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(More customer reviews)Being somewhat obsessed with Oblivion according to my charming fiance, I ordered this expansion pack from Oblivion the day it was released, skipped work on Friday, and played it non-stop until I had sucked every last bit of enjoyment from it. That, in a nutshell, is both the good and bad news. The expansion is very enjoyable. It can also be played through in a few hours.
This DVD includes not just the Knights of the Nine expansion, but all the previous expansion releases available online including the horse armor pack, the Orrery, Wizard's Tower, Vile Lair, Thieves Den, Mehrunes' Razor, and Spell Tomes. For what you get, the $20 asking price is not a bad deal at all.
Horse Armor: Well, it does make your horse look cooler. That's nice from an aesthetic point-of-view, but I thought it was kind of silly that you get it for free as a "marketing ploy". Items like this are always much more fun if you have to do a little work to get them, or at least cough up some serious dough.
The Orrery: This quest involves running around to different bandit camps, collecting items from the freshly slain carcasses of your foes, and delivering these to Bothiel at the Arcane University. Bandits aren't too tough, so this task doesn't take too long, althoug it does make you travel over some terrain you might otherwise have missed. This simple quest (ten minutes tops) gets you into the Orrery, the mysterious locked door in the entry tower of the Arcane University. Once in, you're treated to some neat graphics but the payoff is rather lame. You get to change your birthsign or something. I didn't want to do that so I didn't see much value in it.
The Wizards Tower: I like the Wizards Tower and found myself using it as my primary base for my loot. You inherit this big castle and it does cost you some gold to get it decked out. There are various neat aspects, including your own enchanting and spell-making altars and the ability to summon atronachs, but the real draw is that you have you own alchemical garden off your bedroom which provides you with an adequate supply of some of the rarer alchemical ingredients, including the Oblivion based ones. If you're a big potion maker then this expansion is worth it. Your bedroom includes an alchemical altar which raises your alchemy ability and a chest that can store your alchemical equipment until you need it, along with endless supplies of loot. If you're not a big alchemy person then you're missing a fun aspect of the game. Those paralyze+silence+fire damage+dame health poisons can come in handy some times!
The Vile Lair: This is a hang-out, much like the Wizards Tower, designed with the vampire character in mind. I haven't spent anytime as a vampire so the place wasn't all that appealing to me, but if you're into vampire characters then this is definitely the home for you. It takes some moolah to fix this place up and it can be stocked with your helpless victims, comes complete with a shrine to Sithis, and your very own blood spa. What more could a vampire want?
The Thieves Den: This was probably the best designed "home" for player characters. Tucked away beneath Castle Anvil this base for thieves has a very cool grotto with a very cool pirate ship. Unfortunately it's infested with leveled skeletons so you have to earn this home by cleaning out the foul undead denizens. Then you have to pay to spruce it up too. After all this work you get a cool pirate hang-out complete with pirates who will go out and raid and pillage for you. This would have been much more fun if you could have gone on the raid and pillage operations with them though. As a hangout, the thieves den has advantages over the other "homes" because your pirates also offer training, supplies, and spells in addition to swell companionship when you'd like to swap blood-thirsty tales of misadventure.
Spell Tomes: These books are found as loot on the corpses of your enemies and give you the ability to learn new spells by reading instead of paying a trainer. They don't show up that often, and the spells offered are random so you don't necessarily get anything you'd actually want.This works well however as this approach is balanced. It's fun to find them but they aren't likely to make you so uber-powerful you don't enjoy the game anymore.
Mehrunes Dagger: This dungeon is HUGE. Make sure you go in well-stocked with everything you could possibly need because you aren't getting out again until you make it through to the end. Those darn Telvanni Dark Elves ("Dork Elves" according to my fiance) are at it again and preparing to rebel against the empire, the fetchers. You have to take out their assembled army, hack your way through their slave-powered mining operations, solve various riddles, fight gangs of vampires, and battle a fearsome Telvanni Wizard, (who in true Mannimarco fashion goes so quickly it's a letdown. They should give these guys 10x more hit points so they have some staying power) and get the fabulous Mehrunues Dagger. I wouldn't trade Umbra for it, but as weapons go it's pretty decent. The fun part of this expansion is that it truly is a huge, sprawling place that will take you several hours to get through. The best part of it, and worth the entire price of the expansion, is the awesome Morag Tong armor you can get here if you play your cards right.
Knights of the Nine: This expansion plays much like any of the other faction quests. An evil Ayelid-Sorcerer king returns and you have to go clobber him. This "crusader" guild quest is fun, but it is pretty straight-forward without any of the well-thought out surprises and plot-turns that were part of the original faction story-lines. The plot is linear, making you have to assemble a special set of armor and weapons and then confront the uber-boss in his lair. There are some decent riddles involved which are easily solvable with a little patience. At the end you have some major magic weapons and armor, but frankly I chucked them in my storage chest in the Wizards Tower and put back on my Morag Tong and custom-built stuff. The quest is fun, but it only took me five or six hours to play through the whole thing. Do this quest and then go back and do some of the Dark Brotherhood quests for some amusing commentary from the NPC's in the world.
All-in-all this expansion has a lot to offer. There are some neat bases to chose from, a few cool effects, worthwhile new magic items, and another 10 hours of so of total game play. Hopefully we'll see some more new factions and expansions in the future to complement this one.
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Product Description:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Knights of the Nine includes all the Oblivion downloadable content released to date: Horse Armor The Orrery Wizard's Tower Vile Lair Thieves Den Mehrunes' Razor and Spell Tomes. There's also a new faction and quests for noble characters that will answer the questions surrounding the Ayleid ruins found throughout Oblivion. Battle against a sorcerer-king and his demonic minions while exploring massive dungeons and searching for legendary relics: The holy armor and weapons of the Divine Crusader.Format: WIN Genre:ENTERTAINMENT Rating:M UPC:093155119307
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