I love this game a lot, had a lot of good times with it on the 360. I beat it once more on my pc in like 2015 or something. On this most recent playthrough I just had to stop because of constant crashes, don't know if it was mods or what. I'm gonna try to compare some stuff to Skyrim now.
The beginning is somewhat aimless i guess. It tells you a place to go, but it's on the complete other side of the map, and its not even a city. Skyrim kind of just leads you into riverwood into whiterun, where you can accumulate quit a few quests. Oblivion you just go to weynon priarie and there are no quests in that line to get. I feel like it probably should have made you go to the imperial city first, but even then i don't think a lot of oblivion quests present themselves to you like skyrim's do. It being very open is neat, no pressure to do much, but i just kept thinking "man, what am i gonna do next/first."
I think a lot of Oblivion's mess ups comes from its leveling system. I do kind of like level the skills, getting 10 is a level, yeah its neat, but that can lead to really fast levels. I was about 35 hours in and already level 30 (not max, but basically end game since stuff stops scaling at that point), and that feels way too fast since i had only done theive's/fighter's guild with some other stuff. I had a mod that gave me the +5 bonus to an attribute so i didn't have to deal with managing my bonuses correctly, which just seems like a really not fun way to become underleveled compared to enemies. Hell, all my stats at 100, enemies still felt like damage sponges at level 30 on medium difficulty, i often just set the difficulty down because it was way too much. I think Skryim handles the leveling curve way better because you are always getting stronger slowly, and don't just cap off way too early.
I did enjoy the hand to hand a lot more mechanically than skyrim's. I had mods for both to make them usable (oblivion) or busted (skyrim). I actually felt like i was a hand-to-hand user in oblivion, circle strafing enemies, punching a lot, using power moves, it honestly felt really cool. Skyrim has less depth than oblivion in this since, but I think it makes up for it with the Kill Cams; any game with a suplex on command is godly.
The beginning is somewhat aimless i guess. It tells you a place to go, but it's on the complete other side of the map, and its not even a city. Skyrim kind of just leads you into riverwood into whiterun, where you can accumulate quit a few quests. Oblivion you just go to weynon priarie and there are no quests in that line to get. I feel like it probably should have made you go to the imperial city first, but even then i don't think a lot of oblivion quests present themselves to you like skyrim's do. It being very open is neat, no pressure to do much, but i just kept thinking "man, what am i gonna do next/first."
I think a lot of Oblivion's mess ups comes from its leveling system. I do kind of like level the skills, getting 10 is a level, yeah its neat, but that can lead to really fast levels. I was about 35 hours in and already level 30 (not max, but basically end game since stuff stops scaling at that point), and that feels way too fast since i had only done theive's/fighter's guild with some other stuff. I had a mod that gave me the +5 bonus to an attribute so i didn't have to deal with managing my bonuses correctly, which just seems like a really not fun way to become underleveled compared to enemies. Hell, all my stats at 100, enemies still felt like damage sponges at level 30 on medium difficulty, i often just set the difficulty down because it was way too much. I think Skryim handles the leveling curve way better because you are always getting stronger slowly, and don't just cap off way too early.
I did enjoy the hand to hand a lot more mechanically than skyrim's. I had mods for both to make them usable (oblivion) or busted (skyrim). I actually felt like i was a hand-to-hand user in oblivion, circle strafing enemies, punching a lot, using power moves, it honestly felt really cool. Skyrim has less depth than oblivion in this since, but I think it makes up for it with the Kill Cams; any game with a suplex on command is godly.