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Finally closed the gestalt that I opened and left unfinished 15 years ago.
Anyone who played it knows that everything after was only worse, except perhaps for the quests—though here they are completely primitive: go here and kill/bring something, and that's almost all of them—both guild quests and random side ones. Maybe that's just how it is, but for me, the quests in Oblivion+ never felt like anything other than something cobbled together by a schoolboy, maximally ridiculous "uncanny valley" stuff, given its clownish engine with idiot NPCs and markers.
I used to be repulsed by the Wikipedia-style "dialogues," but now I've reconsidered, and compared to what came later, it's not that bad. You can always ask almost any NPC where a certain shop or character is; otherwise, 99% of the standard question-slop can be ignored immediately—as can 99% of these NPCs—you won't miss anything, and there's no need to click through everyone clockwise. Remembering those ridiculously animated Oblivion morons who make faces, looking at your ear or the top of your head while talking with a dead-serious face, belching out one soy-flavored voice acting per race, different voicelines in different voices, and generally chatting quite primitively—the "straight to business" Wikipedia conversations aren't that bad. Persuasion here is also better than that ridiculous wheel. Over time, by the way, I first realized another of many factors as to why NPCs in the company's games look unnatural—everyone has a unique name, and if it's not a name, it's some kind of twisted contortion, sometimes reaching pure absurdity. The idea that no two NPCs in the world share the same first name is such an inorganic stupidity. As a result, everywhere you look: either some Dolbos Navpiskoniy, or Skufing Beerbelly, or Nykhus Soleus.

The combat based on hit chances, which I remembered as being absolutely hideous, also turned out not to be that bad. A relatively small value in the weapon skill is already enough to land hits decently, and moreover, enemies aren't damage sponges that you have to hack for 5 minutes like in Obli. For this, thanks to the lack of auto-leveling—in this part, you can calmly level up, even suboptimally, and experience no difficulties. There is some conditional minimum tuning of monster grades based on your overall progression, but it's minuscule.
All sorts of magical effects, abuses, and so on—I didn't use them much because I barely leveled magic—but they are here, and they are clearly the boldest and coolest by the standards of all Bethesda creations; you can't argue with fans on that, and they were cut from subsequent parts.
The cave clearing isn't as excessive as in Obli+. There are enough of them, but minimum are mandatory for quests, and they themselves aren't confusing copy-paste labyrinths taking three hours, but quite manageable.

The little world is disgusting enough, with bug-mushrooms-deserts and plague mutants, with janky houses, with ugly local red-eyed elves inhabiting it—now it's clear why they are so wretched in this setting—but then again, as fans say, it has its own taste; you can't deny its uniqueness, whereas subsequent parts devolved into maximum generic. It's as if a different company made this part, it differs so much from the rest of the line.
Some people seem to praise the plot, or rather its delivery, and the presentation of this very little world. I didn't see anything special here. Some would say you need to read the books, but that is, of course, complete madness—absorbing hundreds of volumes of in-game graphomania about god knows what, written by literary monkeys on stimulants during a crunch week.

I'd give it a 7, maybe a 7.5 at its best moments.
The feeling that you're playing an extremely outdated relic almost never leaves you, with gaps in gameplay and design, ergonomics, and many individual moments. But alongside this is a sense of old-school boldness in character progression and the overall look of the product, more freedom and a more unique vision.
But overall, the main plus is that it's just chill to play. You walk around, do something, click, nothing much is required of you, no fuss or hysterics with portals to hell or dragons—just a slow feeling of decay in an already uncomfortable world where you gradually poke around. I think this effect is achieved, ironically enough, in no small part by the aforementioned flaws regarding combat, quests, and Wikipedia.