Hey Dragon, You Can Have Her: The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion

[spinFX]

I'm going to make one simple statement:

An unmodded Oblivion is terrible. I can see the effort but I'd rate it 5/10 because it is an obvious console port. Dumbed down immensely from Morrowind in story and mechanics.

Modded Oblivion is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. I have about 30 balanced mods that just improve the game sooooooooo much.

Ok that was more than one statement. I'm outtie!

 

[Sev72]

Meh, I disagree with this review, but it's more a matter of opinion, which is to be expected in a review.

However, for the love of god use pictures in your reviews. I know you have a site that you are trying to sneakily push people towards with the promise of shinies and frankly I don't care, please put up pictures to increase readability and break it up a bit.

 

[spinFX]

I'm going to make one simple statement:

An unmodded Oblivion is terrible. I can see the effort but I'd rate it 5/10 because it is an obvious console port. Dumbed down immensely from Morrowind in story and mechanics.

Modded Oblivion is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. I have about 30 balanced mods that just improve the game sooooooooo much.

Ok that was more than one statement. I'm outtie!

Would you then not say that the game is even more terrible that it needs player mods to make it good? Proffesional game developers doing worse than amateurs.

Well the developers laid the ground work. But yes. The base game is just... pretty horrible.

- The UI is clearly for a console. Dumbed down, streamlined, simplified whatever you want to call it.
+ The mod "Darnified" fixes this

- The combat is horrible, usually consisting of you blocking and waiting for the enemy to hit you and stagger so you can hit him. Magic consists of running backwards and nuking your opponent and archery is the same.
+ The mod "Deadly Reflexes" add an insane amount of combat tactics, animations, moves, AI, decapitations, slicing people in half, dodging, kicking, impaling downed enemies, stealth kills and it is all very well balanced. The mod "Midas Magic Spells of Aurum" adds 400 some new spells for new tactics and more interesting spell effects, and it is balanced! It adds new quests too, to get these spells you have to put in effort but by no means do they mean you auto win. Just a small list of new spells: summon Balrog, grow wings and fly, summon a comet, summon a hurricane, force push, LAZOR BEAMZ! and maaaaaaany more. Great mod.

- Collecting herbs sucks in vanilla Oblivion. I won't even describe it.
+ "Herbalism" and "Harvest Flora" mods make it so you auto harvest plants near you. Well actually harvest flora changes the plant to make it obvious you already harvested it. Vanilla oblivion made no change between an already harvested plant and one that was untouched.

- Vanilla Oblivion has too few options for armor, weapons etc. Also not many types of enemies.
+ I have thousands of balanced new items via "Francesos Added Items and Creatures" mod and several other mods but I believe this to be the biggest. Many new creatures too.

- Vanilla Oblivion has some pretty terrible convenience oversights. Selling items sucks. You first double click an item to sell, then confirm it. If you are selling a stack you have to confirm the amount too.
+ "Toggleable Quantity Prompt" mod makes it so if you want to sell an entire stack with no confirmation prompts you just hold shift. One at a time? Hold control. Amazing mod.

- I'm sick of the tutorial stage.
+ I have a mod called "Alternate Start" that first off doesn't start you as a prisoner which limits some role play, it starts you on a ship that has just arrived in your choice of city. You fill out immigration forms where you can role play some more (SOOOOOOoooo many options here) and then you have a dream about the emperor's death and can start the main quest.

- Oblivion is old and looks a little crappy. Sound is aged too.
+ I have tonnes fo visual improvement mods that just make the game look fantastic. No more blocky low res off int he distances textures. Improved cities. More realistic NPC AI living out their days. Natural weather. And much more. I even have new music and ambient sounds that draw me in further.

- No cloaks in Oblivion, WTF!?
+ Bam. "Capes and Cloaks" mod.

And I have maaaaaaaany more mods that are just swell.

 

[AWDMANOUT]

Honestly...

When I started a new game, I immediately used the 'replicate item' cheat tons of times, then sold them all so I would not have to worry about money the entire game. Just because it made things less aggravating.

The game was good because it was revolutionary. Even if it had many faults and glitches...

 

[Sebenko]

I'm going to make one simple statement:

An unmodded Oblivion is terrible. I can see the effort but I'd rate it 5/10 because it is an obvious console port. Dumbed down immensely from Morrowind in story and mechanics.

Modded Oblivion is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. I have about 30 balanced mods that just improve the game sooooooooo much.

Ok that was more than one statement. I'm outtie!

Would you then not say that the game is even more terrible that it needs player mods to make it good? Proffesional game developers doing worse than amateurs.

Dunno, I found Oblivion to be almost beyond saving. Almost. But by the time I'd gathered up enough mods to make the game playable, I'd got bored and didn't have the interest to stop hating the game.

Plus, a game should not have to be modded to be "not shit". Oblivion did. Mods are the only reason my copy is still in my games rack, and not relegated to the shelf o' shit, where I keep such faliures as sun age and Spellforce (acually there because it's the only game I have with a scantily clad woman on the box and it embarrasses me. Like most of my RTS games, I never played it for very long. I just got fed up of seeing it in the games shop for damn near a decade.)

 

[SavingPrincess]

Yeah, since this game won so many awards, it must be shit. Everyone knows that if anyone gives a game an award it's because of fake reviews and false praise. Over praise due to false ratings and fake millions of people buying and praising the game always equals fake reviews. No one really liked this game, they just had spam accounts that said people liked it. It is more of an overly hyped sack of lame propaganda than it is a game that anyone has ever enjoyed.

After the Flaming Princess Dragon mouth guy told me so, I have come to realize I never known what a good game really is. Now that I have read the ******************* I know that this game is entirely over rated, and I wasted not only my time, but my money, and my soul due to a horrible life sucking piece of video entertainment. Plus: it only had 6 voice actors.

I will now go and boil my head in hate, and see you all on the other side of Red Dead Redemption, and Alan Wake.

Please reference the below graph:

Seriously... one person (plus more who agree with me) didn't like the game for reasons that appear to be agreed upon. If you're basing game "goodness" on how many awards it's winning, what other people say about it, how much praise it gets, etc.

[HEADING=2]... you're doing it wrong.[/HEADING]

I judge a game on whether or not I have fun while playing it and why. I must be wrong though since it won so many awards... right?

 

[MrJohnson]

No offense, but from the first couple of paragraphs you seemed to sort of send out this vibe of "I went into this game hating it, so now I'll say whatever I can to defend myself and act like the tiniest things make everything terrible."

Of course, to each their own. I just find it a bit ridiculous when some people in this thread haven't just said they didn't like Oblivion, but it was a terrible game. Which means of course that anyone who likes it must be stupid. Since, you know, people can't have different opinions. That's moronic!

Then again, I'm probably one of the easiest pleased gamers out there.

Plus, I play on console.

And, every paragraph so far in my post has started with a phrase or word and then a comma.'

So, I'm an awful writer.

 

[SavingPrincess]

No offense, but from the first couple of paragraphs you seemed to sort of send out this vibe of "I went into this game hating it, so now I'll say whatever I can to defend myself and act like the tiniest things make everything terrible."

Quite the contrary actually. I guess I can see how you'd think that given the nature of the post, but I really wanted to like the game. I played it for a very long time despite the fact that my brain kept poking at me going "Self, what are you doing? We're not having fun here." To which my desire replied, "Wait, it has to get better, just a little longer..." So yeah, I really really wanted to like it, but came away being mad at it for wasting my time.

The only things bad were the storyline, voice acting and sometimes the character models.
Good game all in all.

You enjoyed the melee combat? Felt good about the solid character animations? Digging the obsessive use of bloom lighting? Enjoyed the leveling of monsters that caused progression to be completely pointless? Awesome

 

[imaloony]

I also believe the main quest should not be "Meh". It should be the main substance of the game. The open world should be the side dish, the seasoning, and the thing that brings everything together. But if the main part of the dish is crap, then the seasoning and side really doesn't matter, now does it? And that's how I felt with Oblivion. The main quest SUCKED. Big time. Along with terrible combat, bad voice acting, and an open world that failed to impress, it took me three heaving starts before I was able to power through the game. It turns out that the guild missions and side quests are much better, but because of the aformentioned faults, it still stuck to me as a sub-par game.

Long story short, Oblivion is really overrated, mostly remembered because it was one of the first open world games on that scale.

 

[SavingPrincess]

-snip-

[HEADING=1]Your Review And You: Welcome To The Section![/HEADING]
[HEADING=2]Formatting: Keeping others from thinking OMG WALL O TEXT[/HEADING]

This section is mostly about the effective use of paragraphs. A common mistake when writing reviews early on is writing blocks of text. This is unappealing to the eye and discouraging to the reader. You see, while people will be willing to read a long review, it helps a ton when it's broken up into smaller, more digestible chunks. This basically comes down to how you space your paragraphs. If you put them too far apart, the review seems like a block of text. Too close together, and the reader will think the review is disjointed and fragmented. Neither of these is a good thing, obviously.

[HEADING=2][a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.120165-Your-Review-And-You-Welcome-to-the-Review-Section]Have you read this? I seriously think you need to. Specifically, Formatting: Keeping others from thinking OMG WALL O TEXT[/a][/HEADING]​

No I haven't. I also reeeaallly don't care. If people are "afraid of text" then likely they're going to just move on to something more multi-sensory like a ZP review or something of that nature. Just because someone has an opinion on what makes a "good" review or column or whatever, doesn't mean it's "right." If someone doesn't want to read, don't read, it's not my job to spoon feed the masses in a way that quells their fears of having to spend more than 30 seconds of their day reading something.

I'm seriously tired of people complaining about this. I'm normally a pretty nice guy who gives people the benefit of the doubt, but seriously... In the time you spend complaining about how much you have to read, you could have probably read it.

I've never read a book, article, column, editorial, letter, or anything else of that nature and thought to myself "You know what this could use? Pictures." Get the 'eff over it people. I'm not going to add pictures. Deal.

... my paragraph structures are fine by the way.