Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1695 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Take 2
• Released on: 2007-03-30
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description:
Shivering Isles features more than 30 hours of new gameplay and allows you to explore an entirely new plane of Oblivion – the realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. Shivering Isles adds to the existing world of Oblivion so you can continue playing with your existing save game/character, or create an all new character just to explore the new content.

Within the Realm of Sheogorath, players can explore the two extreme sides of the god’s madness – the sublimely creative and the completely psychotic. Something is happening to the Shivering Isles and Sheogorath himself looks to you to be his champion and defend his realm and its inhabitants from destruction. Do you have the strength to survive his trials, tame a realm fraught with paranoia and despair, and wear the mantle of a God?

The Shivering Isles features a bizarre landscape split between the two sides – Mania and Dementia –filled with vast, twisting dungeons mirroring the roots of the trees they are buried within. You’ll encounter more than a dozen new creatures including hideous insects, Flesh Atronachs, skeletal Shambles, amphibious Grummites. Throughout your adventure, you will discover all new items, ingredients, spells, and more, and have the talented craftsmen of Crucible and Bliss forge new armour and weapons just for you.

Customer Reviews

Refreshing!
After playing Oblivion, a game with such sheer scale and depth, ultimately flawed by the poorly constructed main-quest but bursting at the seams with side quests and great visuals, I hoped for an expansion pack to do it some justice.

This does.

Firstly, we'll look over the visual stuff: The island is big, not as big as Oblivions, but around 25% of the size, which is still very big. The scenery is amazing, the island is essentialy split into to sides; Mania and Dementia (Happy and Sad). On Mania's side are bright sporing mushrooms with autumn trees and bright starry nights, whereas things are a little darker on Dementias side (swamps, dead trees and gloom) Both are carried out beautifully in design and visuals.

The story: Very much like the island, the story is split in two based on your decision to follow either the Golden Saints (Mania) or the Dark Seducers (Dementia). Both sides are fun and each choice has its own benefits. BUT you can't play both quests with the same character, you'll either need to save and go back, or start with a new character (which is frustrating as you need to have either completed the main quest or be arena champion or something in Oblivion).

The Main Shivering Isles quest, regardless of which side you choose is fun filled and interesting enough to keep you hooked!

Extras: New weapons, my only gripe with this is that the unique weapons you find along the way in Shivering Isles are too low-powered to be of any use to a high level character. Another point to make is that you can't (by default) have a horse in Shivering Isles, so be prepared to walk a lot! Oh and another thing is you can't (again, by default; there are mods to fix these) buy a house in Shivering Isles, so you'll pick up lots of heavy loot and have to go back and forth between realms to stash it! (irritating)

But seriously, put these little obstacles (all of which can be fixed with pretty simple mods) aside and you have a gem of an expansion pack which if you take your time over will easily cost you 50 hours of your life :)

Hope that helped :)

Refreshing, but still flawed
This pack expands the game of Oblivion to add new scenery and some new locations. This is a refreshing addition, as the landscape of Oblivion has been criticized for not having enough variety. There is certainly a lot of fun to be had from the extra locations and missions, and the pack was worth the £20 I spent on it (including P&P).

Unfortunately, the longevity of the game still suffers from the poorly implemented "level scaling" system. The expansion does nothing to fix this. The idea behind the system is that there is a "constant challenge" (read: almost nothing is too hard for you to beat from the start of the game). For a great many gamers, this simply means there is no reward to the investment of time in your character - no obstacles to overcome in the future. This makes the game more of a hack n'slash sandbox instead of a true RPG.

That said, there is still fun to be had, but like FPS games your long term achievements will be sacrificed for short term goals and mindless action.

One important issue that should be noted here is the massive bug that can destroy your game. The patch to fix this should be available within a few days of me posting this (go to the developer's website). The issue actually goes back to the original game, but the expansion accelerates the effects of the bug (causing more people to encounter it earlier). The game uses "Form ID's" to record information, but these are not recycling properly, so you will eventually run out of Form ID's for the program to use. This means that eventually, new items (and perhaps characters) will not save and vanish upon reloading your game. If you are going to buy this, make sure you get the patch!

Good Add-on to Oblivion
I've just completed the main story line of the Shivering Isles and it took me about 10 hours of playing time. Whilst this doesn't sound like much there is currently a large island out there waiting for me to explore it and I have several side quests that need to be completed.

Once you have installed Shivering Isles 24 hours later a new quest appears that takes to to a door that has opened into the realms of madness. Once you decide to enter you enter the fringe, where people wait to enter the actual realm - the only way in is to kill "The Gatekeeper" who is a monstrous hulk of a creature and you will probably need some help to kill him. Once you are in you become the pawn of Sheogorath "The Mad God" who sends you on a jnumber of quests to save his realm from the forces of Law. During the quest you get to choose whether you follow the way of Mania or Dementia and to rise in power within the Mad God's court. One nice big twist later and you find yourself fighting for the ultimate prize within the realm...

There are lots of new/unique items and I have gained lots of new powers, however most of the powers are linked to the shivering isles and are unavialable when I leave. The land mass is large, there are lots of towers , dungeons and settlements to discover.

I like this add-on and it has extended my enjoyment of the game. It's not a massive addition in terms of the main quest, but dive into the realms of madness and see what you find. 8/10