A beautiful game...
Okay, now onto the parts I don't enjoy quite as much. The combat system of the game is basically fire arrows or spells at distant enemies, swing your weapon as fast as you can to kill bigger, slower enemies and charge up for a heavy swing at smaller enemies, killing them in one. Then you may sneak behind someone to attack. I have no gripe with the ways you can kill things, i prefer it when it's kept simple - in this game its basically shoot or hit, which is cool.. but...
When fighting with melee weapons, i find this to be greatly annoying. I feel as if the developers just didn't put much thought put into the combat system (its just swing, block, swing, block...) until you kill the enemy. Plus when you make contact with your weapon to... lets say the enemy's head; it does'nt feel as if you have done anything. Instead of a solid thwump that i first expected, it felt like i had just hit a wire frame of fresh air... another annoying thing, is that when you damage them, they don't seem to be hurt much (they keep attacking even though you have just slaked an iron axe into the side of their face!! I mean what's with that!! They don't even clutch at wounds in pain). I honestly don't understand how people find this entertaining, i find it to be very annoying, irritating and really quite odd how battles are won by either sneaking up on strong foes and repeatedly stabbing them in the back (they don't even turn round to think; hmmmm somebody's stabbing me in the back, who could it be...) or by using fairly thoughtless tactics of swing weapon, now block, swing as fast as possible a couple of times... now block, and swing... wow i killed it... and possibly one of the most annoying things (for me anyway) it seems NPC's don't feel pain and will continue to attack until they are killed out right, which creates a completely unrealistic feel to the already odd combat system. (Please understand that these are my opinions alone and am not trying to upset any fans by speaking my mind, I understand that some people enjoy the combat system which is great!! Enjoy it dudes!)
Oh, while on the subject of NPC's their AI is one of the worst I have ever come accross in a game. If you decide to be a thief random NPC's will come after you even though they had no line of sight. Another thing about NPC's I don't know if its just me, but a few times I approach someone and they start shouting at me, telling me to go elsewhere and stuff. So I speak to them, tell them a joke or how lovely they look and they're best friends with me.. very odd indeed. Another odd aspect is that with a game that has sp many individual NPC's you'd of thought a higher amount of voice actors would be used. As over and over again you could talk to someone, then go to someone else and they'd have the same voice, which is totally lame.
This one's completely random, but here it goes!! --> Is it just me, or when you make the character jump... does it feel as if a) they didn't bend their legs to jump. b) they kind of hover in the air for a couple of secs c) when they land, again they don't bend their legs to compensate for the drop and sudden force that would be pushing down on them.. I mean, it feels like Halo's frog man jumping!! It's extremely wierd and again something that annoys me greatly.
OK, this is the last rant i have!! lol!! The game is also full of bugs and glitches, my 360 has froze at least 4 times now.. sometimes just for accessing the menu. Maybe it's my copy of the game that's gone wrong, but im sure other people have had similar problems. However, I can cope and understand these glitches as the game is HUGE!! Which is pretty damn cool, these few bugs are a small price to pay for the sheer scale of the game.
Overall, I was had great expectations and was really looking forward to the many hours I thought I'd be playing this game. The idea behind it is superb, the graphics it has are awe-inspiring, simply amazing. However i believe that oblivion could have been much, much better. There are just too many bugs, glitches and odd goings on (i have metioned only a few above!) that makes the game feel rushed into completion, annoying and generally not quite right.. which is a real shame.