Arx Fatalis - worth a look

Mad Mike

My plans to indulge in a spot of NWM were put on hold becasue Play.com was out of stock. Desperately needing to salve my post KOTOR hangover I bought Jowoods 3 in 1 DVD of Arx Fatalis, Archangel and Gorasul (PC) for €14.99. Not quite the bargain it seems at first, Archangel and Gorasul are both pretty dire. Arx on the other hand turns out to be very good.

If you haven't seen Arx it is a 3D first person rpg set in a underground world. It has excellent graphics, sound effects and voice acting. There is almost no music but the overall effect is very atmospheric. The plot is very good and the quests are interesting and reasonably challenging. There are relatively few side quests and those that I have come across are meaty enough in themselves. The lack of side quests is a good thing because it keeps you focussed on the plot and you don't spend time clearing rats out of cellars just to gain XP. Combat is fairly challenging with both magic and fighting being useful at times. Magic uses a neat system of drawing runes in the air. You can store up to 3 spells for quick release during a fight but after that you can forget trying to draw a complex rune as a rampaging beast charges down on you. This makes battles an interesting challenge - fire off your strong magic spells first and then either draw swords or run.

It has its flaws. The original was impossibly buggy and even patched up to version 1.17 (17 versions ???) I still get the occasional crash to desktop. The journal is truly awful and is virtually useless. The skills are quite unbalanced. Some skills are essential and some are useless but the game documentation does not warn you about this. It is also far too easy to scupper the game by killing mission critical characters or by losing (sometimes due to bugs) vital pieces of kit. The game doesn't tell you about this so you could end up playng a wild goose chase for days. A walkthrough is almost essential to prevent you from falling into some pitfalls.

At first the obvious flaws almost put me off the game but I persevered for a bit and now I am really enjoying it. It is truly absorbing and very entertaining - well worth the €14.99 even if you never ever play Archangel or Gorasul.

Mad Mike

OK Just finished the budet version of Arx and I feel I must qualify my earlier recommendation.

The game is really excellent in many respect - very good storyline, very atmospheric, good voice acting, good graphics, interesting locations and characters.

As I mentioned earlier it is let down by being fairly buggy and does feel a bit unfinished in some ways.

My new gripe is that the gameplay definitely goes downhill considerably from about the half way stage. The challenges you face are interesting enough it is just that there isn't any proper clues as to how to do the puzzles. The game degenerates into the sort of charade where you spend hours trying every item in your inventory and searching every nook and cranny for some elusive rock. Lets face it life is too short for that. It is so bad that the game is pretty much unfinishable without a walkthrough. That to me is a sign of laziness on the part of the developers.

Anyway I still found the game interesting enough to finish (by frequently tabbing to a walkthrough from rpgdot.net) but I do feel that the developers let themselves down by not including enough clues in the game to allow it to be played properly.