A massive game to say the least and in Oblivions case you get and get to eat it to.
First the graphics. thay are great looking but IMHO thay are maby just a step down form HL2,FEAR wich is not a problem. the enviroment is great and the amount of pollys the dev's used to make up a charicter is impressive be sure, but the charicter skin textures in most case's leave a good bit to be improved. but when you factor in the LARGE amounts of objects ect and the distence at wich you can see "think FARCRY" i have to say its as impressive as any other game to date. all this comes at a cost this game is a HUGE recource hog. unless you have a very powerfull PC your going to have to cut back the graphics alot more than what your going to want to. I have a 3000-64bit cpu,gig of ram and a OCed 6800gt and to keep the frame's smooth im running in 800/600, textures high , no AA, HDD off light bloom is on,veiw distence is max but the other "sliders" are about med. far from maxed out you could say. and still i get in the mid 20 FPS at times. YMMV.
The game play is great IMHO best played in the FPS veiw. the Sword fighting could have been deeper considering the amount of it you do. The leveling system is strange for any one new to this game but it is deep and with in a day even a tottol n00b will figure it out :) . there is a fast travel feature for going from town to town but you will miss out on many locations to explore ect wich is a large part of what makes this game so complexe.There is just SOOOO much to do in this game. you can be a mage learing spells ect, a warrior fully suited in armore, a Theaf picking pockets and robbery,a hired assasin,a merc or any combanations pluse some. you can buy house's ivest in bussness's ect. i just cant stress how deep and huge this game is. the main quset missions are alot of fun and so far always make sense and there are TONS of side qeust and missions that are alot of fun also. youll meet charicters early on that you wont give a secound thought about to find later on thay have there own story and problems. pluse the world is dynamic and always changeing each charicter has there own day to day lives ect.
The AI is ok nothing to realy wright home about. in fact the friendly AI is honistly horrible. thay always want to walk in frount of you just as your attacking leading to the takeing the hit and turning on you. The enemy AI is just a bit better. iv noticed that in case's when a enemy is out matched by me or near death thay will often choose to try and run away while screaming "I give up" lol. but i still think there is alot of room for improvement or maby FEAR,FARCRY and HL2 have spoiled me :).
The sound is impressive though i dont have much of a sound sultion. basic sub and two sat speakers and onboard sound "no card" but with volume high even my set up lets me hear enemys tryn to sneak up on me or NPC's haveing a talk yards away.
All in ALL a great game that has alot of imediate depth that just gets deeper as you play and a lot of replay. i cant miss for just about any PC or 360 player plus already TON's of well thought out mod's that improve a already great game.
Less than awsome skin textures and a bit to simple a fighting syetem and only so so AI keep me from giveing this game a 10. in fact its only the stiff compation in those area's by games mentuned above that i judge this game by makes me notice those faults.
Also it may sound silly but id like to see a fishing option for this game what with all the awsome looking streams,ponds,lakes and oceans scaterd about this game. it just seems strange that was not included. the deffernt fish the player could catch could be used just like the plants,food ect that is in the game. also a slightly large selection of deffernt weapons would be nice.
If you dont have at least a 2800 or 2.8 cpu and 512 ram with something at least close to a 6600gt and you do have a 360 then i highly recommend the 360 version at least untill you get a better PC. with less than above specs your going to realy miss out on alot of what this game is. this is just one of those games that graphics are as important as gameplay. it will play with less but like i say unless your realy good at finding tricky tweaking sultions your going to miss alot.