The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

Good game, but does not run on steamdeck well. just looking out for other steamdeck users because it advertised as "verified" and it shouldn't be.

This is going to be a mixed review. The marketing strategy was insane. They shadowdropped this game out of nowhere during the announcement trailer, which is pretty unheard of and I can actually respect that because most anticipated games let the hype overtake the game and the game ends up not living up to expectations. Boy did this game live up to those expectations. You know how when you remember an old game in your childhood and how real it looked at the time but when you went to play them recently you realized just how dated the graphics were? This game is like everything I remembered about how I thought it looked at the time. But that's just it; it's the same exact game with those rose tinted glasses. And therein lies the problem. It will probably be an absolute blast to play as a newcomer, but as an Elder Scrolls veteran, I realized that a fresh coat of paint did not add anything new. I'll admit, I've been spoiled by the critically acclaimed RPGS of the modern era. And I cannot deny that Oblivion was revolutionary for its time, because I experienced that firsthand. It feels oddly dead, though. It feels like all of the stories have been told and the world itself has become a husk of the monumental achievement in game design that it once was. Sure, the developers have attempted to remedy this by bringing some of the mechanics in line with modern gaming (like sprinting, for example), but it doesn't feel enough. It still feels like there is something missing. I don't know. I refunded the game hours after playing, which is surprising to me as I put hundreds and hundreds of hours into the original. Maybe I'll wait a year and see what the modding community has come up with, but until then, this game will not be in my library. But if this is your first time ever experiencing the world, you'll enjoy the game as much as I did when I was younger.

Despite being a certified Morrowboomer, I somehow missed Oblivion growing up. What a treat to finally return and wander the storied lands of Cyrodiil. [i]Oblivion[/i] stands tall among its Elder Scrolls siblings — uniquely weird, charmingly busted, and impossible not to love. It may be the middle child, but it’s the feral one with all the personality. I enjoyed gripping questlines that put Skyrim to shame [i](special shoutout to the Dark Brotherhood)[/i], Radiant AI that’s both immersive and unintentionally hilarious, and a grand total of like three voice actors who somehow carry the entire population on their backs. I’m home. [b]<3[/b] [i]I saw a mudcrab the other day. Horrible creatures.[/i] [b]BYE.[/b]

Aah, and i fell for this game-breaking, softlock-ridden, piss filtered artisticly soulles cashgrab, cause nostalgia's plucked my heart strings just the right time. Now, that's a me problem. However. Charging 50 for not having to produce/write/design anything new, piggybacking on a legendary title and still fucking it up is a red flag in itself. Too bad I ignored it. Don't get me wrong, I had my fair share of fun (as long as my not even bad rig allowed me to enjoy the poor stuttery unoptimized performance that is). But the thing is, i'm having a blast with the original just as fine, without having to set up a complete power plant in my backyard just to run this shit. (Srsly, studios should have rethink this UE5 turd 'bastardisation'. No style, no vision, no creativity behind it. Just 'efficiency' am I right? But just because you can consume it fast, doesn't mean it's not a slop still...) Anyway, in the first couple of hours, i was too convinced, that this is the right thing to handle a remaster like this, but as I poured the hours in, the game started to fall apart gradually. Crashes, endless loading screens, softlocked out of crucial questlines, bad audio mixing, and don't even get me started on 'improvements' that are basicall downgrades. (Like I don't know who thought that accessing the local map this way in the game was an "improvement". I'd rather switch by tab as in the original, but thanks, I guess.) All in all, if you can, go play the OG goty edition instead. You get the same (or i shall say, more charm, less bugs for a fraction of this price. Or, wait for Skyblivion and play it for free. Don't support slop just because it's new and shiny. I already did and regretted.

[b] "PICKPOCKET, PICKPOCKET. GUARD YOUR PURSES!" [/b] [i] This game literally has the best and most over dramatic dialogue lines [/i]

I can't recommend this game right now as currently there are serious game performance issues for what seems to be a large number of consumers. I have had my share of performance issues too game crashes hourly and or multiple times per hour, suffice to say I have many crashes........ When they patch the game up and it performs better I will be willing to change my review.

Game has been out for two months and has received only one update that doesn't even fix major bugs and performance issues. There is NO excuse for a game with the backing of a AAA company like Bethesda to not have more, and faster fixes. Compare that to Avowed, a game from the same publisher that put out hotfix after hotfix immediately after release and is working on major updates based on community feedback. I don't know what's going on at Bethesda, but keeping the game in this state is just straight up baffling. I couldn't help myself and got the game because Oblivion was my first ever Elder Scrolls game and western RPG, but this feels like an insult to the Elder Scrolls fanbase. I wouldn't go as far as to call it a cash grab, but something needs to be done to fix the game's many, many issues, and no, mods shouldn't be the answer. Games you buy should be functional and fully playable without the need for external tinkering.

Do not buy any Bethesda Game Studios products ever again in your life. The fact that the last update has done nothing to address bricked save games, in addition to the piss-poor state the performance of this game launched in, is disgustingly pathetic. It has become increasingly obvious over the past DECADE that this company no longer cares about its fans, only their money. This is a blatant nostalgia death-cry from yet another dying game studio that has only managed to fail upwards thanks to daddy Microsoft, Xbox, and their ESG/DEI government funding. This is no longer the studio that brought us Fallout 3 and Oblivion. Bethesda's bugs, jank, and lack of overall polish could be excusable if their games were still good, and they haven't been for 10 years. We have been forced to QA test another full price product on the market for a AAA game development studio owned by a trillion (yes fucking TRILLION) dollar corporation. It doesn't make a difference whether this game even existing and managing to run is a technical marvel for UE5, the state this game is in shows how much this company cares about their playerbase. You are nothing more than a glorified beta tester, forced to pay them to report these basic issues that should've been caught BY THEM before release. Only then, and only after waiting for months with Bethesda's update schedule, do you get to actually PLAY THE GAME you purchased. Idgaf if I lost 3 hours of progress or 30. This is absolutely fucking ridiculous and pathetic. You are owned by a company with more money than God, Bethesda. Do better for the first time in 10 years ffs. Unfortunately its already too late, Microsoft is a parasite, a tumorous cancer that feeds off talented game studios and replaces that talent with diversity hires, forced politics, and any game from any studio owned by this corporate entity will be terrible. Pathetic game launch from a pathetic game studio owned by a pathetic corporate overlord.

The optimisation in this game is absolutely horrendous. Do not touch this mess until there is a major optimisation overhaul. Constant crashes, constant dips in frame-rate and glitches galore.

Just another glorious UE5 disaster. Waited a month and a half for a patch, thinking maybe just f*ing maybe they’d fix the bugs and memory leaks that make the game run like a flaming dumpster fire. Nope. They dropped the update and somehow it's still unplayable. No performance improvements, nothing since June 4th. I’m writing this on June 28th, by the way. Bravo. Classic Bugthesda slop cooked in the finest UE5 grease. Unless you're running a quantum computer cooled with unicorn tears, don’t even look at this game. Devs are either asleep or just couldn’t care less. Worst optimization I've seen since Cities: Skylines 2, and that’s saying something.

I would give this game a TWO thumbs up if the developers would haven't been lazy and had used a more efficient video processing engine. The frame rate and stuttering make it all but unplayable. It astounds me that a 7 year old game like Red Dead Redemption 2 can still run circles around this monstrosity. I certainly hope they do something about this soon. What a shame!

Not now, needs patches. UE is the worst. They should've just remastered it in Creation Engine 2 or something.

Once upon a time. In a galaxy far, far away. There was a game remastered called The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And in the beginning, everything worked and the game played well. Then the evil empire (Bethesda) patched it. Now, it does not work. It's broken. Suggested fixes don't fix the broken game. Sick of seeing UE5 has crashed again. Save your monies. Save what fond memories you have. Save your HD/SSD space. Do not buy. The end.

Not recommending this game at this state. Horribly unoptimized, and poor performance. Also a ton of FPS drops, stutters, freezes and crashes.

You'd think after 2+ months they'd have fixed the crashing. Game crashes every 15 minutes at this point. I can't attack an enemy without worrying that my game will crash. I'm saving every minute. Edit 6/30/25 - Locked out of the rest of the Thieve's Guild quests due to a game-breaking bug.

It has been over a month and the game is still borderline unplayable for alot of users due to the horrendous optimization. I gave them grace and time to fix it but I'm starting to think we'll never get a patch to resolve this. which is unsuprising from bethesda, they have reached a new bar of bad here

The game is great, but it takes me 20 - 30 minutes JUST TO PLAY. I get constant loading screen freezes. I get so frustrated just trying to play this game

I love Oblivion, it's my favorite Elder Scrolls game, but this version is literally unplayable on Unreal Engine. I have a pretty solid gaming laptop, and yet the engine crashes about every 4 minutes. I have tried so many things to fix the issue, from installing mods to deleting files in the game folder to changing graphics settings, but at this point, I've spent just about as much time troubleshooting the game as I have playing the game.

Experience a bug that only could be solve by console commands and mods. Lost 25 hours of progress as the only way to fix this bug was load a save 25 hours ago before doing a long chain of other quests. Fuck you guys for not fixing these bugs that have persists for 10+years in this game. Thanks for this awful gaming experience.

My game crashes constantly, regular drops in FPS, the game is very poorly optimized which makes it unplayable at times, I have to restart it every 10 minutes.

Loved morrowind and oblivion growing up, childhood defining games for me. but this 20 year old remaster needs just that, a remaster. It's insanely buggy, laggy, game breaking bugs, etc. Don't know how they came out with this remaster in this state, it's almost as if they didn't fix anything from the original and updated textures, and NOW are just focusing on fixing bugs. Give it a couple years or possibly a decade to play.

Good news! They kept the original base game intact and provide a mostly graphical overhaul, bugs and all! Bad news! They kept the original base game intact and provide a mostly graphical overhaul, bugs and all!

Constant crashes on 9800X3D/9070XT. Wouldn't recommend to anyone until the game is more stable.

Game performance in the sewers is pretty good but upon leaving the game begins to run like absolute shit and looks horrendous. Even with mods that improve performance it still runs bad. Either the game isn't properly optimized or Unreal Engine is just a dogshit game engine

This is a joke. One of my favourite games of all time has been rendered unplayable thanks to being constantly booted from the game. I've just had a session where i was booted around 10 times in the last hour. I'm over it. FIX THE GOD DAMN GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM SERIOUS .... FREAKING FIX IT FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Constant crashes every 5 minutes. Literally unplayable. Tried a bunch of fixes and nothing worked. I have a 4070Ti, latest drivers, verified files, fresh install, did every windows update, etc, but still crashes every couple of minutes.

It want to say this was a well executed remaster if you ignore the fact the game shudders constantly ruining the experience. Bethesda you dropped the ball when it comes to optimization. The game wont run at medium settings with a GTX 3080. Fix your game then we'll talk about flipping this to a positive review.

Refunded due to the save game issues. I probably will buy it again if they fix it because it's a great game, but now it's unplayable unfortunately

Of course I had to purchase Oblivion Remastered! But damn it to hell, I can't recommend someone spending their hard earned money on this game right now. I could not recommend a game to people that constantly crashes about every 5 to 20 minutes. It is ABSURD. I really hope they can fix this. Then and only then I would recommend this game.

I love this game but right now its unplayable :( Shivering Isles has 100% crash rate at the end lol

Do not buy this game. I have spent ~70 hours on my play though for my save file to corrupt on me. I have lost all of it and need to start a new game, which I wont be doing. They got my money this time, but not next time. Not until I know the game is safe.

With performance issues out the wazoo, and fixing only a couple of the originals flaws. The 50 dollar asking price feels unreasonable.

DO NOT PURCHASE UNTIL THERE IS A PATCH. This remaster has been out for over a month. Not only has there been no patch, but there has been no hint as to when a patch may be arriving. "Oblivion" is a great game, but this remaster release needs a lot of work. I'm not recommending it until some bugs get fixed.

I'd love to get more into the game, but I can't until it's patched. It's been almost 2 months and nothing. As soon as you leave the starting area and are let loose on the open world, the game becomes stutter city.Wait until on sale and in a couple years at this rate when this is more patched up.

Game is extremely poor regarding performance, stuttery, and very difficult to actually enjoy. Plus the new update broke the game.

Really awful stuttering in the open world, no matter what settings you use. Unreal 5 once again proves to be a performance mess. It looks pretty nice though, even though every time you access a menu, run more than a few meters, or have an enemy appear, there's stutter. For context: I run a 5080 with an i7-12700k. I get >60 fps in most enclosed areas, >50 in the open world with mostly maxed settings. Turning down the usual suspects (shadows, lighting, reflections) does not really make a difference in stutter or framerate for me. Using a modded engine.ini helped a little bit, but the performance is still pretty bad. It is extremely true to the original in terms of gameplay, almost too true, with very minor QOL additions. Sprinting is really nice to have, for example. There are a lot of issues though with pacing, cell structure, and just outdated gameplay, to be honest. The biggest sin for me is not taking advantage of fewer hardware limitations and combining cells. You need to go through multiple loading screens to just visit your entire house, for example. This gets especially tedious with some dungeons, escort quests, and similar gameplay. The gameplay being outdated... yeah, its just that. The cities are pretty dead, the quests involve lots of waiting (both for time of day and jank NPC AI to make its way to the right spot), lots of jank, and are fairly basic from a modern perspective. I think a remake would have been better than remastering with unreal 5. I think this is a really overpriced texture/map swap with raytracing added. Once again, I am disappointed with UE5 performance

Do not buy this game in its current state. It is a buggy mess and the developers are not fixing the major issues with the game. The latest patch "fixed" some absolutely minor bugs but it introduced even more. I can't even use the spellmaking or enchanting altars without the game crashing and I can no longer use my alchemy skill because the game crashes every time I do. I did not have these problems before the patch, and I even opted out of the beta update when I discovered these bugs. Unfortunately, they the patch is now part of the main version of the game and I can't roll it back. I have a top PC, so my hardware is not the issue (though this shouldn't be happening regardless of my specs). It is unfortunate because I was enjoying the game until this happened, even though there are honestly just so many bugs. The writing was on the wall from day one. Visual bugs, constant crashes, frame drops, random ui elements not working or displaying properly. The list goes on. These are not things that "add charm" like some people claim. They are annoying and disruptive to an enjoyable experience. My 80+ hour playthrough has pretty much become unplayable because of the latest patch and I will not change this review until the myriad of bugs in this game are fixed. I mean ACTUALLY FIXED. Not "fixed".

Don't waste your money on this game unless you have a strong pc with a powerful graphics card. The second I got out of the dungeon to fps tanked and the game crashed. It took me over two hours to discover the game was unplayable on my pc so steam is refusing to refund. I wish I could give a more detailed review but I simply can't get the game to work whatsoever. Total waste of money.

When they fix the constant crashing issue ill change my rating. Would love to just play more of it. But having to restart the game every 30 minutes and constantly being worried that i have to quick save the game every time i walk into a new area. Don't buy until fixed

This game crashes like nothing else I've ever played. I'm a really patient player, and I'm willing to save frequently, adjust my settings, and roll with the punches, but honestly. I'm almost 90 hours into this, and the crashes are becoming so frequent that the game is almost completely unplayable. It crashes virtually every time I go through a transition door, especially from an interior cell to an exterior one, but it can be any transition. It occasionally crashes randomly, during battle, or during nothing at all. It crashes during alchemy. I spend more time restarting than I do playing. I almost wish that I could just transfer my game information into the old GOTY version and turn this playthrough into old school Oblivion, I'd be having more fun with it. It's beautiful, obviously, and some of the improvements are great, but this crashes more than any game I've ever played and I've been playing Bethesda games since Morrowind first clipped me through the floor in 2003. Please fix it.

As a remastered version of an iconic game, it's enjoyable. They've stayed faithful enough to the original that my sense of nostalgia was never disrupted. Unfortunately, this faithfulness also applies to the bugs, glitches, and constant crashes. The fact that they haven't done anything about optimization (and haven't made any announcements about it even after weeks) is exactly what you'd expect from Bethesda.

My review doesn’t refer to the game itself, but what the developers have done to it using Unreal Engine 5 should be illegal. This is, hands down, the worst optimized game I’ve ever played. We’re not talking about minor things, I mean constant crashes, massive lags, stuttering, bugs... it’s a complete mess. It kills any sense of immersion or fun. In its current state, I can’t recommend this game to anyone. And judging by other reviews, it looks like no real effort has been made to fix anything. No updates, no improvements, just a rushed port that feels like a blatant cash grab. I’ve already requested a refund, I’m genuinely disappointed.

Update: I managed to solve my CTD issue by installing old Nvidia drivers 576.28 and resetting shaders cache. Will not update my review before latest drivers work properly. -- Oblivion Remastered is unplayable. It just keeps crashing to desktop constantly. My playtime reflects purely my efforts in trying to get it running properly (closer to 15 hours). Tried all engine tweaks I could find online and will probably keep trying for some time just because I'm stubborn. (Fyi, My hardware is good.) Taking a risk and paying full price for a 20 year old game that is technically worse is definitely not worth it. Stay away! If you end up paying for this for some weird reason: My advice to you is that refund the game instantly upon first crash. It may seem to get slightly better at times but ultimately crashing is random and soon you could crash 1-10 times per hour as you continue playing.

This would be a solid game if it didn't have heaps of performance issues. Honestly I just wish game devs would stop using unreal engine 5.

Bad performance. Sloppy attention to detail. Buggy and underdeveloped UI. All creativity and personality stripped out of the character and environment assets. I wish I didnt impulse-buy this on the shadow drop date. Play the original.

Wait until they fix this game up more. I got it running good for 3-5 hours at a time on the initial release build after much tinkering with in-game settings and other driver tweaks. New update crashes every which way like never before.

It is not TOO bad. It is just hard to play without it crashing a lot.

Let me put the TL;DR up front - if you played the original Oblivion you know what to expect, but it looks (and genuinely feels) much better. If you haven't played TESIV before this is a great way to experience it, [i]if[/i] your hardware is up to the task. This is actually a [i]remaster[/i] of Oblivion the game; not purely a graphics overhaul; it honestly feels and plays much better than the original (that may not mean much given it's been over 15 years since I last played Oblivion). I've got to give it to Virtuos and Bethesda (and Xbox) for creating the opportunity to relive a childhood favourite in a new light. That said, I would agree with the sentiment that using UE5 in combination with the original engine is not good for performance, you could easily argue it's actually bad for most user experiences, [i]but[/i], this is something you would know if you looked at the recommended specs before purchasing. To everyone complaining that it runs poorly, start by looking at what Steam [i]recommends[/i] you have in your system. The RX 6800 XT is a recommended GPU, it's what I use, and I get a [i]just[/i] playable framerate at 1440p with FSR3 and mostly "High" (some "Ultra") settings. Unless you're running at minimum a mid-tier system from no more than 2 hardware generations ago or have [strike]dropped[/strike] tuned graphics settings well you're not going to have a great time. I've also [i]not[/i] experienced the extensive crashes that others have had issues with. I've put around 50 hours in thus far, and have had it crash 3 times, 3. The first was before I updated to Adrenaline 25.5.1, the second and third after the first game patch when I hadn't realised Adrenaline 25.6.1 was out; keeping up with drivers has brought me stable gameplay through and through. Play the game, keep up with drivers, and enjoy the fact that there was a team out there that cared enough to breathe new life into a game nearly two decades old. I have enjoyed playing the Oblivion remaster more than most big studio titles released in the last 4 years.

In short, it's the Oblivion you remember with some minor gameplay updates and a complete graphic overhaul. At the time of writing, it's currently one of the best looking games out there, but it is terribly unstable and prone to stuttering and crashes. I assume it was released with the assumption the modders will do the rest of the work, even though Bethesda doesn't offer any official mod support. What a joke of a company. It's like they're competing with Ubisoft to be the worst game publisher in the AAA market.