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Previous rants:

Pokémon (Part 2)
Pokémon (Part 1)
Brutal Legend's publishing issues
Activision/Robert A. Kotick
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 4)
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*** THIS RANT CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

A while ago, I got myself to complete the main storyline of Oblivion. While I could have done this much sooner, I wanted to pay A LOT of attention to side quests before making anymore progress with the main quest and I'm glad I did. That was 150+ hours well spent. Now you're probably wondering "Isn't this more of a review than a rant?" That is a good point but there are some things here that don't quite make it an actual review in my view.

To begin with, I have to praise this game for several things. First off, the combat system is a huge improvement over the crappy one in Morrowind as you no longer have those miss hitting the targets bullshit. With that out of the way, battling was a lot more enjoyable and of course, I was happy to explore the whole of Cyrodiil (i.e. world map for Oblivion) with the exception of one thing which I'll explain later on.

Not often should graphics be an important in factor in video games but credit has to be given to Bethesda Softworks for making such amazing settings in Oblivion along with great graphics. I even thought they were spoiling the players with the scenery in the game as you can see the Imperial City at a far distance from many places in Cyrodiil. You could even climb the highest mountain and still have the chance to see it. It's that awesome! Too bad these places aren't real.

One complaint you might remember from my Morrowind rant is the jumping mechanics. They didn't make your character hurt from falling from heights into deep water which is another huge improvement. However, you can still easily raise your Acrobatics skill by jumping all the time. However, I didn't overdo it with pressing the jump button all the time as I made Acrobatics my major skill and this if I did so, my level would skyrocket too quickly and enemies will become far too strong for me. I learned this the hard way but easily adapted to the system after a while and it worked like a charm.

What really bugged me was the amount of pointless locations. While it's better than having half of the map empty, I still wish they could have given most of these places more use as without anything special within these places, what's the point of even exploring them in the first place, especially when they all look alike? It's a good thing I didn't go through all the trouble to go through each and every one as a lot of hours spent into the game would have been for nothing. That was actually my original intention at first but later thought it wasn't worth it. However, it's still funny that the first Ayleid Ruins I discovered actually contained a key item for the main quest without even realising it.

About the world map, why the hell are we not offered to view the full map when needed? Having to drag across the zoomed in map gets really annoying, especially if your desired location is on the other side of Cyrodiil. Sure, if it's a quest the map location will take you there right away but not for any other cases. Some of you might recall a similar complaint from my Spore review where the creature stage didn't offer a full map view mode and it makes me wonder, why on earth do game companies do this? Is there really something wrong with viewing the full map in the game?

What else didn't I really like about Oblivion? Are the boss fights any good? Only the main ones apply here rather than a sidequest character and out of all the main ones, only one of them was actually good which is Jyggalag of the Shivering Isles expansion. Umaril in Knights of the Nine is a pushover as well as the last boss you fight yourself in the main quest. Infact, these two bosses were so easy that the goblins and clannfears were more of a challenge and they're two common monsters in mines and Oblivion planes respectively.

The final boss you see in Oblivion you don't actually fight at all. Instead, you have a NPC fighting the main villain for you. While the scene was epic, this is a game I'm playing and I should be one in this fight! At least THE final fight in Final Fantasy VII let you barely use the controller in order to beat the game. This on the other hand is nothing. How on earth could they take away the opportunity to let you become a giant dragon fighting the fierce Lord Dagon? I don't care if Martin's a key character in Oblivion, it should be the player fighting at the end. If I wanted to watch two giant monsters battle, I would have watched a Godzilla film.

In conclusion, as brilliant as Oblivion is, it does have its drawbacks. Them being the excessive amount of locations without any meaning whatsoever, lack of full view map and piss poor boss fights except for Jyggalag. Despite these drawbacks, it is still an improvement from Morrowind and the next thing I want to do in The Elder Scrolls universe is playing the full version of Morroblivion whenever it comes out. That or finally get to Fallout 3 as a few people have demanded me to do so.

Oh, and for the heck of it: