise and joy) that I couldn't carry most of the treasure and that it was too expensive to sell to most vendors (a 50,000 gold shield to vendors with a maximum of 1200 gold?), forcing me to use the barter feature to trade one ebony breastplate for a whole pile of cheap, light goods (gems, enchanted jewellery, ebony darts were good for that too) that had to be distributed to other vendors in other cities for all the coin they had. I actually never ended up selling all of those hugely expensive items and kept most of them as beautiul decorations in my home. All in all, just this "laundering" process was so involved and interesting that it made my incredile theft worthwhile. It gave what I stole a feeling of real value and was a nice touch of rich depth that the world's economy actually couldn't absorb hugely expensive items so easily.
It would be unfortunate if Oblivion failed to improve on an experience like that, but NO, it seems rather than actually trying to improve that... THEY COMPLETELY REMOVED IT FROM THE GAME!
(whoa, reliving that memory made me angrier than I expected)
Secondly, the careful manipulation of abilities, skills, spells and equipment is the bread and butter of RPGs, and one of the most potentially rewarding activities is the science of better combat ability through analysis, innovation and work. Often, the more options a game gives you, the better, and I was hoping to find more such options to play around with in Oblivion. I was sadly mistaken:
-All armor and weapons are identical to those of Morrowind. Leather, fur, glass, silver, ebony, yeah... been there, used that.
-Alchemy is identical to that in Morrowind, only some herb and food names are different, with slightly more boring names than in Morrowind (I have onions and apples at home, but I'll never forget saltrice an ash yam as some staples of another world)
-This is made worse by the fact that the magical effects system has been completely ported over from Morrowind. The same damage, the same (target, touch, radius options), the same attribute damage and recovery, the same summons, exactly the same effects as in Morrowind. The mechanics, options, and even the feel of the system is identical. There are no new strategies to be discovered here.
-And I don't see any jump or fly spells available... probably because the shiny new graphics engine can't handle the possibility of high-speed movement (the old Morrowind had loading trouble when you tried to jump from one capital city to another in a single catastropic leap, but I can just imagine Oblivion having a brain aneurism trying to load that much data). Also think teleports were removed, but who needs them with fast travel?
-Stealth is identical, with the same AI problems and nasty limitations/unrealism as before. Though they did integrate the effects of lighting and darkness at least
Combat remains a boring hack and slash-fest, though they made some progress in making it more "actiony". I think the best it got was in the arena against an archer and sword wielder duo, as I danced backwards out of range, starting and stopping to both avoid arrows and the giant sword right in front of me. The best part was when the arrows actually hit my opponent a couple times. That said...
-The ranged attack system has the same problem as in Morrowind, where all projectiles travel in slow motion and are very easy to avoid or miss with. The enemy alway fires directly at you, or calculates exactly where to lead their target based on your direction and movement speed.
-The melee combat remains a hack and slash fest, even though you can dodge and power attack, it gets repeitive very, very quickly. It's also obviously subject to the classic problems inherent in first person melee combat, and the somewhat clunky character movement (and performance issues against multiple opponents) still keep you disoriented and off balance.
-To use an example, if you're creeping along a corridor with the emperor and his guards and an enemy jumps out nearby, you're essentially paralyzed. A slight choppiness/delay degrades you accuracy and reflexes and your allies and enemies rush about (with the signature "instant direction change" annoyance from the original Morrowind) all in all making you as likely to hit allies as enemies if you launch any attacks.
All in all it seems that the developers of Oblivion have no idea of what makes RPG combat fun. The opportunity for creative, tactical thought, rather than twitch action is what makes it rewarding. This is why I often find myself going back to Diablo 2 and Guild Wars, oddly enough. Those games make you think tactically about the use of a wide variety of abilties, and the possibilities for experimentation are considerable.
In fact, I think that's one of the reasons why fantasy games and RPG's go hand in hand so naturally, since a world full of monsters and magic and complex, varying equipment is perfectly suited to the kind of RPG strategy that somehow makes things exciting when the actual combat is slow, or even turn-based.
There never really was much opportunity for experimentation in Morrowind. Only increasingly powerful swords, bows and fireballs to replace the previous ones. They have done nothing to remedy this problem in Oblivion. Not only that, but every strategy you can try in Oblivion, I've already tried 1000 times in Morrowind, making the limited strategic options instantly boring for me.
Rather than try to address this problem, and help Oblivion excel in the kind of combat depth that RPG's are known for, they instead focused on the "action/arcade" facet of things, as if trying to make an RPG with Counterstrike or Quake 4 style action.
Oh, and don't get me started about roleplaying possibilities. The lack of party members is an automatic and serious limitation made far worse by a lack of control over dialogue or interactions (you occasionally get to choose between two stereotypically heroic responses). The fact that every word said by NPCs must be part of voice-acted dialogue contributes to the feeling that roleplaying-wise, this game is a one-way railroad with hundreds of little prepackaged linear side-quests along the way.
Oh, and from what I've seen and heard of the radiant AI, nothing special was done with it. Guards patrol the roads, wolves (and sometimes unicorns?) chase deer, and people go to sleep at night. Beyond that, they just wander around aimlessly. You can't do something cool like toss around furniture and have some react appropriately or burn half of the settlement's food and see food shortages and food prices go up e.t.c. Crime is also limited by the trademark telepathic guards that were a major annoyance in Morrowind.
So all in all, this game does not have RPG combat, magic, stealth, roleplaying, interaction, a good story or even exploration going for it (as the ruins, settlements e.t.c are exactly like the sort you'd see in Morrowind, right down to the daedra ruins). All it really has is stunted arcade combat and good graphics.
In conclusion I feel I should mention that I fuond it amusing to see how successive Tomb Raider games recieved scores about 10% lower than the previous one, or reflect what happens when you release the same game a year or more after the last one with no new innovations.
On Gamespot, Morrowind recieved and 8.7, which I agree with entirely, but their 9.3 for Oblivion was shameful. I find a 7.2 to be harsh, but it is entirely fitting that, like a tomb raider sequel, this game lose 10% for making no real improvements to the game, and that it lose another 5% for the changes that actually made this game worse than it predecessor (terrible story, voice acting limitations, console interface e.t.c).
Honestly, I feel like giving this game a 1 out 10 just due to emotion, indignation, and the nagging but far more logical claim that this game is not an RPG at all. I can't help but wonder what the developers were thinking when they released a beautiful, anticipated RPG that featured neither character advancement, strategy or roleplaying.
I can only assume that if it was a conscious decision at all, they likely decided to cater to the hundreds of satisfied player-reviewers on this site alone who gave this game between 9.1 and 10 out of 10.
And against that kind of unanimous acclaim, how can I possibly argue?