Customer Reviews

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

The title for my review seems to be about the best way to describe this game. It's considered an RPG, but it's more of a sandbox game in my opinion. That being said, it was the first and only RPG I have played and I absolutely loved it. If you haven't played Oblivion and you're thinking about buying it for PS3, wait a month or two. Bethseda is releasing a "Game of the Year" edition that will contain all of the expansion packs for Oblivion (Knights of the Nine, which is included in this reviewed PS3 version, Shivering Isles (not included in current PS3 version), and I believe there's more). Positive and Negative breakdown, shall we?

Positives:
- Fantastic graphics
- large world to roam about, lots to explore and discover
- Story lines are immersive
- No lack of tasks to complete (game guide is some 400 pages)
- character leveling provides incentive to practice skills, you also find better weapons, armor and magical abilities the higher your character levels.
- ability to craft your own magic spells, enchanted weapons and armor, make potions

Negatives:
- Some of the dungeon and cave crawling gets repetitive, especially the Gates of Oblivion
- Enemies level with your character. While it keeps the game challenging, part of the joy of levelling is becoming more powerful. With enemies that level with your character, you never really become "God-like" as the enemies become more powerful as you do.

Really, there isn't a lot not to like. the game is at least 200 hours long, with all of the side quests and such outside the main story line. The Dark brotherhood quests, especially, are very fun quests. I highly recommend this game, but like I said earlier, wait for the Game of the Year edition if you plan to buy.

I played the 'Game of the Year' edition on our PS3 and, before ordering the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition I wasn't sure if I wanted to spend the $50+ for the full thing or maybe start with this, less expensive, configuration and then add the Shivering Isles to it. It was a difficult decision to make because there wasn't enough information available at the time or I could not find it and, in the end, I decided to live dangerously :) and went for the GOTY. Now, that the happy Oblivion-playing days are behind me, I believe that it was the right thing to do but I would like to help, if I can, anyone who may not be so sure of what to order, make the right decision.


What you get in this edition:
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This edition has the plain-vanilla 'Oblivion' AND a relatively small expansion called 'Knights of the Nine' which was available separately on other platforms.

Knights of the Nine integrates seamlessly into the Oblivion universe and it's really a set of additional quests, all taking place inside the 'original' Oblivion universe.


The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles:
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Is part of GOTY but it is not included in this package. In the PS3 world, this represents the difference between the plain Oblivion and the GOTY.

The Shivering Isles are a different realm. The world's texture is different, the characters behave in a different manner, you encounter different monsters and you travel on the path of a different story line. While you can take you weapons and your skills with you, the Shivering Isles is a world onto itself and you go in and out of it through a gateway so you are either in Cyrodiil or you are in the Shivering Isles.

If you are thinking in terms of 'is it worth it?', you should be aware that the Shivering Isles does not double your universe. It is a relatively small world and it has a smaller number of quests. My estimation is that it's probably 1/5 the size of Cyrodiil proper, possibly smaller. In my view, purchasing the GOTY edition was worth it and I have little doubt that, once I was almost done with the main Oblivion I would have ordered the Shivering Isles, regardless of the price but, for anyone who's more cautious, there seems to be no price penalty for purchasing them as separate packages. However, given the convenience of having everything on one disk and given the likelihood that, if you love Oblivion you would buy the Shivering Isles anyway, I would recommend the GOTY.

See my GOTY review below.
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Oblivion is EXACTLY how I imagined an RPG should be like back in the 80's, while playing Ultimas on Commodore 64s and Atari STs.

Oblivion has weather. While there is no wind other than a constant, gentle breeze, you do get rain/thunderstorms, fog, snow (no blizzards though, because there's not much wind). You don't slip and fall on ice but the sound of your steps is different whether you walk on the road, on grass, on snow or on ice.

The world of Cyrodill is not exactly continent-size, maybe some 20-30 miles in any direction from downtown Imperial City but... what a world this is. Cities, settlements, camps, estates, roadside inns, ruins, caves, dungeons, mines, shrines. The landscape is made up of plains, hard-to-climb mountains, rivers, swamps, waterfalls, seas. You can travel on foot or you can ride a horse. You can fight your way into fame and fortune while doing good or you can sneak into other people's houses or pickpocket the unsuspecting. The guards will chase you and throw you in jail if you do illegal things but, if they like you enough, maybe they will look the other way sometimes. Powerful gods or humble people will ask you do 'little things' for them and, if you can make them happy, they will reward you according to their abilities. You can raise to the top of your profession, as a fighter, as a mage, as a thief or as an assassin or you can assemble your own little gang of dreamy crusaders so that you can fight evil and recover the relics of a legendary knight. Or you can do them all and become all, in sequence or make progress in all paths more or less simultaneously while moonlighting as a gladiator as well and, if still bored, how about helping a lady take care of the rats in her basement (that's NOT what you think) or some drunk guy at the inn get rid of the Trolls that took over his daddy's country estate? Oh and, I forgot, there's a world to save or... wait... there's TWO worlds, thanks to the Shivering Isles extension.

This game is so huge, I can't see how you could really 'finish' it. After more than 2 months of almost daily playing, I am maybe 75-80% into the main quest, half a way through the Knights of the Nine, only started the Shivering Isles adventures. I did become the realm's Chief Mage (and the titles earns me no respect from the scholar mages) and the grand master at the Fighters league, got myself 350,000 gold coins in my pocket, 2 comfortable houses and 2 nice offices, completed close to 100 quests, slaughtered 2000 creatures and hundreds of humans, murdered 4 or 5 and all but one by mistake (friendly fire), didn't even come close to the Thieves guild and, foolishly, made it impossible for me to ever join the Dark Brotherhood (these are the assassins). Also, I've never been a vampire and didn't yet start my career as a professional gladiator. I did massacre the peaceful dwellers of a small village but I did that under the influence of some drugs that made them look to me like bloody Orcs - that was the price to pay for infiltrating and destroying the source of that scourge. Oh, and while briefly in the land of Dementia - or was it Mania? - I did, willingly, push buttons that caused a few careless adventurers to go insane and I watched as they were becoming so. I humiliated a lovely princess - or was it a duchess? - and I killed so many fearsome monsters, I lost count myself but the game does keep a count so it's easy to know. In fact, the game keeps track of so many things... I could easily find out how many jokes I told, how many potions I made, how many horses I've stolen (one), how many hours I slept or how many books I read.

Well...? What do you think?

On the 'not so good' side, the game does slow down when you are fighting 4-5 monsters at the same time or when there are other things that keep the PS3 busy while you are fighting the baddies - like a fire burning. Loading/saving times are a bit too long but, while this is happening, you do get to read some randomly selected good advice on the screen.

The other thing that saddens me is that I don't believe the good people at Bethesda are working on the next chapter yet. I do hope that, as soon as they are done with Fallout-3, they are going to get busy with another adventure in Cyrodill or thereabouts.

My other problem is that I am now fighting with my kids over time on the PS3. We have a bunch of other games but, since Oblivion came into our house, I would say that 95%+ of our PS3 time was on Oblivion.

First of all, I really enjoyed this game. It was a lot of fun to play, and it took me about a week to play through to the point where I felt comfortable completing the main quest. In that amount of time, you can do a lot of the side quests that the game provides. I didn't have a huge problem with the bugs, really. At first, it was a little confusing when an NPC standing near me would die for no reason. Then I started getting annoyed when the game would put a bounty on me when I knew I hadn't committed any crime. Or when my bounty was 0, and yet the gods refused to heal me because I was a criminal. Also, in some of the most important scenes in the game, characters' audio would cut off for no reason. This was really only an inconvenience, because I could get the information they were going to give me from my journal afterwards, but the voice-acting in the game is good enough that I wanted to hear it. After one particular session of reloading a save multiple times to hear the audio work, I got fed up enough to turn the console off and wait until the next day to try again.
Frame rate wasn't a huge problem in the game. Generally it stayed high enough that even if it slowed a bit, it wasn't that big a deal. However, toward the end of the main quest, the game got so bogged down in the number of enemies on screen that it went down to a point where it took nearly half a minute to turn my character about 90 degrees in any direction. At the same time that this was occurring, the game would also simply stop responding to me hitting the attack button, so I was standing there getting beaten to death by a horde of enemies that I could have easily killed while I could see the end of the game from where I was standing. Luckily, the in-game menu popped up quickly enough that I could still heal myself with potions.
With all of that said, however, I still loved playing this game when it was working right. I haven't played a game that was this expansive in a very long time. There were a few times I disagreed with judgments the game made, like a time when I was clearly targeting an open door to close it and the game had me pickpocketing a character standing next to the door (which was really frustrating, because it got me kicked out of the Fighter's Guild). Or that killing the grand champion of the arena counted as my first murder, which sent the Dark Brotherhood after me. But even these were only minor setbacks in an otherwise beautiful and incredibly huge game.
If it weren't for the fact that the bugs in the game so ruined the ending for me, then I would have been able to give it a higher score. However, I don't think that what passed for this game's "final boss" should have consisted of me pointlessly pressing the attack button while I was being killed by about 10 daedra.
Even with all of this, if you can overlook the bugs in the game (which do end up being a very small number if you spread it out over the course of what could easily be turned into a 100+ hour campaign), I would recommend that you get it, because it is a really fun game. The storytelling is very well done, the graphics are incredible, the voice acting is also very well done (although hearing the same voice saying the exact same words for 6 characters in a group of 10 or 12 is a little odd, but also understandable when you consider the number of characters you need to make the world actually feel populated), and the AI works pretty well... most of the time. I only had one major problem with the AI, and that was at the very end of the game, where I had to lead one of the characters into an area for the ending, and he simply would not follow me. It took about 20 minutes before he would follow me.
In closing, if a few more of the bugs had been ironed out of this game, I would say that you should have absolutely no qualms about buying it. But if you would be bothered by something like this, then this game is not for you.

I've never been much for the medieval adventure genre of video games but this game is really quite amazing. The world is so rich and detailed. It doesn't have the scripted feel that many games do. You can explore just about anything anywhere and it seems like there are nearly countless little discoveries that you wouldn't know existed if you didn't decide to just wander off the path.

Excellent Game!

Well, I have owned Oblivion since it came out for the Xbox 360. For any RPG fan, this game cannot be beat. The depth of game play, the level of detail, and of course the fun factor. The proof is in the pricing. It has been one year and most still sell Oblivion for the 360 at close to the same price as when it was released. Very few games can accomplish that.

I am a long-time Microsoft fan. I find most PS3 games ok, but nothing spectacular nor any better than any comparable game on the 360. Graphically though for Oblivion on the PS3, I must honestly admit it looks a lot more crisp, clearer, and brighter. I am still using the same TV and using component cables for both systems. On the 360 with my TV, I found myself needing to increase the brightness all the time just to see certain areas well enough even with a torch lit. It is perfect on the PS3 without any adjustments.

Load times are faster overall. You still wait here and there, but not nearly as long as on the 360. It is missing many of the downloads you could get on the 360 for a small fee. A couple of those I really miss. I still think the Xbox 360 controllers are much better to use than the Sony ones, so that is one flaw I do not like dealing with.

So yes, same game on a different system and I bought it again. This game has entertained me for hundreds of hours and hopefully even hundreds more. If you have not played it, there are many characters to choose from and during the game, you can of course choose a heroic path to an insanely evil path. You just have to be good enough not to get caught when being evil.

Now maybe if they did it on the Wii with that remote, that would be interesting.

For those of you that don't own or haven't played Elder Scrolls Oblivion for the PC or 360...Oblivion is an RPG adventure (Role-Playing Game) that focuses on a gigantic fantasy world know as Cyrodiil. The game allows you, the player, to progress your character in anyway you choose or could possibly imagine, in order to save the world from oblivion. For those who haven't played this type of game (RPG), don't be afraid...this is THE BEST game on the Playstation 3.

Coming from a football/basketball sports game fan (GO Lions...yeah right), I originally thought that I wouldn't like the game because it may have been too "nerdy" for me. Boy was I wrong. This is easily one of the deepest, most customizable games made in the last 5-10 years! Once you finished the tutorial level (Imperial Prison), YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT in this world. You'll learn anything from powerful magic to hand-to-hand combat to summoning all sorts of things. You can join guilds with other people, be a bad guy, be a good guy, become a gladiator or a master thief...Just about anything you can think of. Once you get into the flow of the game, you'll spend hours a day just playing it and progressing through.

In terms of looks and graphics, on an High Definition TV (720P), this game is probably one of the best, if not the best looking game on the Playstation 3. Its as good looking as a $1000-2000 dollar computer and better looking than its Xbox 360 counterpart. I am also under the impression that even on a Standard TV set, the game still looks great, just not "HD great."

Although there is no online gameplay (No online on ALL versions of the game), the game has an incredibly deep artificial intelligence system that will keep you busy for hundreds of hours worth of gameplay.

Bottom Line, if you own a Playstation 3, buy this game! If you don't have the money, borrow the money. If you can't borrow the money, rob a Best Buy...kidding, just kidding. The game is 10/10 and the best title on the system so far.

One of the biggest games around has come to the playstation 3 and about time it did and its called Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion .

First off what sets this version differently from the xbox 360 is that it comes with the bonus content like that was released for the pc then later came out on a xbox magazine cd so you could install.

The graphics will honestly blow you away , and bring the player more into the game . The detail you will see is just so freaking cool . The graphics seen in the playstation 3 version really do stand out . They also look decent on most regular tv's and of course if your hooked up to a hdtv it will look alot better.

The audio for everything in this game is really well done . I have my ps3 hooked up to a sony theater system and sounds really well and brings the game more to life . I have also tested on a normal setup no theater and sounds really well for tv speakers .

The controls might take a little time to learn for most player's but some might be able to pickup a little faster .

The fun factor can come in many different way's but will touch base on two of the biggest that most might like is that being able to design your own toon , and the replay value .

Being able to design your own toon is a good key feature to any game ! The reason is the player gets to see his or hers creation level up and become alot more powerful in whatever class path they select.

The replay value to this game is endless and falls back to alot in being able to design your own toon. The game will be alot different if you did it once as a fighter type then later as a caster type . Just seeing you hack and slash to a monster , might be better for some players . Also being a caster blasting a creature with magic , might be funner for a different bunch of players .

So honestly Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the playstation 3 falls under one of the must have titles list. This game packs it all into a blue ray disk , great graphics, audio, extremly good replay value as well a great gaming time for the player . Also already having the bonus content already in the game , just really adds more insane fun for the player to check out.

The bonus content i talk about is the Knights of the Nine expansion . It was released for the pc version , then also came out for the xbox 360 with that one you had to get it via download or off a cd.

One last thought the playstation 3 might have started out with a minor selection of games . The list is starting to grow now with alot more better games comming out. If you was looking for a reason to get a playstation 3 , look at some of the titles comming out and oblivion is verry good choice for showing off the power of the playstation 3.


Have a great playing time with a great title for the playstation 3 called Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion !

This is one of the best games I've ever played, seriously.
I think other games like Prince of Persia, Sonic or Metal Gear are pointless now. This is the future and this is what will become of video games. It's worth your money. I hate spending my money in arcade-type-boring-games, I played those games when I was a kid with my Sega Geneis...now it's just stupid to do that...I have a PS3 and I want something more, and this is it!
Games like Oblivion, GTA series or Fallout3 are the future. Games like Star Wars Force Unleashed, Ninja Gaiden, Prine of Persia....etc...are a waste of time and money. They are good games for a weekend, but not for spending 60 dollars for Christ's sake!
Can't wait The Elder Scrolls V!!!!

This is usually not my type of game. I am usually not into the RPGs such as Zelda and Final Fantasy. But I must say this game blew me away. The environment is amazing, you can touch random things such as chains hanging from a ceiling and it will move when you pass by it. Graphics and sound are amazing, best so far on the PS3. This game can literally last you a year if you decide to do all the side quests and roam around in the HUGE world.
For me however I get a little motion sickness after playing this game for more than 30 minutes. I'm also like that with FPS's but that won't stop me from playing this game even if I have to throw up while I play!

Sometimes I feel there is 2 types of gamers: the ones that finish the game and experience all it has to experience before they can rightly say how they feel about it and then there's those who after awhile get the idea planted in their head of "I'm not going to be able to handle 25 more hours of this". Games like Assassin's Creed had some very bad gameplay choices and incredibly repetitive structures but I still beat it mainly because one part of my brain thought "it's tolerable" but in the case of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, after a few hours in, I thought there was no way I'm going to be able to handle any more of this and there's still 100 hours or more apparently and I have to tell you, I just couldn't handle any more.

Story: Instead of topics about existence and spiritual matters as seen in a lot of Japanese RPG's, Western RPG's tend to be about England in the Middle Ages with characters fighting demons and goblins from an evil realm, Emperors and heirs to thrones and the collecting of mystical artifacts. And that's Oblivion in a nutshell: the Emperor gives you a world-saving quest involving his previously-unknown heir and the realm of Oblivion and the dark forces that go on there. I think that's part of the reason why I couldn't really get into the story as it's too familiar and too close resembles other RPG's.

Graphics: I mentioned this in another review but it definately applies to Oblivion as graphics can be divided in 2 categories: the aesthetic and the performance. Oblivion as far as its look is quite gorgeous and there's many picturesque locales and sceneries that look quite striking (although there's not much variety in them either). On the other hand, despite the 5 gig install which isn't Bioshock/Devil May Cry 4-like where it does it at the beginning and does it through the gameplay itself, it still has texture pop-in where trees just magically appear, framerate dips and even pauses within the game and glitches. One time I wanted to ride my horse but apparently I was in the wrong spot as my character just walked against his side, forcing me to jump away and reposition my character.

Sound/Music: First I'll do the music as it's quite fantastic. Renaissance-esque music with flutes, violins, pianos and more triumphant themes show up and I just loved having the music on and listening to it which especially works well as your travelling the countryside. However, the voice acting is iffy as you'll literally run into people from different ends of the land with the same voice. One mission I had to save a village because its citizens were invisible. Going to a nearby fort and locating a man that gave me the item required to help out, imagine the confusion when the man who sent me on the quest in the first place had the same voice as the guy who gave me the item. Either they're part of a inaccessible cloning experiment or the voice actors didn't even have the common sense to change voices for new characters. At least Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean are here to make things better.

Gameplay: Games like the Grand Theft Auto series or an RPG like Final Fantasy reward players for doing quests off the beaten path. In GTA, it's driving a certain number of taxi missions, police car, ambulances, fire trucks, locating hidden packages and the like. Final Fantasy ranges from card games to ultimate weapons or fetch quests. Oblivion is similar as the main love many have for this game is the large amount of stuff you can do. From levelling your character's stats and equipment to taking on various quests from people to item collecting, it's fair to say if you're a completionist well this game will keep you busy. I, however, like to finish the main quest with the occasional optional stuff (Gold Chocobos let's say) but I didn't even bother taking on most of them and wanted to finish the main quest, which is sad cause there wasn't really a driving motivational reason to beat the game other than saying I "beat it".

The oft-maligned levelling system of Oblivion rightly gets it scorn as you don't progress by EXP to conquer your foes necessarily but rather repeatedly using one skill. Want to be a better swordsman? Cut down lots of enemies. A better sniper? Use your bow. Better your shield and armor? Get hit. Not only does this feel rather strange but it also makes it easier to work your way around the enemies who level up with you. Key is to better your stats so that a level 20 run-of-the-mill demon won't clobber you like your inexperienced level 1 self. I don't know about you but I prefer the traditional system of taking on multiple enemies so I can kick a level boss all over a room by the flick of my finger and not have the jerk bust my balls because I don't use my shield more often.

At a certain point, you have to stop trying to force a game and just take it for what it is. Unlike other games I initially didn't care for, only to keep playing because something kept bringing me in, the more time I thought about playing Oblivion more, the more thoughts of tediousness and general lack of motivation I had for completing the game. Sometimes bad games don't deserve such hatred but on occasion even the heavyweights aren't always for everyone.