Arx Fatalis

Arx Fatalis is very interesting semi-sandbox game: from the very beginning you are thrown into the underground world with several major "factions" and with lots of things to do: performing diplomatic quests, saving small chidren from cultists, robbing the local bank, giving the economic independence to trolls from goblins (if you wish), disenchanting the mage turned into chicken (Hey there, Baldur's Gate), and finally saving world from yet another evil sorcerer/god. It consists of several levels connected with each other and having secrets and hidden locations and objectives. Thick atmosphere is another keyword for this game: when it is creepy - it IS creepy (especially and hardly surprisingly in the Arx crypt and at the gnome level). Also interesting runic magical system again adds to immersion. Unfortunately, cryptic, obscure and imbalanced - are also words suitable to describe Arx Fatalis: as previous commenters pointed out, the puzzles and general direction are very vague at best and you will find yourself often seeking for walkthrough and/or letsplays to just understand where EXACTLY you should go and what EXACTLY you should do (especially with mage-chicken). Some builds are almost useless - like thief. I stronly advice you in first playthrough to invest into warrior skills as well as to HPs - the investments will be paid off. And remember that even the mighty warrior will have tough time fighting the Ylsides, near-engame common enemies. So beware. Other than that, it is fine game and good debut game of young and enthusiastic team in far away 2002 year and good immersive game.

This game belongs to my best list. I could finish this version combined with the free arx libertatis fan mod. I couldn't play the gog version alone because I had no menus in the game to be able to start the game. I needed two attempts to finish the game because of the big amount of game bugs which aren't fixed in the game after all today patches. The level with the dwarven mine destroyed all of my success. I couldn't create a special sword which was necessary to finish the last quest and had to start again. So if you want to see the end titles don't forget to have a big list of savegames. Please consider that the puzzles are brainsick. It will be necessary to watch endless youtube videos to solve them. Why then 5 stars? Beside that you will find the most interesting magic system of all computer games. You will have to draw runes in the air to create spells. The population in this game is awesome like the music and the sound system. Trolls, goblins or rat men character models are fantastic. If you only play 5 minutes arx fatalis, a dark but absolutely charming world under the earth, you will totally forget your everyday life. I build up a mage with additional fighting abilities to beat the game and had a lot of fun except the awful puzzles.

Excepting Shadowgate Classic, this is my first "real" dungeon crawler. With that in mind, I tried the demo of this game a couple of times, determined to get into it, but I was initially put off by the graphics and controls (why won't THIS do THAT!!). Turns out the manual is a huge help, though the in-game tutorial does an okay job too. Anyway, my point is I learned to really love the graphical style as well as the controls -- wouldn't have 'em any other way, now. So, even if you do find it rough around the edges at first, don't give up as the game is highly addictive once you get the hang of it. I dig the story of the game pretty well, although Arkane does seem to have a real thing for the "who am I...world is in peril...chosen one talk...oh, I am the chosen one" plot (referring to its spiritual sequel Dark Messiah, if you didn't catch it). Nothing really the matter with this, anyway, and there's lots of lore if you want to get into that. The painting-style cutscenes add a nice touch, as well. The meat of Arx is in its gameplay, though, of course. Basically it has all the elements you'd expect from this kind of game (hack/slash, lots of weapons and armor, magic, levels, stats, etc), but it's styled in such a way I find it irresistable and charming. Plus, the terribly innovative spellcasting system adds a whole other dimension to the game (and level of addictiveness -- must hunt down every rune!). While to the less "hardcore" players this could be tedious, I really didn't find it too bad, and enjoyed that it kind of encouraged me to whip out a pen and paper now and then. There's also a bunch of sweet secret spells to discover -- check the forums for those. After having just come from Dark Messiah (which I did really like), I do have to say Arx is an infinitely deeper game, and for me personally, much more enjoyable. Audio is also great -- quite ambient, and used sparingly, which I found helped suck me in (that takes finesse). Mostly I much like the voice acting; dialogue is quite funny at times, a good contrast with the dark nature of the world here. All in all, a highly immersive game -- in many ways you really feel like you're living in this universe...a tough thing for any developer to achieve, no doubt, but Arkane pulled it off very well, and so I say let yourself be drawn in -- highly recommended to any RPG or dungeon crawler fan, particularly for the insane $6 pricetag and extras.

Ok so I absolutely LOVE this game. I am the type of gamer who gets tired of games VERY quickly. I have such a short attention span, that on average, even when I think a game is pretty good, I only play it for 20 minutes to an hour, then quit it and never get around to playing it ever again. So when I tell you that Arx Fatalis is a game that I've played for a year, you should get an idea of how impressive this game is. First off I bought this game on Xbox, then I got it on Steam, but that version didn't work with Windows 7 64 bit. Luckily GOG has this game and it does work on Windows 7 64 bit off of here, I remember reading on a forum some where that they put in a patch helps it run just fine (was a GOG exclusive patch). So after spending the past 3-4 months not playing Arx Fatalis, I am back to playing it again haha. This game has by far the greatest sense of humor I have ever come across in any game. The characters in the game have a lot of funny dialogue. To give you an idea of how funny it is, my girlfriend who doesnt play video games has been around me so much while I'm playing it, that she quotes Arx Fatalis all the time now haha. So it's the type of funny conversations that go on where you actually are enjoying what people are saying. The voice acting is pretty awesome. You'll find that all the races have awesome voices, and that the sound effects are very well done. The gameplay in Arx Fatalis is like nothing you have ever seen. The magic actually feels like your casting spells. You hold the control key, and you draw ancient runes across the screen. You have a book to refer to for each spell incase you forget what they are. But no joke, when you get into it you'll find that you remember a crapton of the spells your always using in no time. I just logged into the game today after not playing it for like 4 months, and right away I was casting spells off the top of my head. So it's totally unique to this game. Also the combat is great because you can actually keep a distance and move back and forth between mobs. So in the event your dealing with something that can dominate you in a few hits, you have the chance to rush back and work out a magical attack, or rush in and swing and rush out before the attacker can kill you. Also just an fyi, no one play through has to ever be the same. The first time I went through the game I went all Warrior. Then the next time I went thief, and following that I went Thief/Mage. But the cool thing is there are no actual classes, just stat points that you build a character in the direction of a certain class. So like you have Strength, Dexterity, Mental and Constitution. Then you have sub stat points into things like melee combat, archery, magic, sneak, ect. You place your points where ever you want to determine the type of character you have. So go all strength if you like Warriors, ect. Have you ever played a game to death, and you found yourself going after the meaningless stuff in the game world, just because you didnt want the experience to end? Like you know your done, but you still have that connection to the game. That is what Arx Fatalis is all about. It's about you hating the fact that this game didnt have some wicked crazy expansion that gave you a crapton more stuff to do. That is literally my only complaint about Arx Fatalis, is that after you clock in about 80 to a 100 hours of gameplay (you could go through it way faster, but I took my time because I love it) you'll find you've done everything there is to do.

Arx Fatalis is a very atmospheric RPG, with interesting (and sometimes even funny) quests, likeable NPCs, a gesture recognition based casting system which makes magic much more involving (and during combat, frantic) matter than the standard"click on the right icon" scheme. Too bad Arkane Studio didn't use the same magic system when they did their following game ( Dark Messiah) to completement the physical combat. I remember reading an interview with the makers who said they were inspired by the two Ultima Underworld, and it shows in a very good way. Graphically the character models are a bit on the very low polygon side but that doesn't hamper the fun. The one RPG players I wouldn't recommend this game to are those with claustrophobic tendencies : you REALLY never get outside. For all others : it's a must-have!