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@vacri: Good point. I didn’t think about the lighting issue, but you are correct. This is why my character looks odd in daylight! :P

@Mart: Yeah, world leveling is something I’m dreading. As for fast travel, I try to walk/ride my horse to the cities I haven’t visited yet for the visuals. I love how you can sometimes catch glimpses of the Imperial City (or other towns) from higher mountains and etc.. On subsequent trips I fast travel.

@Alphast: Actually, you can save just before exiting the sewers. Before you venture out into the actual game world they always ask you if you want to modify your character. You can change everything (including appearance) right there and then. :)

@Steve: Steve, I heard that the Shivering Isle expansion is actually *better* than the main game both story and game-play wise. I don’t have it yet, so I can’t say if that’s true but apparently it is a welcome change of pace and setting.

I had many of the same problems with Oblivion as you…and it wasn’t as fun as Morrowind. In fact, I just got to the point where I wanted to finish the damn thing, and “created” some super armor and a super weapon, did that trick where I pull back my bow string, and click an object in my inventory, then release my arrow…it causes about a thousand of the inventory object to be replicated all over the place :) Replicated a bunch o’ those things that restore the magic power in your items (can’t remember what they are called). Then I just smashed through the rest of the game, in god mode, and finished it. Bought the expansions but never loaded them.

@Jakob: I agree there. I don’t know if there are mods for that. Or some kind of “Better Faces” mod for Oblivion…

@Alphast:
Sure, not good looking might be more realistics. But the slider manipulation is just horendous and a source of massive frustation. I want the ability to make good looking characters without having to have the algorithms and calculate how to manipulate them. The fix would be simple: Don’t make the sliders interdependent. Is there mods out there does that?

Ok. My take on this (I am, as you know, a big fan of Morrowinf and a very moderate fan of Oblivion):
* Faces: yes, it’s ugly, but with a bit of use, you manage to get some ok looking people (my current character is not stunning, but pretty ok). This said, isn’t it a bit more realistic? ;-)
* Tutorial: not that bad once you realize that it proposes you a character that fits your gaming style. The trick then is to save the game just after the death of the Emperor. So every time you create a new character, you don’t have to do the whole freaking dungeon crawl. You just change (or not) the answers to the Blade guy.
* Visuals: yes, that’s your video card. Same problem with my oldish computer. Otherwise, I have to admit that the visuals are stunning. I love the flowers, trees and herbs. If you want less computing power hungry herbs, there is a very simple mod which replaces the herbs with lower polygon counts. The effect is still very nice and the game runs a lot better on small configurations.
* User Interface: I agree with you, it is not very user friendly. This said, the Morrowind one wasn’t much better (only the resizing was ok). Again, there is a couple of mods around which improve greatly the Journal UI. Also, I appreciate hugely the sorting of quests in the Journal which is far better than in Morrowind. Making a quest active is also a plus. I dislike the Alchemy interface which is even clumsier (removing items…) than the Morrowind one.
* Minigames: I already mentioned that in previous posts. I used to hate them, but I know am at peace with the lock picking one (which I find quite realistic). The social one is silly, but bearable if you begin to learn how to use it.
* Cities: yes, that sucks big time. However, villages and hamlets are ok. Another effect of the console game compatibility. By the way, the reason you can’t fly or jump above the walls is also that there is no Levitate spell in Oblivion, a thing that I regret deeply too.
* Combat: a lot more difficult and also more realistic. You mentioned the Block skill, which is a lot better. Others mentioned the levelling which is a game killer, I think, unless your character is a basic warrior. Again, I think there is a couple of mods which improve this aspect. I haven’t tried them, but anyone knowing which one is good enough, feel free to share… ;-)
* Horses: yes, they are ok for travelling but not for fighting. Again, there is a couple of mods around that improve this greatly. Including the possibility of letting them get in cities and even houses (if you wished to).
* Fast Travel: yes, it is bad and annoying and I tend to ignore it as much as possible. I miss my Silt Striders.
* Fluff: Well, that’s a taste issue. I don’t mind Cyrodil: after all the Imperials are supposed to be very “Latin” in Bethesda’s game universe. The books are still the ones of the Morrowind, Arena and Daggerfal mythology. And once you get down to Oblivion (in game), you recognise the Daedric architecture of the Morrowind ruins and the Daedric monsters are the same. Also, there are still Slaughterfishs in Oblivion (and they are a lot more dangerous) and Mudcrabs.

My biggest gripe with Oblivion was probably the world leveling system. If I recall correctly then after you’ve levelled up 5 major skills, you can rest and level up which will also allow you to get improved attributes. Unfortunately, I had athelatics as a major skill, a skill that will only allow me to run faster which isn’t of much use, so I levelled up being only marginally stronger at combat (thinking that levelling up was always a good idea, how very wrong I was) only to find that enemies who used be easy are now really hard. After that, I got pretty sick of the game.

I could have used the difficulty slider, but that felt really lame. Same for “exploiting” the game, by not resting until I had leveled up 10 major skills (like “power gamers” do).

Forgot to add to the last point about World Leveling:

Something like Might & Magic 6 is cool. I can visit any high level areas as a lowbie, but is restricted to town or some “safe and guarded area”. When I become high and powerful, I can return to the starting area and mercilessly slaughter all the creep that was bothering me at level 1.

Some things I don’t like about Oblivion are:

Fast travel

The ability to teleport after visiting a place, no matter how remote, makes me a really lazy player. It somehow does kill the sprawling world concept. I would really love to have some form of inter-city transportation. And this also somehow makes the horse slightly useless.

Become everyone

I can be the CEO of the Fighter’s Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, the Thieves’ Guild and the Magic Guild (forgot the name) all at the same time. No matter how you align your character, what skillset your character has, you can be everyone. The quests to bring up your career in each guild is very fun to play, but completely kills the uniqueness of all your different characters.

World leveling

I would prefer to have areas of varying difficulty. A high-level area can be accessible, but make it dangerous for you to do so at level 1. At the same time, when I am of higher levels, I would prefer to visit a low-level area and feel like I am the Absolute Power. Somehow, by allowing the world to level with you, it makes the leveling, a core component of any RPG, a moot point. If I can save the world at level 1, why bother to become more powerful?

All the faces in Oblivion suck, and suck hard. Character creation is mostly an exercise in creating a face that doesn’t make you physically ill when you see it, rather than creating a particular look. It’s amazing that they did all this work and no-one thought to say “hey… our faces really suck”.

To make matters worse, you create your character’s look lit by torchlight, something that you don’t see much during the game, so what looks good there may or may not look good out in the world.

Oblivion was a lot of fun, but one of the things that killed the immersion a bit for me was when common bandits started wearing high level ‘glass’ and ‘daedric’ armor as your character became more powerful.