Let me get this straight, this is not a review of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion itself.
That game earned its praise almost twenty years ago. Its quests, atmosphere, music, and sense of freedom were already there back then, and they’re still there now.

This review is about Remaster only.

I played the original Oblivion a long time ago, on a weak PC. It struggled. There were stutters, moments where the game clearly pushed hardware harder than it probably should have. Now I’m playing the remaster on a much more powerful PC. And somehow, the experience feels strangely familiar.

A good remaster is supposed to be an improvement, right? But improvement isn’t supposed to feel like this.

The idea was simple: the same game, running good, looking better, fitting naturally into modern systems. But Oblivion Remastered demands an absurdly strong machine for what it actually delivers, and even then it often fails to run smoothly. You can’t help but ask yourself: is it really worth these requirements just to replay a 20-year-old game?

Every time I ran into something genuinely good - a quest, a piece of atmosphere, a moment of charm - I immediately realized why it worked. Because it was designed back then, 20 years ago. Because it was never the remaster’s achievement.

The remaster contributes very little beyond visuals. And to be fair, the visual upgrade is real. The game looks presentable. It’s easier on the eyes, and for new players, that absolutely matters. But here’s the problem: graphics were never Oblivion’s strongest side to begin with. Its magic came from its world, its quests, its music, its awkward but memorable NPCs - not from visual fidelity. Improving graphics alone was never going to create a shocking transformation, no matter how modern the rendering is.

Visuals alone don’t justify a remaster when they come at the cost of performance so severe that it constantly pulls you out of the experience. Instead of disappearing into the background, the remaster keeps reminding you that it’s there. Not by improving things, but by constantly struggling to work.

Ironically, I’d recommend Oblivion Remastered mostly to people who never played the original. They’ll get a classic RPG with improved visuals. Veterans, on the other hand, won’t find anything truly new here. Just nostalgia weighed down by technical problems.

Oblivion itself is still a great game.

But all the praise it deserves was earned long before this version existed.

one of the most poorly optimized games I've played. bethesda needs to start hiring people from the modding community because they do an infinitely better job than them

This game is really fun when it works. However they refused to push any QOL updates and this game is HORRIFICALLY optimized. (Note: I did install a mod which heavily stablizes the game, but it's insane you have to do that). The lack of updates/QOL makes this a downvote.