A good game that falls down about half way through.
The Good
- Huge, huge world with lots of quests.
- Quests all feel pretty different. Very few "Go fetch me my lunch-box" type quests.
- 3 Main paths to success, Steel, Sorcery or Stealth. All feel like viable choices. All play very differently.
- Voice acting through-out the game on what feels like a cast of thousands.
- Fully realistic world with characters going about their business at the appropriate times of day. World feels very real.
The Bad
- Combat system is shallow. Very easy to just dance in out of enemy range and attack between enemy swings. Very repetitive.
- Monsters level with you as you advance. You never feel powerful.
- Some Quests Lines really don't provide anything of value. So some of the content feels like you are doing it "just to do it."
- Alchemy has so many possible ingredients that you really can't figure it out without just checking to see what everything in your inventory can do.
- The "Closing Oblivion Gates" quests get VERY repetitive.
The Ugly
- Crashes. I had 4+ crashes towards the end of the game.
- Other serious bugs like falling through geometry.
- Some quests can be broken. I broke my Mage Guild quest line by being maxed out in reputation with those NPCs by the time I got around to them.
- Some parts of some of the world weren't finished. Big square boxes in the distance in lava fields. Etc.
- Big world means that lots of areas look the same. Most of the towns look the same. Oblivion (where you will spend most of your time) always looks the same.