I Could Live in This Game!
I absolutely love this game. The graphics are fantastic! The characters are customizable, with a wide array of race choices. The player can acquire many new skills, amass vast amounts of wealth, buy all the houses and take over abandoned ones or just move into homes who belong to now-dead owners, seek out and find treasures, magical items, clothing, armor, weaponry, and other items throughout the game. This truly is an open-ended game. One can prolong gameplay as long as desired or choose to snap through it in a breeze.
Enemies level up as the character does, so you are never totally outmatched, although there are some really tough fights in the game, and of course, the higher you set your difficulty, the tougher the challenges become.
I have only rarely had a glitchy occurrence here and there, and have to re-start, and it's generally at a very high level or when I have too many save blocks going on in the PS3. The game is smooth, the character moves beautifully and easily. The story lines are great. The voice-overs are good although slightly limited in number – but that's easily overlooked, even after playing multiple times. Controls are simple and straightforward to learn and remember, even if months pass before playing again.
There are many side quests, one main quest and many faction quests. There is just so much to do and so little time to do it! One warning, this game can be totally addictive, so make sure you do the other things you need to do in your life or people will get upset with you! My husband and children support my gaming, but really hate it when I play this one because it can be so immersive.
There are a couple of bugs, but with the extensive OblivioWiki, a player can learn about these beforehand and avoid them. My experience with the game is 99.9% positive.
The PS3 GoTY version is out and so I will be playing that now as it has Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine expansion packs on it. So that will be a new experience for me and as soon as I know what I've gotten myself into I will review that too.