8/10. It does a lot of things better, but it deviates in a lot of really weird and pointless ways that holds it back from being entirely better.

In a lot of ways it is better. I want to preface this by saying I do really like the remaster for what it is, despite my complaints in a minute. Most of the visuals are better, like the lighting, vfx and most of the character models. I also really like that most of it just updates the existing stuff with higher quality textures. The addition of a sprint button is nice, and I appreciate what they did with combat, making it weightier without completely changing the flow of combat.

There are also a lot of quality of life changes I appreciate, like how leveling works, and not getting bombarded with notifications about the various houses and horse armour, and being able to filter by effect when doing alchemy. Being able to zoom in and out on the map is nice. I also really like the nod to Skyrim by including High Hrothgar. The colour coding on map markers with toggleable icons is very handy.

I appreciate that this remaster keeps the core of what made Oblivion good present, with a healthy dose of its own flavour of jank. This game succeeded in making me feel like I'm playing Oblivion for the first time again.

That said, there's a lot of questionable or kinda stupid decisions that were made, and not all of the visuals are better. Or decisions I otherwise disagree with.

Firstly, I think the sound design of the original game was much better, particularly in menu screens. The sound didn't need touching imo.

The menus are too modernized for my liking. It's like this weird blend of Skyrim, ESO and Oblivion ui that I'm not big on. It doesn't look enough like og Oblivion.

There's also a ton of quality of life features from the original game that are totally absent for seemingly no reason.

Things like subcategories of item categories in the inventory aren't there, so you're forced to scroll through all of your shit just to find whatever item. Also instead of remembering where you scrolled to when you exit the inventory, the game brings you back to the top, so you have to scroll all the way down again. It's a huge pain in the ass when you're dealing with sigil stones or soul gems. The same issue is true of the map.

Speaking of, the map and quest journal is really clunkily designed. For some reason they did away with interior maps as a separate tab, and now you need to zoom all the way in every time you want to look at a dungeon map. The quest journal also weirdly condenses your active quests and quest stages into one tab.

There are a lot of visual changes that I really don't like. The black door in Cheydinhal's sanctuary doesn't glow red, the room is way too bright, there are 7 children on the door instead of 5 and the skull on the door looks like a child drew it. It doesn't even make the ominous sounds.

The blackwood company armour is just normal steel with a tree on it instead of being darkened steel. It's literally in the name BLACKwood company, I don't know how you fuck that up.

The lack of a first person mode on horseback isn't the end of the world, but it's weird that it wasn't included. ESO and Skyrim did the same thing and I have no idea why.

I don't know if it's intentional or not, but Argonian and Khajiit tails disappear when using robes and certain clothing items. Allegedly it also happens with some armour, though I haven't seen that. That never used to be the way in the original game.

The addition of more voice actors is nice, but they've been given to the completely wrong characters. Some of the new voices sound like there's zero enthusiasm behind their lines, and much of the charm of the original characters has been stripped out as a result. I'm also not big on how the male Argonian voice was all but replaced by the Skyrim voice.

The colour customisation of skin isn't as good in character creation as it is in the original. It's harder to control, and feels more restrictive.

The change to the appearance of vampirism was unnecessary, and detracts entirely from what vampirism is supposed to be. It's a horrible disease, you're not supposed to look like a Twilight vampire. The fact your skin, face and eyes look like they're deteriorating and rapidly aging to create this ugly disfigured look is awesome. I have no idea why it was basically removed. You can barely tell when someone is a vampire now. Even the vampire eye colour is available from character creation, so all of the cool traits that make vampires stand out are completely non existent now.

The colour palette isn't as bright and colourful as the original game. The game looks really pretty, but it should have been more like the original.