First off, I'd like to say that I might come across as biased toward open-ended RPGs like this. And that's because I am. Oh, and I didn't review Knights of the Nine because I refuse to stop killing people, no matter how good that armor is.

Oblivion is another installment from Bethesda studios, a company that nowadays tends to focus only on sandbox RPGs, working, it seems, solely on The Elder Scrolls series, which tend to have nothing to do with eachother except for small character crossovers and links between the games that you only find if you look carefully for and the fact that they all take place in the same world.

Oblivion takes place in two locations- Tamriel, and Oblivion.

Tamriel is your standard environment- an earthy, aesthetically pleasing landscape complete with forests, mountains, and an assortment of creatures.

First off, creatures.
The game has a very wide variety of creatures, though you usually have to do some digging to encounter certain members of the environment, such as the Will-O-The-Wisp, or vampires. One thing I found rather nice was that the game includes nonviolent creatures- generally deer, though I swear I've found rabbits before, though they tend to run off before I get a chance to take them down. Including deer gives us who enjoy roleplaying a chance to live out a couple fantasies. I found that after going through the story once, I could kill a certain man involved with one of the sidequests, and take his key, allowing me to live in a cabin outside the Imperial City, from where I was able to live out the full life of a hunter.
Going back to the actual point though, the game seems to enjoy pitting you against Skeletons, Ghosts, and Goblins of one variety or another, which takes away from the variety, and causes most of the dungeons to become somewhat repetitive.

Graphics.
Oblivion has some truly remarkable graphics, especially, in my opinion, in the mountain regions. I like being able to look around, and think, wow, This is the world I'm fighting to protect (Or, in my case, murder everyone in every city, thereby destroying the world.) However, when you are speaking with people is when it takes away from the realism of the game. The NPCs have a tendency to look somewhat like mobile Barbie dolls, or, at least their faces do. Mouth movement isn't very realistic at all, but, that's not huge for me anyways.

AI
Ok. The AI isn't great at all, nor does it particularly need to be for a game like this. However, in certain levels, my ability to jump made fights easier than they should have been, i.e. I would often find spots that I could maintain a position on top of and fire off spells and whatnot to take out my enemies much more easily. The enemies, however, don't seem to be able to jump on top of things.

Bethesda also uses something called Radiant AI, a system that supposedly lets the NPCs who you're not normally supposed to kill make more 'realistic' conversation, supposedly adding to the realism of the gae.
However, it's a load of bull.
All it really does is make NPCs stop and talk to one another, using random phrases from what they can actually say to the player, along with a couple greetings. As a result, you occasionally get conversations that go something like:
"Greetings!"
"I've seen your kind before... You've got blood on your hands. Keep your sword sheathed, you murdering b*****d, or I'll cut you down myself."

Among other things. Some of my favorites include "You killed my brother!"
and the like.

Of course, a lot of the ones I had had to do with killing, because I happen to take great pleasure in stealing the lives of everyone in town to fill my Soul Gems.
And make gold.

Environments:
The environments in the game, as stated in the Graphics section, happen to be quite nice. Mountains, forests, plains, Oblivion, and dungeons.
It's a nice range, but I can't help but want a desert in there somewhere.

Equipment:
There's more weapons in this game then you can shake a stick at. I can't say an exact number, but through ta certain degree of customization, I'd estimate the nuber of different armors and weapons to hit somewhere between 6000-10000 different pieces of metal or animal skin.

Oblivion by itself scores a 7/10 to me. Most of the lack of 3 comes from the loss of realism because of the thing I hate most in the game- the Radiant AI.


Now then, Shivering Isles.

Shivering Isles is an expansion to Oblivion that takes place in the Shivering Isles, an island owned by the Daedric Prince Sheogorath.

After installing the expansion, you find yourself beginning to hear rumors about a door that has opened up on a lake somewhere.
Being the intrepid, herculean adventure that you are, you find yourself going in to explore the Isles.

A couple quests later, and you figure things out.

This is a very backwards world with two sides- the dark side and the light side, or at least, that is what it is like after you exit the gate to the world.

It's really cool, because what world you end up in depends entirely on which gate you exit through, giving you twice as much world to explore, though, really, the landscape remains the same, just the features of the landscape that change.

Enough about that, though.
Listing the major changes here,
Graphics- Isles' graphics aren't too different from the graphics in the rest of the game, maybe a bit better, but there is a moment when you first enter the Isles in which the room around you erupts into butterflies- a very, very, nice touch. I'll give it 10 out of 10, just for that butterfly effect, because other than that, it remains relatively unchanged.

Weapons- The Shivering Isles adds a pretty nice-sized amount of possible equipment for you, including the Amber and Madness armor, which consists of your standard light or heavy armor. and the matching weapons and whatnot.

Shivering Isles is a lot of fun, because, A. it gives you quite a bit of gold if you sell most of the equipment you get, allowing you to buy damn near anything you want once you return to the standard Tamriel.
B. The inhabitants of the land are a lot of fun to interact with, because they are all insane. Literally.
C.The questline is pretty entertaining, and one of the best parts of this is inside the first or second dungeon you enter, in which, after you repair the defenses in the dungeon, a group of adventurers enters the dungeon, and you get to decide whether to drive the adventurers completely insane or simply kill them. I chose insanity.


All in all, I'd give Shivering Isles a 9/10. It's not that long, really, but there's a lot of stuff you can do in the Isles that makes it last longer, as it is with most Sandbox RPGs, and, indeed, the core game.

Between the two, I'd give the entire package a full 8.5/10.
It's a solid sandbox RPG, but the central story can get dry at certain times, and, as is a problem with most RPGs, the quests have a tendency to get repetitive, i.e., go fetch this for me, kill ________, steal _______, etc., etc.

Still, it's a very good game, and I would defenitely recommend picking it up, whether it be the Game of the Year Edition or just the standard game with the expansion.