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93 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great expansion pack, December 18, 2006
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
Being somewhat obsessed with Oblivion according to my charming fiance, I ordered this expansion pack from Oblivion the day it was released, skipped work on Friday, and played it non-stop until I had sucked every last bit of enjoyment from it. That, in a nutshell, is both the good and bad news. The expansion is very enjoyable. It can also be played through in a few hours.
This DVD includes not just the Knights of the Nine expansion, but all the previous expansion releases available online including the horse armor pack, the Orrery, Wizard's Tower, Vile Lair, Thieves Den, Mehrunes' Razor, and Spell Tomes. For what you get, the $20 asking price is not a bad deal at all.
Horse Armor: Well, it does make your horse look cooler. That's nice from an aesthetic point-of-view, but I thought it was kind of silly that you get it for free as a "marketing ploy". Items like this are always much more fun if you have to do a little work to get them, or at least cough up some serious dough.
The Orrery: This quest involves running around to different bandit camps, collecting items from the freshly slain carcasses of your foes, and delivering these to Bothiel at the Arcane University. Bandits aren't too tough, so this task doesn't take too long, althoug it does make you travel over some terrain you might otherwise have missed. This simple quest (ten minutes tops) gets you into the Orrery, the mysterious locked door in the entry tower of the Arcane University. Once in, you're treated to some neat graphics but the payoff is rather lame. You get to change your birthsign or something. I didn't want to do that so I didn't see much value in it.
The Wizards Tower: I like the Wizards Tower and found myself using it as my primary base for my loot. You inherit this big castle and it does cost you some gold to get it decked out. There are various neat aspects, including your own enchanting and spell-making altars and the ability to summon atronachs, but the real draw is that you have you own alchemical garden off your bedroom which provides you with an adequate supply of some of the rarer alchemical ingredients, including the Oblivion based ones. If you're a big potion maker then this expansion is worth it. Your bedroom includes an alchemical altar which raises your alchemy ability and a chest that can store your alchemical equipment until you need it, along with endless supplies of loot. If you're not a big alchemy person then you're missing a fun aspect of the game. Those paralyze+silence+fire damage+dame health poisons can come in handy some times!
The Vile Lair: This is a hang-out, much like the Wizards Tower, designed with the vampire character in mind. I haven't spent anytime as a vampire so the place wasn't all that appealing to me, but if you're into vampire characters then this is definitely the home for you. It takes some moolah to fix this place up and it can be stocked with your helpless victims, comes complete with a shrine to Sithis, and your very own blood spa. What more could a vampire want?
The Thieves Den: This was probably the best designed "home" for player characters. Tucked away beneath Castle Anvil this base for thieves has a very cool grotto with a very cool pirate ship. Unfortunately it's infested with leveled skeletons so you have to earn this home by cleaning out the foul undead denizens. Then you have to pay to spruce it up too. After all this work you get a cool pirate hang-out complete with pirates who will go out and raid and pillage for you. This would have been much more fun if you could have gone on the raid and pillage operations with them though. As a hangout, the thieves den has advantages over the other "homes" because your pirates also offer training, supplies, and spells in addition to swell companionship when you'd like to swap blood-thirsty tales of misadventure.
Spell Tomes: These books are found as loot on the corpses of your enemies and give you the ability to learn new spells by reading instead of paying a trainer. They don't show up that often, and the spells offered are random so you don't necessarily get anything you'd actually want. This works well however as this approach is balanced. It's fun to find them but they aren't likely to make you so uber-powerful you don't enjoy the game anymore.
Mehrunes Dagger: This dungeon is HUGE. Make sure you go in well-stocked with everything you could possibly need because you aren't getting out again until you make it through to the end. Those darn Telvanni Dark Elves ("Dork Elves" according to my fiance) are at it again and preparing to rebel against the empire, the fetchers. You have to take out their assembled army, hack your way through their slave-powered mining operations, solve various riddles, fight gangs of vampires, and battle a fearsome Telvanni Wizard, (who in true Mannimarco fashion goes so quickly it's a letdown. They should give these guys 10x more hit points so they have some staying power) and get the fabulous Mehrunues Dagger. I wouldn't trade Umbra for it, but as weapons go it's pretty decent. The fun part of this expansion is that it truly is a huge, sprawling place that will take you several hours to get through. The best part of it, and worth the entire price of the expansion, is the awesome Morag Tong armor you can get here if you play your cards right.
Knights of the Nine: This expansion plays much like any of the other faction quests. An evil Ayelid-Sorcerer king returns and you have to go clobber him. This "crusader" guild quest is fun, but it is pretty straight-forward without any of the well-thought out surprises and plot-turns that were part of the original faction story-lines. The plot is linear, making you have to assemble a special set of armor and weapons and then confront the uber-boss in his lair. There are some decent riddles involved which are easily solvable with a little patience. At the end you have some major magic weapons and armor, but frankly I chucked them in my storage chest in the Wizards Tower and put back on my Morag Tong and custom-built stuff. The quest is fun, but it only took me five or six hours to play through the whole thing. Do this quest and then go back and do some of the Dark Brotherhood quests for some amusing commentary from the NPC's in the world.
All-in-all this expansion has a lot to offer. There are some neat bases to chose from, a few cool effects, worthwhile new magic items, and another 10 hours of so of total game play. Hopefully we'll see some more new factions and expansions in the future to complement this one.
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50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps One of the Best Efforts Ever Made For Extra Content, November 26, 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
The Knights of the Nine downloadable content is a very entertaining add-on to the story of the already excellently made Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Many were disapointed with the main story to Oblivion, but Knights of the Nine more than makes up for it. Whether you enjoyed the main story or was unsatisfied, I can guarantee you Knights of the Nine will be entertaining. Challanging puzzles, dungeons, and battles await you as you try to restore a lost order of knights. Recruit members to become knights of your order and have them follow you on quests, or dungeon-romps.
Also included in this pack, are the previous downloadable content such as Frostcrag Spire, the Thieves Den, and Deepscorn Hollow. All lairs for different character types. Also, is the horse armor and the long dungeon-delving quest for Mehrunes Razor, a legendary blade. And lastly, while you are exploring the dungeons in your game, you may come across spell tomes that will teach new spells for your character to use.
I seriously suggest buying this pack, it is well worth your money.
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45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bethesda does Monty Python doing the Arthurian legend..., January 12, 2007
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
Boy, oh, boy, did I get excited for this expansion to the great Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion. Knights of the Nine offers the Oblivion addict expanded content featuring a major new quest, along with new items, locations and NPC characters, and heralds extended game play totaling anywhere between 5 to 20 + hours. Bethesda even upgraded the graphics to enhance an already visually stunning game. I could hardly wait. When Christmas morning came I immediately reverted back to my primal kid, feverishly tearing open wrapping paper until I was turning the box over and over in my sweaty hands. I hardly bothered to say thanks for all the sweaters and socks, that, frankly, I don't know why anyone gives as gifts. As soon as the last of the eggnog had been washed down the kitchen drain, I loaded this baby onto my computer and started playing...
So let's pick Knights apart, piece by piece, shall we?
1. The twenty-plus minute load time. What's up with that? Oblivion in its entirety took about five minutes to load. When I started the install, it took so long to actually do anything I thought my computer froze.
2. Content. My opinion here is all over the map, but frankly, overall, the expansion is a trifle disappointing.
* The Crusader/Knights of the Nine Faction quest - Pretty nifty; about as good as any of the guild or miscellaneous quests in Oblivion. The new villains - the axe-wielding, golden-armored Aurorans - are pretty cool, and I kind of like the whole Knights of the Round Table concept; but the artifacts you're questing for aren't earth-shatteringly unique or powerful, and like most of the guild/faction quests in Oblivion, after you've played the storyline out, the Knights just revert to a bunch of guys milling around an old church without anything to do (although you can come around and grab your followers - but only one of them at a time - to assist you during your adventures, if you wish). At least your knights bust out with a "Hail Master" and recognize you when you visit, unlike the snots over at the Mages Guild, who don't even seem know you're alive once you're named the Guild Master.
Then we have the Big Extras: there's the Mehrunes' Razor mini-quest; the oddly sudden inheritance of the Wizards Tower, the Vile Lair, and the Thieves Den; the rebuilding of the Mage Guild's Orrery, and a few odds-and-ends: the new spell-containing books and the horse armor. Now, I know that, at around twenty bucks, the Knights expansion pack is about half as expensive as Oblivion was at its forty to fifty dollar range. But unlike Oblivion's hundreds of hours of game play, with the mammoth main storyline and the dozens upon dozens of quests and side-quests, I expected to get at least half that content with Knights. Unfortunately, you don't. After returning the Knights of the Nine to glory (which, after the half-hour installation, takes up most of that twenty hours of additional fun), you're left with little real game play. The rest of the content pretty much consists of traveling to/discovering a few new locations, then getting a journal entry telling you to a) go see this merchant, then b) buy the stuff to decorate your new digs and/or horse. All these are nifty elements, but without any kind of oomph behind them. I wanted to go pirating with my pirate crew, a-la Bethesda's buggy-but-swashbuckling Elder Scrolls stand-alone, Redguard, but no. My wizard's tower looks pretty cool, but aside from some pet imps in the basement and a book left behind by the previous, presumably dead, owner, nothing happens here. Or in the Vile Lair either. And the horse armor? There's only two measly choices: elegant elvish or plain old steel plate. Whoopie. And for what? It's not like it serves a purpose. My horse still gets his butt smacked every time he looks at an ogre funny, so what's the point?
3. The M rating. Why? Nothing here is any bloodier or racier than in Oblivion. There's no l'amore, and nobody's running around buck-naked, as fun as that might be for us perverted old gamers. So why the 17+?
4. With all the Ayleid ruins and cultural references, how about some artifacts? Other than a few dusty, new-agey crystals scattered around in the dungeons, I mean.
All in all, there are some nice ideas here, but it seems Bethesda only had time to throw together some quick sketches for this pack, instead of bestowing the lavish painting that was Oblivion. Maybe as with Morrowind, Bethesda has a couple other expansions ready to go that - for another twenty bucks a pop - will add some much needed depth to the underdeveloped content introduced here. Hope so. But that's probably a long way down the road, and I honestly feel a little cheated. Just like when I learned about that whole Santa not being real business.
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