Got this for half-price for Xbox. I told myself I wouldn't play it until January, but I couldn't resist. Initial thoughts were that the graphics are beautiful and genuinely immerse the player. Same goes for the sounds. The voice acting has improved upon Oblivion (no more Sean Bean sounding like he's reading the script while sitting on the bog). That's where the positives end for me.
The big negative is that magic creation has been wiped out completely, so you can only cast specific, pre-determined types of spells that you acquire. The net effect of that is that the more complicated multiple effect spells no longer exist (these were critical to mage play in Oblivion). Thus, to have multiple effects (such as the complementary 'detect life' and 'night eye'), you have to cast them individually through a favourites list that pops up.
However, assuming that you have your left hand equipped with a 'fireball' and the right with a 'heal' or 'ward' spell, casting background effects like the 'detect life' and 'night eye' requires you to:
- pause the game
- 'equip' either your left or right hand with the first background spell
- unpause the game
- cast the first spell
- pause the game
- then re-equip the hand with another background spell
- unpause the game
- cast it
- pause the game
- then re-equip your original spell
...and so on.
It's fucking tiresome - especially given that the early spells are fixed at a 60 second duration. There's a botched quickspell option that uses the left and right D-pad, but you can only assign 2 favourites???? C'mon!
I don't get it. The magic system forces you to choose from many different individual spells, cast them individually, then adds injury to insult by giving an under-powered quickspell system with two measly slots to manage them. Not impressed. Seriously, what would it have taken to do what they do in every other FPS or RPS, by having a 4 or 8 slot quickspell system that appears when you hold down the LB or RB? The mage role is hampered by this.
The map is horrendous. Can't see shit. Can't zoom out to a useful level. Can't see roads or plan a probable route. However, I can tilt the map at an angle which is... uh, pointless and disorienting. Total style over substance.
The skill trees are awkward to navigate (constantly skipping over the skill I want to view) and it's difficult to tell at a glance where one should invest a point as you can never see the whole tree in any one screen. Total style over substance.
The inventory is botched. You can't sort your inventory by weight, value or any other feature. This makes managing your inventory a pain in the arse when dungeon diving as you should, at a glance, be able to identify the heaviest item and do a quick calculation of it's weight/value ratio to determine if it's worth carrying.
The general user interface needs a bit of a re-think as your journal should really be in the same menu system as your maps and inventory... but it isn't. It's in the same menu as your save games??? Pressing Start should deal with settings and system management, while defaulting to your save games... but it doesn't. Very poor.
Oh, and the load screen times between areas are unacceptably long. Walking through the Mage's College is like a test of patience.
The frequent crashes are irritating as hell. I think I've done two missions at the Mage's College and I've already had four system restarts (not including a weird 30 second freeze). I delayed buying because I usually wait for the patches to be released and sort out all the frustrations, but, alas, I think the problems with the game go far beyond glitches. Seriously tempted to invest in a decent PC and play these games via Steam. At least the mod community
will do something about the god-awful UI design.