Though I came to love Oblivion, even vanilla, it was jarring to say the least to see low-level bandits and brigands wearing green glass armor attacking me with high level weapons. When I played it with some of the big mods it was quite acceptable, save for the constant crashing because it wasn't designed to run with more than 3-4 GB ram. There were a few mods I regretted playing though, like that nutter Giskard's, though he taught me an important lesson about the prevalence of massive mental instability in the modding community.

Well, I managed to get the Umbra sword by accident at level 3 or so … discovered Ayleid ruins, bumped into a boss enemy, kited her through all those poisonous fumes down there until she dropped dead … and she dropped Umbra. Leveling was rather easy then.

But I loved Oblivion so much (and no, it was not my first ES game, it was No. 6)… still have these fits of nostalgia whenever I'm in Cyrodiil or at the Gold Coast in ESO.
Especially when I ran into several Truiands and a Pania Hayn in Kvatch.

I probably should try this out.

Just a counter to this thread that I agree with.

Link -https://www.pcgamer.com/the-elder-sc…e-12-years-on/If it wasn't for mods I wouldn't even replay Oblivion.

Still have nightmares over the female faces.:faint:

That PCGamer dude took 12 years to realize that Oblivion colors were muted and faces looked horrible? OMG!

It took me one hour back in 2006… I don't think I truly played Oblivion without a face mod.

For good measure, because I'm mocking someone in the previous post (and check if my rose-colored glasses works properly or not), I can say that re-installed Morrowind and Oblivion this weekend (but I didn't launch Oblivion until last night). I wanted the patched vanilla experience because I didn't want to spend more time downloading/installing mods than I will be playing and I haven't really seen the vanilla experience since those games released…but I had to install a few mods outside of the patch ones. I didn't even want texture mods but Morrowind blurry face/body textures and Oblivion faces and LOD are just too awful to look at.

For Morrowind, I also had to install a bunch of mods that added Oblivion features (magicka regen, running don't drain fatigue, faster base speed) and that was before starting Oblivion up. The few hours I spend in vanilla Morrowind gives me the impression that I'm leveling skills for quality-of-life improvements and not really getting more powerful.

Oblivion feels a lot smoother than Morrowind do control wise. I haven't installed a single gameplay changes outside changing the UI (console UI on PC always annoyed me) and I will probably install the level scaling mod porcozaur linked because I remember that being awful. It also doesn't look that bad outside of the face, LOD and lighting.

On top of that, Morrowind overland feels a lot more empty than Oblivion does.

Anyhow, I kinda feel like playing Oblivion over Morrowind now.

I've just given up on another attempt at modded Oblivion. I followed the Bevilex recommended list and got many hours in before it started crashing. While that list results in a great looking game I would be curious to know if any of the guys that make these lists have actually completed a game with their list installed. If I do try again I will just install the critical mods, character overhaul, Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul, Oblivion Scaling Unclusterf*cked and Oblivion Reloaded. The rest I can do without. I play mainly old games anyway so I have no need for amazing res. textures and snazzy book covers.