The Elder Scrolls 4: Knights of the Nine

So, You've Been merrily playing Oblivion for a few months and you've seen everything. You've hiked up hill and down dale. You've skipped through meadows picking wild flowers ("Umm, they're for, er, alchemic purposes. Yeah, that's it."). You've vanquished thousands of mudcrabs and you've become the head of every guild in Cyrodiil. What do you do now?

Well, if Ubisoft and Bethesda have their way, you shell out another 20 notes for this expansion pack, which brings together all the official downloadable content on one disc. That means you get the patch, some armour for your horse, some spell tomes included in the random treasure, the Mages' Guild Orrery, the Wizard's Tower, the Thieves Den, the Vile Lair, the Mehrunes' Razor adventure and a brand-new adventure called Knights Of The Nine.

The latter adds an entirely new faction of crusading knights, so that means a new stronghold, a slew of fresh NPC characters and baddies and, most importantly, a big ol' quest to undertake. Bethesda claim the quest will take you around 15-20 hours to complete, but I whizzed through it in about five or six.

Good Knight

Short as it may be, it's actually better J than many of the faction quests in the original game. I won't spoil any of it by talking specifics, but it's a well-written series of trials and dungeon-crawls designed for do-gooding, noble-hearted characters, and the items and rewards you gain mean that heavily-armoured fighters will get the most out of it. Evil, backstabbing souls need not apply - wicked acts will quickly see you drummed out of the knightly order.

Good as it all is, we're not sure if this lot is worth $20. The problem is that most of the downloadable content is aimed at specific character types: a pure combat character probably won't give a stuff about spell tomes or a Wizard's tower, while the average mage will find the powerful new quest items totally useless. You're far better off just choosing the content you want online, and this works out a hell of a lot cheaper too, even if you buy everything ($12). Is it really worth an extra $8 to own a box and a disc?