by Andrius Davydauskas

Created on: May 12, 2009   Last Updated: May 17, 2009

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the fourth game in the Elder Scrolls series developed and published by Bethesda Softworks in 2006 . It was highly praised for it's graphics , gameplay and scope . It won numerous awards and is considered as one of the best role playing games ever .

The story starts in a prison where you wake up in a cell and help the fleeing emperor Uriel Septim escape from a group of assassins . Without revealing too much of the storyline , mysterious gates start opening up in the world of Tamriel and release a horde of demons from the plains of Oblivion . You must figure out a way to close these gates . The storyline doesn't end there . Aside from the main quest line there are four guilds you can join . Each guild features a questline just as long . There is also a huge amount of side quests . All of this will keep you occupied for weeks .

Oblivion has a gigantic and complex character creation system . All of the different races like Orcs , Wood Elves , Argonians , Imperials , Kajhits and many more combined with different birthsigns , character classes , minor and major skills make up a mind blowing amount of custom character possibilities . Also , this adds a lot of replayability value to Oblivion . Playing through the game with a Wood Elf archer once and with a Redguard swordsman again will be an entirely different experience .

The long range combat is just as you would expect with manual aiming and critical shots . Playing a stealth based archer is one of the most interesting things in Oblivion . The close range combat is a little lacking as it only features attacking and blocking . Even though there are a few different ways to attack it gets repetitive .The amount of magical skills is amazing . Firebolts , thunderbolts , summoning demons , paralyzing and many , many more .

I should also mention the "quick travel" ability . By using quick travel you can instantly teleport to any location on the map as long as you have already visited it before . This does quicken the pace , but makes the gigantic province of Cyrodiil seem somewhat small .

Oblivion does have flaws . Some are frustrating and some are quite annoying . The NPCs talk to each other in the streets , but they talk about the same things over and over again . Sometimes they change their voice tone while talking for no particular reason . All of this ruins the immersion . Most of the quests work fine , but some might get bugged and become uncompletable .

Overall TES4 : Oblivion is an amazing game and should be tried out even if you don't like RPGs . You are guaranteed to love it .

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