There has been a lot of Oblivion bashing, There was Morrowind bashing but to a much lesser extent.
I agree that Oblivion had its flaws, but there at least had to be one thing you liked about it. It could be anything from a new monster to an appearence make over, an upgraded/new system, a new mod, etc. etc.

I'm comparing Oblivion to Morrowind(because I never played any of the other games)
For me... Havok engine(bad as it was it was than Morrowinds Morrowinds lack of)
-LOD, That is seeing distant land, trees and cities
-Facegen (it was hard to use, but few games have a system like it)
-The menu and Journal were a bit more Organized.
-Spider Daedra were cool
-Controled blocking was nice
-Combat system was nice
-Stealth was REALLY good
-Sigil Stones were cool
-Oblivion gates were cool
-I like the new looks of the Atronachs
-Level perks were cool
-CHEESE! For everyone!
-I liked the new look of Ebony arnour and weapons
-Providing Amber and Madness ore to the smiths in new Sheoth.
-Being able to enter a Deadric Realm(two or is it four?)
-Easier to find the deadric shrines
-The modding community
-Larger landmass
-The shivering Ilses themselves had a very interesting look.
-The new creatures introduced in the Shivering Ilses(I hope some of them appear in a new TES)
-Traps were more like traps.
-I know people don't like them but, the lockpicking and Speachcraft minigames(I was really good at them)
-Patrick Stewart(Thanks to Hamsmagoo for reminding me)
-Sean Bean
-Poisons
-Arena
-Radiant AI and all its systems(It could be better, but at least its their)
-Bows, the aesthetics of the arrows sticking into things and being less Character Skill based
-Waiting an Hour healed fully
-Buyable and Upgradable houses
-Horses and horse armour


Theres more, but I can't think of any at the moment

To be honest, the lore and the story. I think that's the only thing i can think of.

-All stealth related things (sneaking, stealing, bows, etc.) apart from lockpicking and speechcraft.
-Graphics
-Better modability
-Physics (though poorly implemented, it was a good idea)
-AI (again, poorly implemented)

Voice acting would be there if it didn't cause so much to be cut.

All in all, Oblivion's bad points outweigh it's good points, imo.

Oh, and this is from one of the biggest "Oblivion bashers" here.

P.S. There is Morrowind bashing. We just live with it. <_<

I've seen you refute those Morrowind bashers.

This may suprise you, but I used to be a Huge Oblivion basher myself. Having preffered Morrowind for many of things that you and all the other Morrowind preferers liked Morrowind for.

I liked the controlled Blocking and the new combat system overall, the one in Morrowind felt weird because I was basically at the mercy of RNG.

Most important:

simple, consistant controls (compared to previous titles, anyway)

I'm not afraid to say it: I absolutely loved Oblivion. It wasnt a perfect game, but there was a reason I spent hundreds of hours playing it. I loved the lore, the quests and the combat.

- Graphics
- Distant LOD
- Combat system - at least it was better than the one from Morrowind
- Possibility of casting spells with unsheathed weapon
- Magic Penalty Effectiveness (although it was poorly balanced at high Armour skill levels)
- Better AI than in Morrowind - but it needs a looooooooot of work if it's going to impress us in TESV
- Much better stealth system, although it was poorly balanced at high levels (too easy and there was this old Chameleon exploit...)
- Arrows bounced of metal surface and penetrated wood
- powerful difficulty slider (although I would like separate ones for damage taken and damage inflicted)
- Akatosh avatar
- side quests were usually better than Morrowind's
- the whole Shivering Isles expansion

IMO, Oblivion is one of the best games of all-time, so my list would be pretty lengthy. In terms of my favorite aspect of the game...summing it up in one word: Freedom

Archery. It's a great feeling when you have just backed up from a room and see an arrow plunge into the door right in front of you.

Ragdoll. It's even better when you slam someone dead with a two-handed hammer, he falls down some stone steps and ends up in a barrel, his feet up.

Stealth. Way better than before (nonexistent) but still nothing compared to Thief and Splinter Cell.

Landscape and graphics.

After some mods: walking in a pitch dark cave full of deadly traps. Seeing a silhouette of a spiked ball flinging from above, barely missing you. (Darker dungeons and Deadlier traps)

That is all.

I adored Oblivion, probably more than Morrowind (maybe because the gameplay in Morrowind wasn't my thing, to say the least) so picking on thing is hard. In lieu of a blanket gameplay definition, I'd say I like the combat and stealth a ton.

Manual blocking, spellcasting at any time, toggled stealth mode, poison.

Poisons. Poisons. Poisons.

Oh, did I mention poisons?

This.

I liked the fact that poisons where included, but I don't feel they where implemented well. I mean, I could get a one time hit with poison on a weapon. Not very good. What I would have loved to see, is the ability to poison foods, and leave them somewhere for an NPC to eat. A cheap, effective way of silently killing someone, and I don't need to get those hard to find apples, or buy a ridiculous DLC to do so.

I also wish they would have let me poison more than one arrow at a time, or poison my weapon to have 10 or so hits, each one lessening in power.

The Daedra shrines

Poisons were good and it showed that Beth CAN learn from its own mistakes. In Morrowind all those "damage fatigue" potions in shops didn't make any sense. They turned them to poisons and it was a great feature, although I agree that we should be able to poison several arrows at once and poison food, too.

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

-The side quests were all interesting. They varied from "get my giant potatoes back from the tall man" to "kill this man he is a vampire, wait, no, the guy who told you to kill the man is a vampire.

-The animations for weapon swinging

-Arrows getting stuck in doors

-Retrievable arrows

-Player controlled blocking

-Main quest was exciting

-Guilds had storylines and took a while to complete

-Barter system removed. Much less confusing at times.

-Graphics

-distant lands

-mod capability

-spell casting while weapons are out

-poisons

-music

-lack of cliffracers

-Ultimate Heist

-oblivion gates

-the shivering isles

-so many ruins and caves, each one unique and maze like

-full voice acting

-Patrick Stewart

-Terence Stamp

-arrows stuck in victem

-environment was prettier

-environment was friendlier

-made me think of it outside of the game because earth is so alike that it would remind me "hey this is sorta like Oblivion"

-Many people had funny personalitys

-adoring fan.

-character customization

-poison apples

-stealth was awesome

-good traps

-introduction to game

-akatosh avatar

-better difficulty slider

-sky

-trees with leaves

-Daedric Armor looks awesome

-Ebony armor looks awesome

-shivering isles

-Amber and Madness ore quests

-the sky again

-becoming sheogorath

-joining dark brotherhood

-becoming grey fox

-Mankar Camoran's Paradise

The physics system was a pretty good improvement (except when trying to put books on shelves haha).

Obviously, graphics were better.

Animations were vastly improved (Running no longer looks like a bad dance).

I really liked what we had on the Ayleids, but I would have liked more.

To be honest I liked the style of the morrowind journal better, but Oblivions is a lot more organized.

There are a lot of things that I love about Oblivion, but the one that I'm going to focus on here is that I thought the monster design was a lot better. Not in terms of what we got (I'm not trying to argue that minotaurs and imps are preferable to guars and kagouti, here), but in terms of how they actually looked. Especially with returning creatures like mudcrabs, slaughterfish, Daedra, spriggans, and even wolves and skeletons were a lot prettier. Not just in terms of the graphics upgrade, that would be a stupid argument to make. But I mean, compare the concept art for the http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gallery_files/oblv_concept08B.jpg and her http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/gallery_files/bm_spriggan.jpg So the quality of the design improved a lot, I think, even though the concept behind it was less original.

Other than most faction quests, some setting issues, level scaling, and the lack of failure, pretty much everything about it. It also boasts a hell of a lot more modding options, which I love the most, though I wish there were a lot less armor mods that look really revealing. Also, OB may not have Vivec's sermons, but the books are quite numerous and explored a lot more into the nature of daedra much more than any other game.

Stealth in MW was weak (I stab you in the back with a 60lb hammer!), animations were very stiff, combat was clunky for magic and weapon switching, the journal was pretty disorganized (though it did get a bandaid afterwards), the lack of armor for beasts was annoying (at least give us ankle braces!), the economy was extremely inflated, sleeping to get magicka back was very annoying, and resting for days to get health back was annoying.

I like Morrowind much, much more, but Oblivion definitely had it's good points:

-AI that didn't just stand around, making being a thief both easier and harder
-Manual blocking
-LOD, though it could have been implemented much better.
-Poisons
-Streamlined journal and menu system
-Nicer looking world map (though I missed the map slowly being revealed as you covered more and more ground)
-Better stealth
-Fewer slaughterfish
-Better combat
-Voice acting, but it was at the cost of more varied dialogue and multiple choices.

But that's about all I can think of right now. Oblivion has dozens upon dozens of bad points (for me) I could list if I had to, but that doesn't mean it was all bad.

One thing I forgot to mention on the last one of these: yielding.

Besides that:

-the obvious (physics, graphics)
-NPC schedules
-Arena
-stealth system
-poisoning
-horses (I didn't care that they're useless because they're still fun. Same goes for the stupid horse armor).
-Patrick Stewart
-casting with weapon in hand
-cheese and pumpkins
-buyable and furnishable homes (still needs a lot of improvement)
-uhhh... cheese

I love you for this.
Don't Forget Sean Bean.

What I like the most about Oblivion is the huge improvement of stealth.

But there are other things I like very much too, like how the NPCs move around and have lives and do not stand still at the same spot 24/7. There's still a lot of improvements that can be done here, but it was certainly a step up from Morrowind.

And other things