So having heard what a great ground-breaking game Oblivion is, I have to play it. If only for the experience, right?

When I first started playing it, it was a little hard to get used to. My main issue was with the control scheme. I control my character's forward, backward and side-to-side strafing movement using the left analog stick. I control the X and Y camera axes (which also turns my character) using the right analog stick. I am used to reversed camera controls. You know, where you push down to move up, and up to move down, left to go right and right to go left. I see it as a big ball-socket lever where my character is the fulcrum. My camera is located behind my character. I push the camera to the left, and the view that the camera is pointing at moves to the right. And so on. This game? It allows me to reverse the Y axis, but NOT the X. This drives me batty, but I'm slowly getting used to it.

My other issue is that they force you to finalize your class/race combination before you've had a chance to explore half of the skills available. You don't even know spells from most of the available spell schools. You haven't talked to anyone to know how useful Speechcraft and Mercantile skills. I usually get out of the tutorial dungeon, wander around in the world, decide one or more of my main skills isn't as useful as I thought it would be, and start the game over. I think this time I'm going to make a separate save right before the end of that tutorial dungeon so I don't have to play through it every time I want to reorganize my class.

It is pretty cool that it lets you design your own class. Basically, there are 21 skills. Seven of them are combat, 7 of them are stealth, and 7 of them are magic. These can be combat or non-combat abilities, including running and jumping, proficiency in bladed weapons, blunt weapons, light or heavy armor, destructive or restorative magic, bartering and lockpicking. You can pick 7 of these skills for your class and give it a name (though there are a number of precreated classes you can pick from as well). You level these skills by using them, and your character's level goes up as these 7 skills go up. You can level the other skills as well, and get better at using them, but they start out lower and have no effect on your character level.

The only caveat here, and something they DO NOT TELL YOU anywhere in the tutorial or the manual, is that the enemies in the game gain strength as you level up. Because of this, and the research I have done on GameFAQs (this really isn't a game you can just start without planning out your character meticulously as I've discovered), it is best to choose as your main skills things you won't use whatsoever unless you want to level up, when you can easily force levels in them.

This concept is VERY backwards to me. It's going to end up that all of my major skills (which in an RP sense are what define my character) are completely contrary to what I'm actually doing. Never set athletics and acrobatics as main skills because it's next to impossible to keep yourself from running and jumping. Say I want to specialize in fighting with a blade? Well then, I really shouldn't have it as a major skill, because then I'd go up levels! Which is, strangely enough, a BAD IDEA (tm).

The other fun part here is that you gain stat points (strength, intelligence, etc.) based on what skills you have gained levels in since your last levelup. So it's really important to keep track of all of your skills and gain levels in the ones you want stats for. I do believe I shall start my next character with all of this backwards information in mind and perhaps actually play a little bit.