Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Official Game Guide, Covers all Platforms, revised and expanded

For once, Prima's Oblivion guide is actually worth buying. With full walkthroughs of almost every quest, detailed explanations of skills and skill stacking, map locations, and a bunch of miscellaneous information that can conceivably save hundreds of hours of gameplay it's obviously been extraordinarly well-researched and gives anyone who buys it a leg up. 5 stars for both the guide and the value proposition.

Prima's guides have gone dramatically downhill in recent years. Some of it isn't their fault as their testing often gets crammed by publishers rushing out gold titles that are really beta versions, but often the reviewers just seem harried to write the guide in a week so to get it out in time for the release and aren't exploring in depth the way those who buy the guides do. (Read my reviews of several of their useless MMORPG guides as to how bad they've gotten.) Almost always, online help guides are both far more comprehensive and a far better value...Read more

I don't make a habit of buying strategy guides for the games I play -- all too often, there is more than sufficient information online for free, so what's the point, right? But in this case, I have to say I am happy I made an exception. This strategy guide is so comprehensive and in-depth it makes the 'guide to tamriel' that is included with the Collector's Ed. of Oblivion look silly. The in-depth segment on character creation alone is worth half the cost of the book to people like me who found that part of the process somewhat confusing in Morrowind - the information in this guide completely takes all the guesswork out of it, and having read it I was confidently able to make my choices regarding birthsign, class, race, sex, etc. It even includes text on how to create a few 'model-characters' to play or build off of, one for every type of player out there from the pure magic approach to the pure battle approach and everything in between. The background on enemies, characters, and...Read more

Oblivion is a HUGE game. If you are like me, you want to try to do as much as possible without help. Explore the world, attempt quests and learn the ins-and-outs of the game on your own. But sometimes, you get stuck, and in a PC RPG this big, a well written Strategy Guide is a welcome relief for the times you get stuck.

This guide helps create characters, defining the attribute scores for the different races and skill types and even giving suggestions on how to make characters with your own customized skill set. It gives detailed listings on items, weapons, armor, spells, equipment and inventory throughout the game.

The first half of the book outlines all the steps needed for the main quest. Then, the second half of the book covers the Guild quests, village quests, skill quests (for your specific character type) and all the other side quests. Since the game is so new, I can't guarantee it covers ALL the quests in the game, but there are maps for all the...Read more