The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Review 8/10

The Good: Huge game that will entertain for hundreds of hours

The Bad: A bit of repetitive combat

Oh Crap Moment: Why isn’t the lady here with my cure for vampirism? Because the quest is broken for now, that’s why.

Not many games can boast hundreds of hours of game play quite like Oblivion can. I’ve been playing it for 130 hours, and I haven’t even touched the main quest. Hell, I’ve even got two more guilds to wrap up (Mages and Fighters in case your interested)!

The huge amount of time you can spend enjoying the world of Oblivion is just part of what makes Oblivion such a great game! Unlike many games that cap at a max of about 20 hours, Oblivion's world continues to thrive far beyond the completion of the main story line. 

Like most RPGs, Oblivion has a main quest line, but what sets it apart from other RPGs are the one hundred plus side quests that just beg to be completed! These side quests range from assassinating a manor full of people to convincing an entire village that the end of the world is coming. And to make sure you always know what quest you’re working on the game organizes all of your active quests into a journal, which also offers an enticing hint as to what to do next on your current quest.

One negative aspect of all of this freedom is choosing what skills to level up in your character. For example, if you choose to level up your Athletic or Sneaking abilities over those of Strength and Endurance, the monsters in the game can over power you. The game tries to keep this in check by providing you with a sliding-difficulty meter that you can change at any time, however.

The combat can also get a repetitive and feel a bit too hack n’ slashy for an RPG, but the magic attacks mix things up and keep it feeling fresh.

The game makes up for these infractions, however, by giving the player full voice acting. Every line of dialogue in the game is spoken to the player, to the appeasement of many RPG players the world over I'm sure.

Perhaps one of the most upsetting problems with the game would be when the quests temporarily break. Occasionally you’ll do something that will make one of the quests get stuck, or cause an important character to not be in the location they're supposed to, and you’ll freak out. In my case it was for the cure for vampirism quest, and I was afraid I was going to be stuck as a vampire forever. The game will usually fix itself though, so if a quest does appear broken, you’ll just have to go do some other quests and come back a while later and usually all will be righted in the game world.

Overall, Oblivion is a massive game that RPG lovers should play. Final Fantasy purists may not be quite the demographic for this game due to the open nature of the game world, however, but that's not to say they won't find something to enjoy. The game is huge and will give hours of enjoyment. There are no major flaws in the gameplay and it is very fun. I give The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion an 8 out of 10.