(This review is going to be astronomically long, so bear with me! TL:DR; is at the end.)

I remember the first time I played Oblivion. It was at a friend's house when I was seven, back in 2007. I didn't understand it much, but I got to watch him play it on his old television and I got a small turn for a while. Eventually, I got my first Playstation 3 in 2009. Oblivion was one of the first games I ever bought for the system.

Between the endless interesting quests, to the big open world that was the best for it's time, it was one of the best experiences in video gaming that I have ever experienced.

Now it's 2017, and I have just started playing Oblivion again.

I have two hundred or so hours on the retail version, and roughly 30 hours on the Steam version. Time and time again I find myself returning to Oblivion just to play through the Dark Brotherhood questline or to just explore all the dungeons and forts that the game had to offer.

I would even daresay that this game beats Skyrim. Skyrim's graphics are certainly much better, but to me, the game dumbed down on a lot of the elements that made Oblivion great, including a mediocre story, poorly made (and much less) side-quests and a broken vanilla follower system.

But enough about Skyrim, this is about Oblivion. I'm going to list all of the positives, negatives and other features that are a little in-between.

POSITIVES

+ Excellent main story.
+ A plethora of side-quests that are even better then some of the main quests.
+ The Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood's questlines are excellent.
+ Good controls.
+ The Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine are EXCELLENT DLCs and NEED to be purchased with this game.
+ An all-star acting cast who do a very great job at their roles.
+ Very well detailed dungeons, forts and caves.
+ Many different cities with dozens of quests, along with many interesting characters.
+ A lot of well-written books inside the game.
+ Many different weapons to choose from.
+ Customise your own class and what skills level up your character.
+ A lot of spells to choose from, including many other ones that can be bought.
+ The Mage Guild and the Fighters Guild. Their questlines were pretty good, however, they didn't return in their same form in Skyrim. The Companions in Skyrim represented the Fighter's Guild and the College of Winterhold represented the Mage Guild.
+ An amazing soundtrack. From the quiet songs while you're trading with a merchant in the Imperial City, to the heart-wrenching song playing when you enter an Oblivion gate, this soundtrack is quite possibly the best in the Elder Scrolls series.
+ Weapon degradation. You can use repair hammers to repair your weapons, where in Skyrim, you couldn't do that.
+ Alchemy. I enjoyed the alchemy in this game a lot, especially when I needed to upgrade my Alchemy tools whenever I levelled higher!
+ The voice acting is on-par with 2017 video games to date. With the famous 'Lucien Lachance' scene being one of the best scenes in the entire game, just because of how the actor portayed Lucien in that very scene.
+ The visuals are pretty damn good. Skyrim's visuals were excellent, but felt very drab. Oblivion's visuals were perfect for how many players envisioned Cyrodil. From the beautiful green trees, to the snow near the Blade's temple at Bruma, the scenary and visuals are excellent.
+ The end of the main quest. The end is very well done, and it's short and simple. Much better than Skyrim's in my opinion.
+ The Arena. It may be repetitive sometimes, but for me, this was one of the best questlines in the entire game (taking a back-seat to the Dark Brotherhood). From the Gray Prince realising his true identity, to the many battles you will have to win to become the 'Grand Champion', this is another reason why Oblivion is so good.
+ Random encounters. They may be less of them than Skyrim, but coming across a Highwayman when crossing a bridge near the Imperial City, or M'aiq the Liar outside of Leyawiin, I just found more enjoyment in those encounters.
+ The Ayleid Ruins. Skyrim tried to replicate the Ayleid Ruins with the Dwemer Ruins. To me, I found them a lot less interesting than the Ayleid Ruins in Oblivion. The beautiful arcitecture and design, (along with the value of all the Welkyd stones that you could collect) made them a lot more fun to explore, then Skyrim's substitute.

I think that covers all of the positives. Now, onto the features that are a little positive, and a little negative.

AVERAGE

~ All of the guards have the same voice actor, so good luck trying to find a certain guard if it involves a quest.
~ The game stutters infrequently (at least for me) and it breaks immersion.
~ The AI isn't very good, especially the Bandit and Mage AI, where they will just run right into my blade instead of being tactical or running away.
~ Glarthir. That entire quest is absolute garbage. The only thing that's good about it, is being able (you can choose not to) kill him and take the reward.
~ Merchants seem to have infinite gold. It makes no sense that if a Merchant has 800 gold, you can sell 795 gold worth of potions to them, and be able to sell them more as long as you keep the amount to under 800. The gold never depletes!
~ Lucien LaChance's ending. I don't want to talk about that.
~ I'm not going to say that the Zombies are hyper-realistic, but they are too scary for me.

Now...onto the negatives.

NEGATIVES

- The UI. It is clearly designed with the Console in mind, and it can be extremely frustrating and sometimes un-usable due to it's awful inventory interface and merchant inventory interface. The only way to really use it, is if you download a UI mod for the game from the Nexus.
- Levelling up. Being able to level up your stats while you're sleeping? Overall, the levelling up system is good, but I just found it really curious as to why we need to sleep to level up.
- The Lockpicking. It is a good minigame, but the problem with it is, you can just Quicksave in front of a locked door, then reload whenever you are caught or break a lockpick.
- The intense lag. The game can range from 30 to 200 FPS (only up to 90 in my case, and that's with a GTX 970). For a game that is over ten years old, intense lag in some places (such as Bravil or the Arena) is unnacceptable. Download mods to fix this and greatly reduce your lag.
- The Adoring Fan. You know what I'm talking about if you've finished the Arena questline.
- Invisible walls. Like in Skyrim, Oblivion has a LOT of invisible walls. Couldn't big mountains have been put in place to force the player to stop and not be able to hit an invisible wall? The only positive to this, is that when mods open up new lands to explore (Elsweyr Arquenia, etc), all you need to do is disable the invisible walls.
- The fame and infamy system. Fame isn't such a problem to me, as it makes a lot of sense, but infamy seriously annoys me. I want to be able to complete the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild questline, but I can't because each mission or murder grants you infamy (even when nobody sees you doing these crimes) and eventually, guards will attack on sight if your infamy is high enough.

That's all I could think of.

Oh, also, a massive positive.

MODS. Enough said.

TL:DR; Oblivion is an amazing game and is the best Elder Scrolls in the franchise and it is definitely worth picking up (ASWELL AS THE DLCs) and should not be missed at any cost. It overcomes it's shortcomings with an amazing story, world and cast of characters, that are unforgettable.

GET. THIS. GAME.