Oblivion: Knights Of The Nine (PC DVD)

The DVD contains 8 add-ons to Oblivion, each of which can be loaded separately. They can be broken down in to 3 groups, Quests, Real Estate and Equipment, so I'll tackle each group in turn. Warning, before you read on, my review does contain specefic information about the game, which some may consider minor spoilers.

Quests x3: The Knights of the Nine (completion: 8ish hours) sends you to multiple dungeons collecting things, before battling an ancient evil foe and saving the world, the usual kind of grand plot. There are some nicely designed dungeons and at the end your reward is an armour set, which is either light or heavy dependant on your own highest skill. It's not particularly good though, although it does have one nice effect, which is to stop wild animals attacking you. Minor gripe: some of the voice acting is too quiet, leading to constant fiddling with the volume. Mehrune's Razor (completion: 4ish hours) Just one dungeon, but it's absolutely huge, contains a whole village in one cavern; the reward at the end is a very powerful dagger. Minor gripe: the lighting seems brighter than dungeons from the original game, not to my liking, but no big deal. The Orrery (completion 1ish hours) amounts to a handful of skirmishes with bandits to obtain parts to fix the Orrery at the Arcane University. Once fixed the Orrery grants you a spell to give one of your attributes a large boost, which attribute is dependent on the moons phase, the downside is it also cripples another attribute by an equal amount.

Real Estate x3: All 3 properties fall in to your ownership for free, via various stories, however, buying the upgrades require substantial funds. The Wizards Tower highlights: huge storage area, altars for enchanting, spell making & Atronach summoning, garden of alchemy ingredients, harvest Imps for Grand Souls & teleport to any Mages Guild Hall. The Vile Lair highlights: prisoner for Vampires to feed from, bathing pool that cures vampirism, shrine that cures disease etc... like a church altar but only evil characters can use it, your very own minion who will go out an kill on your orders and bring you back the loot. The Thieves Den highlights: set on a pirate ship with full crew, all crew members have useful training skills or good items to sell; think you need to reach a certain mercantile level for some. Practice chest for and increasing lock picking skills. The crew can be sent out pillaging and will return with your cut.

Equipment x2: Horse Armour, a vendor sets up business selling the said item, you get a freebie for starters, but can buy more if you lose your horse, comes in 2 designs and offers decent protection to your horse. Spell Tomes, these books start turning up in random loot, when you open the book you read the spell and decide if you want to learn it and add it to your permanent list. Spells range from weak to powerful, so you won't want to add them all, so far I've found a couple of goodies.

Summary: Some entertain new quests adding a good few hours of game play, a nice selection of real estate to add to your portfolio and a couple of useful new equipment types. The only thing that seems to be missing is a property for the fighter type character. Still, for the price you can't really go wrong, even if you only decide to load half of the add-ons. Not quite worthy of 5 stars, but still very good!

This addon for Oblivion contains all the additional downloadable content from the official site. You get the following new Quests/areas to explore

The Wizard's Tower - gives you access to elemental familiars and an enchanment station and spell creation fascilities. You all get access to some alchemical ingredients. The familiars allow you to fill soul crystals with elemental souls and really that's it - I am already Arch mage so I have access to everything else, but you do get access to all the available mages guilds.

The Vile Lair - cavern area designed for evil characters. If you are a vampire (and I was before I cured myself) then you get an almost unlimited access to people to feed your blood lust....

The Thieves Den - A ship wreck containing the undead crew lies in wait for somebody to liberate it. Once you have completed the quest you have access to thief related training and there is even a lock picking training station.

Mehrunes' Razor - Nice long dungeon quest looking for a dagger with the ability to cast your opponents directly into the deapest pits of Oblivion, good fun for fighter based charaters.

Horse Armour - Additional protection for your horse, and the first set is FREE (unfortunately I keep losing horses)

The Orrery - Pieces of the Orrery from the Mages Guild have been stolen, track the bandits and return them to make the orrery work again, depending on the phase of the moon you get a different attribute bonus when turning it on.

Spell Tomes - Books added that can be randomly found, the add spells to your inventory.

The main quest of the Knights of the Nine added about 10 hours of game play to the game for me (with each of the additional bit mentioned above adding between one and two hours each). The main quest leeds you to find all the waystations of the nine and prove yourself to be a champion worthy of fighting an achient evil that has returned to the land...if you complete it you get a suit of heavy armour and a sword and mace that are simply superb for fighters of any type.

For £15 you get between 25 and 15 hours of additional game play (based on the fact that I am not the most thorough player of quests and they took me about 15 hours in total) to get the most out of it you also need LOTS of in game money as some of the areas (thieves den and wizards tower) need to be kitted out before they are of any use - I'm 29th level so every enemy I meet is wearing either glass or deadric armour so money isn't an issue for me.

I like it - but you could probably download the content for less - 8/10

Oblivion is a great game, though a little too over simplified compared to Morrowind. If you liked the original you'll like this expansion. Good plot, nicely integrated in to the main game and well paced. Some decent characters and lots of special items. Overall I'd say that it's a bit short, but good while it lasts.
Might be worth picking up the Oblivion - Game of the Year Edition as it inlcudes this expansion and Shivering Isles.