Oblivion is what an RPG should be all about...
Oblivion is a massive game. The main quest is about 15 hours long, and has a great story, tasking you to research and take down a cult bielieving in a powerful dark god. These story quests are long, epic, and most of all, fun to play. but that is not where the game ends. There's also a lot of downloadable content now released for the game, which I'll get into.
First there are the smaller add-ons (I will talk about Thieves Den and Mehrune's Razor in this review.)
Mehrune's Razor costs about 3 dollars and will lead you to a new dungeon far away from any major city. The general story of the new dungeon will be about you following in the footsteps of an archaeologist to try to find an artifact deep within the mysterious cave, the Razor, which will be very beneficial to your character as it can deliver a one hit kill. This new dungeon won't feature any puzzles, but instead lots of multi-enemy combat, which is a welcome change from the normal combat where players will take one or two enemies at a time.
Second is the Thieves Den. This small dungeon will first task you with clearing out a few undead pirates. Once they're all dead (again) you will receive the boat and the den. Then you can put what items, furniture you want inside the boat, but the main draw is that you can hire a squad of pirates to take the boat out for raids, when they return, giving you a hefty sum of cash.
Then there are the two bigger add-ons, Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles.
In Knights of The Nine, you will take up a quest to seek out religious artifacts and ultimately form a band of knights to serve the gods. The quest is pretty fun and there are a few cool new dungeons. The combat in these dungeons is pretty awesome, they'll feature lots of multi-enemy encounters, as well as multi-enemy encounter while being backed up by your own allies. You'll also receive quite a few items for your character, that you'll probably be using a lot. After you beat the quest, you'll get your own band of knights that you can get to follow you, as well as self-repairing armor.
In Shivering Isles, you'll be called to a crazy realm to help a crazed prince stop an invasion of forces trying to make his realm a little more calm and sane. All the dialogue in this new expansion will either be weird or very funny, which is a refreshing change from the more serious dialogue in the core game of Oblivion. There are cool new enemies, huge new dungeons (far bigger than any in the core game, or the add-ons) and lots of multi-enemy encounters. You'll also be given a lot of new items and fresh new set of achievement points, brining the total possible up to 1250.
You will find tons of side quests to do. TONS, its almost impossible to count, it seems every other NPC (and there are a lot) has a quest for you to do, from a paranoid guy who wants you to investigate a list of people who he thinks are watching him, to a guy who is in a Dreamworld that you must enter and help him out of. Also in the game are guilds which will offer you some great quests. All of these side quests, even though you may be used to the standard RPG's crap side quests, are extremely fun, engaging, and most of the time are open-ended, having more than one solution. Another great feature is the dungeon-crawling. Along your adventure you will find many "abandoned" castles, mines, and caves, filled to the brim with baddies to dispatch, and awesome items to get.
And due to the fact that the game world gets an add-on every few weeks, there are always new adventures to have.
The land of Cyrodiil is massive, and the graphics seem to hold up pretty well. There is some awesome lighting, and textures, but the models really suffer, and look ugly, as well as a lot of loading. But once you see the scope of this game you may be able to get over it. In Shivering Isles, the new realm you're given has an awesome artistic style that's way different than the standard Lord of The Rings style environments seen in the core game.
Great sound. It seems almost every NPC has a different voice, all of which are well done, as well as a part played by Patrick Stewart. The effects are great, from the swords clashing to the spells that are casted, but my one problem is that the spells seem to only have one repeating sound effect rather than a few.
Do I even have to say how long Oblivion can be played for? Well, I could basically play it until I die. And if the retail game wasn't big enough Bethesda is kindly adding lots of new content via the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Olblivon is easily the best in the Elder Scrolls series, and easily one of the best RPGs out there. With awesome value, superb graphics and sound and great gameplay, Elder Scrolls IV and it's many addons will keep you playing and keep you interested for a very long time.