Bought, downloaded, installed, launched.

Watch cinematic -- cool, dated graphics, but cool.

Alright. First screen. Picture of lizard shaman dude, and title of game. Nothing else. Click around screen with trail behind my pointer, and no text. No text....randomly a click begins new game (I think?)

I come to character creation with a bunch of half-comprehensible symbols and a portrait...nothing else. Click around...don't know what to do.

Who made this? Is this a joke?

Some help would be great, because this game is annoying the hell out of me.

My computer is a new HP Windows 8 with great specs for this old game. So I doubt its my comp.

You have forced antialiasing through your video card's control panel. Set its antialiasing setting to "application controlled" (or similar). Text will then render correctly.

Alternately, use Arx Libertatis.

Ok thank you, fixed it.