Hi, good review, there were afew things I disagree with, but it was pretty good. Just want to point out afew things I don't realy disagree with:
Magical combat, however, is somewhat limited and feels too much like a first person shooter. I literally find myself circle strafing the enemy while attempting to lead my target with fireballs, just like my Q3 RA days. Though some might argue this isn't such a bad thing, I think it limits the potential of the game and breaks the immersion somewhat. (-2)
OK, first thing I sorta disagree with. In a game that is first person, how else is magical combat suposed to feel? The fact that it felt kinds FPSish was good imho, and is a nice break from the melee combat, which as you said, is a little to fast and hacky. If they had slowed combat down to about the speed of mount and blade more of the stratagy would have shown through.
BUT, thankfully, I just found a mod that increases arrow damage to an acceptable level. Huzzah! The game is extremely moddable, which lets the community do a lot of tweaking and modding. However, as this review is about the game that comes right out of the box, this feature will be noted with a slight point shift. (+1)
Only +1 point for modability? I would argue that the customability of the game is an "out of the box" feature I'd give it at least a +10 for modability, as many of your UIA gripes were fixed with mods already, and the potential is huge, considering this game has only been out for afew weeks now.
Oblivion's sneaking model isn't as robust as it could be. The enemies seem all too omniscient for me, and I swear they can sense me through the walls, even when I have 58 points in sneaking, wearing full light armor and padded boots. It gets difficult telling which parts are "shadowy" and which parts will make you stick out like a sore thumb, and sometimes these "zones" seem all too arbitrary. (-3)
I play a stealth character and am having no problems with sneaking. The fact that it's a "spotted, not spotted" icon dose seem to give the impression of an invisible line is bad, but overall sticking to the darkest areas of the room and trying to be behind (or at least to the side of) an enemy seams to keep you hidded, which is as it should be. I would still give it a -2 for having the eye be so abrupt (Rather have it fade in and out depending on how LIKELY you are to be spotted based on your light/los/skill/armor)
Size 36 font? I feel like I'm in the large print section of my local bookstore, where old ladies with oversized bifocals dwell. Do we really NEED font sizes this big? We're not blind, you know.(-1)
Takes entirely way too many clicks and hotkeys to get where I want, be it my inventory, map, or skill list. (-1)
I feel your pain, and agree utterly.
I can't zoom in on my map? What? (-1)
I don't care too much about that, and don't see why it would be of use, as neither of them are cluttered enough for it to be of much use.
Only 8 quickspell slots? Even Morrowind had 10. What's up with that? (-1)
Unfortunetely the interface was designed for the damned Xbox 360, which isn't even selling well. Same reason why they have the stupidly large fonts, and why you can only have about 6 items on the screen at once.
What's with the generic item icons? Where's the description for the items? Can't drop quest items? What's with that? They're just cluttering my inventory. At least they don't carry weight. (-1)
Quest items aren't so bad, but the lack of descriptions is frustrating.
The majority of quests still follow the classic objectives of Fed Ex and Hitman, and pretty much involve little more than "Go there, fetch that item, bring it back to me" or "Go there, kill that guy, and report back to me". There is very little in terms of quest variety. There are a few quests about investigation, where you actually have to talk to various people, but since the compass points exactly at the person you have to talk to and "investigation" usually amounts to clicking on the corresponding wiki dialogue, much of the intrigue is gone. (-5)
Considering the amount of quests in the game, the lack of creative objectives isn't so much a problem as it's still fun to do most of them. Examples include many of the early dark brotherhood quests, a brush with death, and the one with the guy stuck inside his own dream; they are very standard in their objectives (Hotman, and two go fetch quests respectively), but the execution is where the fun lies, not always with multiple options, but with fun and cool methods. Also the thing is there are quite afew non standard quests, it's just there are plenty of stanard ones too. Ivestigating/looking for info isn't that in-depth, but then again asking computer controlled NPCs for info get's boring quickly (in any game), so the dumbing down was very welcome.
Further more, with the exception of a few select quests, there's one and only one way to solve any given quest: by going to the place, beating everything up, and completing your objective. This completely destroys the whole Choice and Consequence deal that should be the backbone of any RPG. It makes the player feel like he's just going along for the ride, with nothing at stake, and no impact whatsoever on the outcome. (-15)
The first part I actually agree with, but this bit is rubbish. Quite afew quests had some ways to get your objective without smashing everything up. Granted the alternative most of the time was sneaking but I found quite afew fun ways to divate from some of the sugested ways of doing things. Not going to spoil them for you though
The NPCs, like Morrowind, still use the whole wiki-dialogue system, which really doesn't help with making any of them memorable. This time around, however, there are even LESS wiki-options than Morrowind, which doesn't really help either. Most of the NPCs still seem soulless with zero personality what-so-ever. The fact that they walk around and do stuff because of Radiant AI just makes them seem even more robotic and bland. (-3)
The system makes searching for information alot easier, and it's preferable to loads of NPCs with the same dialoug tree with the same exact options. I don't know, but seeing the same topics dosn't seam as bad as seeing the same entire lines of dialouge. Granted, many will say the same thing, but the greying out means you don't have to hear it if you don't want to. Also the RAI hardly makes them more robotic. Also there were quite afe memorable NPCs (paranoid elves, those crazy bravil skooma addicts, the dark brotherhood guys, one of the Cheydinhal innkeepers, ect...I could list more, but the list would be too long), probably just as manny as are in other RPGs, it's just that there is also alot of filler. I wouldn't give it a negitive or a positive in this catagory
Now, you may not be able to roleplay a spear wielding cavalier, a levitating teleportating mage, or a savvy diplomat, one thing you CAN roleplay is a cartographer or a surveyor. (What, not everyone wanted to be astronauts when they were kids.) Oblivion's Cyrodil is HUGE. The landmass is easily larger than Morrowind, with lots of nook and crannies for the player to stumble upon and explore. After all, a large, freeroaming landmass IS the trademark of any TES game, and Oblivion delivers on this front beautifully. Yes, the world may FEEL smaller due to fast travel and horses, but if you actually go out and actively explore, you'll get a much better grasp of how large and varied it really is. (+5)
I would give more of a bonus, just because of how dense the world is with areas of interest. Exploring is arguably the biggest part of the game. I'd give it a +10 for this.
However, the compass puts a pretty big dent on the satisfication of finding that obscure cave or bandit hideout, as everything in a 3 mile radius is lit up quite succinctly on your compass. What do I do? Post-it. (-2)
Alot of the things you wouldn't find without the compass. The ruins are easy to find, but the caves and mines are quite hard to find on thier own.
The Journal system is also in need of optimization. The quests are collated in chronological order, but sometimes, when you have so many current quests, or need to search for a specific completed quest, a different sorting order (for example, alphabetically) would have been just grand. Unfortunately, no such option is given. Unlike Morrowind, the specific dialogue associated with the quest is NOT SAVED in your journal. I sometimes wish that it were. (-2)
I think the journal system works quite well, and the lack of sorting features never was much of a problem as I never realy had more than 8 active quests. Since everything is sorted by quest it is actually very easy to manage, and never was the least bit confusing.
Oblivion is a wonderful action/adventure/exploration game, and not so much a roleplaying game. It's very easy to dive into this game and just have plain, unadulterated FUN, and that, I think, is THE most important part of a game. In that aspect, Oblivion shines as one of the greats.
I agree...now, if is suceeds so wonderfully in that, what is the problem? I mean, that is the point of the game. Critisizing it for "lack of RPGishness" is silly considering that there is so much varience within the genre. There are the good old (and prettymuch extinct) hardcore RPGs like wasteland and daggerfall, there are japanese RPGs (boo) that are esentialy movies with random turn battle sequences, modern RPGs that are just annoying hackfests, ect... Anyways I wouldn't clasify oblivion as a hardcore RPG, but it isn't a hackfest either. It for the mostpart suceeds in bringing the depth of a hardcore RPG to the fun of an action game (note a full blown action game, not some silly action RPG)
One last thing to note: I am suprised you didn't mark it down for much of it's clothing merges.The fact that robes couldn't be worn over armor was annoying, and the commonness of 1-peice suits bugged the hell out of me. Combigning paulddrons with the ciurass didn't bug me, nore did combigning the left and right glove, but they couldn't just leave it at that and mix everything up from there. My 1-peice dark brotherhood suit bugs me the most- I mean, it looks pretty cool, but the fact that I can't realy customize my character's apearance beyond that is annoying.
