Posted on: January 29, 2022

Rewinder4747

Games: 136 Reviews: 10

Brilliant and flawed

If you play games mostly for the characters, dialogue and story, Arx Fatalis is probably not for you. But if you enjoy games with an immersive atmosphere and freedom of choice, you may be able to look past the flaws and find a great game underneath. The game is an immersive sim/RPG hybrid with an impressive variety of ways you can interact with the world. You can attempt to "use" any item on any other item or object in the world, and the game rewards you for being creative. I was often impressed by how well the game responded the ideas I came up with to deal with various situations. The environments are beautiful and are a highlight of the game. The city of Arx in particular looks great, and there's a good variety to the visuals in general. The sound design is INCREDIBLE and is on par with the Thief games. The atmosphere in the game is just top notch all around. Unfortunately, the story is pretty basic and doesn't really take advantage of the setting. The voice acting is awful, and the dialogue isn't great to begin with. The main character is probably the worst of them all and typically sounds bored or drunk. Most of the other voice actors aren't much better. The game does not hold your hand and tell you what to do. You are given a set of abilities and spells and it's up to you to decide when and how to use them. The quest journal is pretty bad at tracking everything, and a few times I had to look up on the internet what to do. The game is noticeably rushed at the end, and this is where I found myself frustrated a few times. Ultimately I had a great time playing the game overall, but the flaws do prevent me from wholeheartedly recommending the game to everyone. If you are a fan of the immersive sim or RPG genres however, you should absolutely give it a try.

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Posted on: May 13, 2022

seanieboy123

Verified owner

Games: 33 Reviews: 1

Diamond in the Giant Rough Dungeon

Arx Fatalis is not a perfect game. At its worst, its a frustration simulator with its unwieldy UI, extremely limited combat, and unorthodox magic system. At its best, this game feels like a RPG missing link between the 90's and the 2000's. While it retains some of the adventure/puzzle solving lineage from games like Ultima and Baldur's Gate, its magic system and world design feels ahead of its time compared to some of Arx's contemporaries like Morrowind or Fallout. It really has more in common with Deus Ex and Thief than anything else. While the magic gesture system takes a long to get used to, magic's utility has so much potential within a 3D space in a 1st person view. This wouldn't be that fun on its own, but Arx provides a fascinating answer with its giant dungeon world. Arkane asks themselves: What would a whole world fit into the Mines of Moria be like? You get the giant and singular puzzle box that is Arx Fatalis.

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Posted on: August 31, 2021

Spitfyrx

Verified owner

Games: 215 Reviews: 1

Definitely not for me.

Arx Fatalis will definitely appeal to a niche audience, but it's a pass from me. I love Arkane Studios and Immersive Sims so I was excited to give this game a shot. Unfortunately, I found the game to be way too cumbersome and directionless to be enjoyable. The game oftentimes gives you objectives with no hint as to how to accomplish them. I'm all for games leaving the player to figure out how to solve problems, but the player needs to at least know where the problem is to solve it. The game's quest log seems to only update occasionally and your journal is a stream of conciousness that isn't organized at all. Despite the game's world class level design (and I do mean that, some of the details and connections throghout levels are astonishing), navagating the world is a chore due to the slow movement speed, confusing location layouts, and the worst minimap of all time. The UI is also a mess and requires you to constantly switch between mouse look and cursor mode, which is very clunky and grating. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the magic system. The game makes you draw the runes associated with spells in order for you to cast them. This is brilliant in theory, but in game is incredibly annoying and will test you patience and sanity. I kept trying to draw the rune for the only offensive spell I had only for the game to constantly register it as a rune I had yet to own. I was literally spending minutes trying to draw a single spell correctly. Oh, and the game doesn't have any marking system for quest items, which means you can sell them and break your game. The game does have its merrits such as the reactivity of the world, cooking system, and level design, but it isn't concerned with teaching the player much and the gameplay itself just isn't fun for me. If you love games that throw you to the wolves and leave you to fend for yourself, you should definitely give it a shot but it absolutely isn't for everyone. Then again, nothing should be for everyone.

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Posted on: July 4, 2022

MrFoofles

Verified owner

Games: 683 Reviews: 24

Dated but worthwhile, immersive world

The world of Arx is atmospheric and immersive. The sprawling dungeon heavily encourages exploration. Coupled with excellent sound design, you will satisfyingly tiptoe through unknown areas in a way that cannot be matched by modern waypoint-centric games. Player agency and interaction is key: you must think and pay attention when you play this game! You are always rewarded for picking up on the slightest details, such as noticing books that might be useful to certain NPCs. Arx also uses verticality, with hidden items on ledges you can retrieve with telekinesis or levitation. Magic is performed by actually drawing runes with the mouse cursor. Your spell catalog grows impressive and powerful with intuitive rune combinations. However, it can be finnicky to get shapes to register–especially during battle! Thankfully, you can store up to three spells to instant cast. Character-wise, you have your typical melee, mage and ranged builds. You should specialize: magic is the easiest, while ranged/thievery is the hardest. Compared to other games, it takes a surprisingly large investment in lockpicking and stealth to be viable. Unfortunately, the GoG release is quite buggy on modern Windows. I initially struggled to get the game launching at all. Beyond that, crashes are common so save often. The sound occasionally cuts out and can be resolved by toggling EAX or restarting. Some textures have ugly black backgrounds when they should be see through. Past the technical issues, I found the game's lore and plot a bore. The premise of humanity being forced underground has potential, but I never felt strong investment in any of the characters. The combat experience varies. Lower enemies fall swiftly to your blade or powerful spells with ease. On the other hand, tougher bosses drag on and become more of a chore than a genuine challenge. The final boss of the game is one of the least satisfying fights I have seen in any game. All said, worth trying out.

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Posted on: June 7, 2024

SkeletonDoctor

Verified owner

Games: 261 Reviews: 19

i hate underground settings.

this entire game takes place underground, and i love it anyway. i cant remember the last time i played through an rpg 4+ times. it's just fun. there's 3 "general" builds you can do; warrior, mage, rogue, and they all work fairly well.(being a swordmage is also completely viable, because combat is largely a joke.) there's a ton of ways to handle the quests, and the freedom you have makes it veryyy enjoyable. the world feels very alive. there's a human kingdom, a goblin kingdom, a troll kingdom, a dwarf kingdom, a snakewoman city, you can either run around murdering everyone or be diplomatic or you can just decide you don't like a certain racelol, you can rob everyone blind if you have high Sneak, you can rob stores and resell their wares back to them, you can buy shares in troll mines that may make a profit, you can steal a dragon's eggs or pay her for them, you can buy a beer and drink it, you can feed dogs, you can cook food on fires, you can bake bread and pies, you can gamble and then rob the dealer when he's had enough of you. You can even get a gf. there's just so much to do in such a small game. it's a lot of fun. something you might not like is that enemies don't respawn infinitely, so you can't grind forever. most people don't even hit the level cap of 10. So you kinda have to spec you character a little carefully. but there's no shortage of resources in the game, especially if you just play as your class. only real issue with the game is that it does ultimately fall short of other games with how "alive" the world actually is. Somehow it does manage to really pull it off though. Maybe because of the setting, everything feels very significant. some tips: 1 kind of enemy in the game is absurdly fast and strong. if you're a mage, ezpz, if you're a pure-strength warrior, you're boned, use invisibility potions. mage is OP, warrior is probably the hardest class to start as there's a really really good pdf guide out there, just search for it and you'll find it

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