I've played both games (and also Morrowind), as well as brief stints though Daggerfall and Arena. Hell, I even played a bit of Redguard and that other game they put out (telling I can't even remember the title). However, I'd strongly recommend Fallout 3 over Oblivion. It's a better game in every way, at least in my opinion.
But, anyway, sticking to the Oblivion and games like it. The big problem for me (and the same with Morrowind) was the "level by doing" system. It amounted to me standing around clicking a button to cast a spell over and over, level, get another spell, click, click, click. It all felt very raw and numerical--mechanical, in fact. Everything had the math sticking out rather than carefully integrated into the gameplay (I prefer most if not all of the math and number crunching to take place behind the scenes, not staring at me in the face). The random item generation and all that is pretty obvious as well. To top it all off, the game doesn't scale worth a crap, so pretty soon you're superman and easily defeating enemies. On the positive side, I found it easy to get around (love the mounts), and the graphics were of course spectacular (in my opinion, the graphics are the easiest things to get right nowadays if not always).
DA:O is a much different style of game. I've already described it, but it does have its faults, too. I've in fact put finishing the game on hold while I work on building up my characters in WoW. I was hoping that the characters and story arcs would keep the game more interesting than what WoW or an MMO had to offer, and it did at first. It may sound silly, but what's really draining the game for me are the long loading times. They're just long enough to make you think about going to do something else. They're compounded by the very difficult battles; it's very easy to wipe and thus have to reload a level. Also, they actually copied one of the annoying things about WoW--managing lots of items. It pisses me off. At least in Mass Effect and KOTOR you could carry as much as you wanted (it was flawed as well, but I preferred that system to this one). Now, you're limited to a certain number of items, and it always seems to be filling up. This means either abandoning treasure or going back for it (bleh). I'd also like a bit better AI. True, you can assign tactics to your party, but I'd love to see what the computer recommends for each tactic slot rather than doing most of them myself. Perhaps that's just laziness on my part, but it takes time studying all the possibilities. All the characters seem to suffer from low mana or stamina pools, so you only seem to get to use a few special attacks per battle anyway. Whine whine whine, bitch bitch bitch. :P
I've played both games (and also Morrowind), as well as brief stints though Daggerfall and Arena. Hell, I even played a bit of Redguard and that other game they put out (telling I can't even remember the title). However, I'd strongly recommend Fallout 3 over Oblivion. It's a better game in every way, at least in my opinion.
But, anyway, sticking to the Oblivion and games like it. The big problem for me (and the same with Morrowind) was the "level by doing" system. It amounted to me standing around clicking a button to cast a spell over and over, level, get another spell, click, click, click. It all felt very raw and numerical--mechanical, in fact. Everything had the math sticking out rather than carefully integrated into the gameplay (I prefer most if not all of the math and number crunching to take place behind the scenes, not staring at me in the face). The random item generation and all that is pretty obvious as well. To top it all off, the game doesn't scale worth a crap, so pretty soon you're superman and easily defeating enemies. On the positive side, I found it easy to get around (love the mounts), and the graphics were of course spectacular (in my opinion, the graphics are the easiest things to get right nowadays if not always).
DA:O is a much different style of game. I've already described it, but it does have its faults, too. I've in fact put finishing the game on hold while I work on building up my characters in WoW. I was hoping that the characters and story arcs would keep the game more interesting than what WoW or an MMO had to offer, and it did at first. It may sound silly, but what's really draining the game for me are the long loading times. They're just long enough to make you think about going to do something else. They're compounded by the very difficult battles; it's very easy to wipe and thus have to reload a level. Also, they actually copied one of the annoying things about WoW--managing lots of items. It pisses me off. At least in Mass Effect and KOTOR you could carry as much as you wanted (it was flawed as well, but I preferred that system to this one). Now, you're limited to a certain number of items, and it always seems to be filling up. This means either abandoning treasure or going back for it (bleh). I'd also like a bit better AI. True, you can assign tactics to your party, but I'd love to see what the computer recommends for each tactic slot rather than doing most of them myself. Perhaps that's just laziness on my part, but it takes time studying all the possibilities. All the characters seem to suffer from low mana or stamina pools, so you only seem to get to use a few special attacks per battle anyway. Whine whine whine, bitch bitch bitch. :P
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com