Oblivion, at its heart, is a good game. It does some things better than Morrowind/Skyrim, and some things worse (namely, non stealth-archer combat). Overall, it is a pretty fun Elder Scrolls game.

The problem, is that the engine for Oblivion is absolute trash, to put it mildly. Even if you are wanting a pure "vanilla" experience with no mods, you are not going to have a good time. You need many mods, 3rd party tools, and unofficial patches just to get a SEMI stable experience. No matter what you do though, you will be besieged by crashes that increase over time.

The pros tell you not to use autosaves or quicksaves. They'll tell you to never overwrite a previous save. They'll say to restart the game after every death. They'll tell you a hundred other tips and tricks that ultimately decrease the enjoyment of your gaming experience.

I cannot count how many times I had to re-do a quest because I kept forgetting to "save manually", and then had a crash right before I thought about saving, or times where I died and just decided not to re-open the game. It's exhausting just how much you have to go through just to play the game.

And even if you follow every instruction and every best practice, you will still, inevitably, lose your savefile to corruption. I've tried on multiple occasions to get a solid "stable" experience going. I've dumped hundreds of hours into Morrowind, Skyrim, and even Oblivion back in the old days. I had hoped that with all my newfound knowledge and experience of these engines, combined with over a decade of community support, that it would be easy to "not screw it up" and get another hundred hours out of from Oblivion.

Attempt #1: Complete and total Savefile corruption after 35 hours.
Attempt #2: Complete and total Savefile corruption after 50 hours.

At the moment of this review, I have 85 hours in Oblivion. I have easily spent more than that trying to research and stabilize a mod list that would maximize the performance, stability, and gameplay aspects of Oblivion. I am feeling very burnt out and disappointed with the end result. I may try and go back to an older save to recover it, but I've done this several times already and I don't have high hopes.

Oblivion, at its heart, is a good game. It does some things better than Morrowind/Skyrim, and some things worse (namely, non stealth-archer combat). Overall, it is a [i]pretty fun[/i] Elder Scrolls game. The problem, is that the engine for Oblivion is absolute trash, to put it mildly. Even if you are wanting a pure "vanilla" experience with no mods, you are not going to have a good time. You need many mods, 3rd party tools, and unofficial patches just to get a [b]SEMI[/b] stable experience. No matter what you do though, you will be besieged by crashes that increase over time. The pros tell you not to use autosaves or quicksaves. They'll tell you to never overwrite a previous save. They'll say to restart the game after every death. They'll tell you a hundred other tips and tricks that ultimately decrease the enjoyment of your gaming experience. I cannot count how many times I had to re-do a quest because I kept forgetting to "save manually", and then had a crash right before I thought about saving, or times where I died and just decided not to re-open the game. It's exhausting just how much you have to go through just to play the game. And even if you follow every instruction and every best practice, you will still, inevitably, lose your savefile to corruption. I've tried on multiple occasions to get a solid "stable" experience going. I've dumped hundreds of hours into Morrowind, Skyrim, and even Oblivion back in the old days. I had hoped that with all my newfound knowledge and experience of these engines, combined with over a decade of community support, that it would be easy to "not screw it up" and get another hundred hours out of from Oblivion. Attempt #1: Complete and total Savefile corruption after 35 hours. Attempt #2: Complete and total Savefile corruption after 50 hours. At the moment of this review, I have 85 hours in Oblivion. I have easily spent more than that trying to research and stabilize a mod list that would maximize the performance, stability, and gameplay aspects of Oblivion. I am feeling very burnt out and disappointed with the end result. I may try and go back to an older save to recover it, but I've done this several times already and I don't have high hopes.