Arx Fatalis - Revisited

In my desperate search for new roleplaying games I stumbled upon a game called Arx Fatalis released in 2002. I had never before heard of it but I read some of the reviews both at GOG.com and at other places and got fairly interested to try it out. So here is my experience of this game.

The game comes with a 69 page very well written manual that explains most of its uses together with tables full of statistics (just what I lack today). It is written in a very personal way which only makes it more enjoyable to read. 

The game is a single player, firstperson rpg game but with more RPG focus than a pure hack´n slash game. You have several important attributes for your character: Armour class, Resistance to magic and poision, life energy, mana and damage. They change depending on what items you wear. When you create your character you spend points on strength, intelligence, dexterity and constitution. These affects your other attributes and also you skills.

There are a dozen or so skills in the game like stealth, close combat, projectiles and defense and more cryptical ones like object knowledge which is needed to repair armour, item or weapons. There is also intuition which helps you detect hidden objects, secret passages or traps. But also gives you better deals in the shops. There are a few more as well.

The background states that for many thosuands of years ago the world known as Exosta was inhabited by Humans, Orcs, Ratmen and more. They lived on the surface under the sky. But then the sun died and everything turned into darkness. The creatures was forced underground into the old Dwarf mines and made it their new home called Arx. In the beginning the races cooperated but soon the animosities between the races flared up again and led to aggression. This was nurtured by Akbaa the Lord of Destruction. Akbaa allied with the human high priest Iserbius and founded a cult that worshipped the dark master and spread his reign of terror. The cult was finally discovered by king Lunshire´s astronomer but he has shortly disposed of. He did however manage to send a message to the Sybarta which keep the balance of power between the gods. And it is said Sybarta sent a guardian to Arx to counter the threat of Akbaa by restoring the bonds that once harnessed the Lord of Destruction. To this day no one has seen the guardian or know when this saviour might appear and lead Arx out of darkness.

You start out in a dungeon. You have lost your memory and have not the slightest idea what you are doing there. By talking to another prisoner you soon find a way to break out and kill the jailer with a found human bone. From there, you manage to crawl out from a tunnel into the goblin stronghold who has got you captive.

I have just escaped from my cell and looks for something to plunder

You have to carefully move forward, bypassing or luring the guards away by throwing items in the opposite direction. You could also put out light sources if you have access to water. In this respect it reminds me a little of the thief series although it is far from Thief's exceptional implementation. Since you lack any items in the beginning whatsoever, you have to pick up everything you find and after killing the first jailers you could get hold of a dagger which inflicts more damage.

The game features voices for the goblins you meet. They go around talking to themselves or eachother or shouts during fights against you. Eventually I managed to flee into a natural cavern that I explored with underground streams and nasty rats.

There is an automap in the game but I have to say it is not very good. The maps are hard to get a good overview on and the fogness removal of them is not working too well. But it helps out in a very general way. You can´t even place notes on it.

The automap is not very good

The interface is fairly clumsy overall and it took me a few hours to get used to. The interface is sluggish and requires all too many clicks. I even had to reduce the resolution because the items got too small. Your inventory is limited and you have to manage it carefully because it gets full fairly quickly. Later on you will be able to buy a backpack to increase it.

Stealth is pretty well implemented and there is a skill for it. You could sneak up on enemies from behind and do backstabbing damage. I opted to go for a warrior though and put most of my skillpoints into strength, close combat and defense so my success in sneaking is very limited. 

After I had broke out from the goblin jail I came upon a human fortress that had just been overrun by an unseen enemy. A wounded soldier asked me to look for the captain and when I found him he said that the way to the city has been blocked by a slither. He asked me to find another way and report to the king what had happened here and to send reinforcements. After some time I managed to find a way that led me to the city. For the first time I came across shops that allowed me to sell my now full inventory. I got some valuable gold for it and was able to buy a better weapon.

I reported my findings to the king who said that the giants should be able to help clear the way to the outpost and sent me over to negotiate with them. I got into the giants parts of the underground caves and had to help them out for them to help me. They had put up a strike and refused to work for the goblins in finding gems. I sorted this problem out by going over to the goblin king and solved some minor tasks like poisioning his food in order to access his throne room. Soon I managed to strike a deal with the goblin king to let me enter a previously forbidden area in exchange that I saw to it that the giants returned to work. To make a long story short I completed these tasks.

There is a lot of tiresome running back and forth in this game. Your movement is pretty slow and it has gotten to bore me down a lot to go back and forth between the city and the parts in which the adventure takes place. It is true that later on I stumbled over portals that could be activated in order to allow for fast-travel. But they appear too late and are too few to really make much difference.

Combat is done in realtime. You have to move close in order to make a hit. Since you move quite slowly I feel the system quite cumbersome to use. It is very hard to measure distance. The more you hold your mousebutton the more damage you inflict before releasing the key. It seems there is only one type of attack. If you manage to attack from behind undetected you do backstabbing damage and if you are lucky you could make a critical hit but that is decided by your dexterity. 

I also bought a longbow and found some arrows. Using a ranged weapon do have its advantage even though the damage dealt is much less. At least you stay out of danger if you constantly retreat while shooting. But even so the system is not perfect.

I really dislike the use of magic in the game. You find runes and by combining them you gain access to different types of spells. You have to find or buy the runes. So far so good. The problem is that when you are trying to cast a spell you have to draw your spell by painting in the air in accordance to how the runes look. That is just ridiculous. It adds nothing but frustration and only takes time. I have decided not to use any magic at all because of this. 

And I haven´t understood why you have to eat. You find a lot of different kinds of food in the game. From the rats you kill to cheese and bread. And sometimes your character says he is hungry so you feed him some food. But there is no way in which you could see that your character is hungry or why you would need food. Food only helps very little in restoring your health. The best way is just to wait for the time to pass to restore your health. The developers surely thought they where ingenius when they allow you to cook your raw fish, meat or even combine different ingredients like flour and water to dough and by putting the dough into the fire it turns into a bread. For me, that just makes it tiresome. There is no fun in micromanaging different ingredients and that´s why I always never do alchemy in these kind of games. Did I say you find a lot of natural ingredients like leaves, flowers and stuff in order to make your own potions ? Sounds good in theory but for me it just micromanaging without much effects in the end. 

See how small my inventory is

Later on in the game the king and his advisors discover the dark rituals performed by cultists in their search for support of the dark lord Akbaa. My mission will be to finally destroy this evil and so I am sent to the temple where I should look for a meteorite that only I - the guardian that was sent - could destroy. This temple is filled with spell-casting priests that gave quite a challenge to me. The game is filled with secret rooms and hidden buttons. In one room in the temple I stumbled upon a Lich that trapped me. Despite five attempts to kill him I failed and had to leave him for now. Also there was some puzzles to solve involving golems. 

This is the king

When you reach a certain amount of experience points (XP) you automatically gain a level and could put one point into strength, intelligence, dexterity or constitution. You are also give 15 points to distribute between your skills freely. I like this system and it works quite good. You don´t have to spend all points at once. You could save them until you really need them - Something I use when the game system allows you too. 

Your weapons and armours will gradually degrade in the fights and if you don´t maintain them they will be destroyed. Since they are quite expensive to buy it is better you repair them or pay the blacksmith to do it for you.

I eventually stumbled upon the meteorite which I was sent to destroy but it wasn´t possible to harm it. Instead my life energy was sucked out from me when I touched the stone. The only way to harm it was to find two specifc items and combine them. That would protect me from having my energy drawn out. I am just now down where the rebels and serpents are in the world in a mission to try to recover these important items.

I am attacked by a ratman

The game started out very interestingly - like they all do. But after 5-10 hours it begun to degrade partly because of the long distances you have to run back and forth and also because the world is quite empty and lifeless. I feel I am past half of the game right now and perhaps I will see it to the end but the experience of the game balances between enjoyment and a chore right now. 

Might & Magic X - Legacy - Review

Game reviewed: Might & Magic X - Legacy

Version: 1.5
Created by: Limbic Entertainment (Ubisoft)
Released: 2014

Formats: Pc

Difficulty: 7/10

Est. Playing time: 50 hours
Price: $41

Everything went fine with playing through Might and Magic X Legacy until I reached the end. The end part of the game is very long with no way of returning back and after countless of difficult combats I reached the final one but find no way that my team can go victorious out of it. I cannot retreat back to use trainers, buy different equipment or get other hirelings even though we have gained a lot of experience for at least 1-2 levels. It is here the weakest part of the game is, an no-retreating end that spans some 6-7 complete levels with both sub-bosses and very difficult ordinary fights. It took me perhaps 8-10 hours to wade through. No way I will reload to the beginning and repeat it.

The whole gaming experience to the end has been a joyful journey though. Let´s see how it stands the test of the gamerating system.

Gameworld & Story

The gameworld is said to build upon the world presented in the Heroes of Might and Magic series so it is not built upon the worlds seen previously in the series. Not that it matters because I think the execution of trying to immerse the player into the world, races, intrigues etc has been very poor. Most of the informatoin or quests given are done in a few sentences with new names, places or races introduced all the time making it almost impossible to relate to.

The game begins with your party landing at the town Sorpigal-by-the sea on the east of the Peninsula. Your first task is to bring the remains of your teacher to the temple at the city of Karthal. But it soons turns out the city is closed off to outsiders following a coup. Sorpigal is also closed off because several disappearances and problems relating to a spiders nest in the town´s well. After having aided the town, the garrisons captain sends the group to Castle Portmeyron to meet with the governor Jon Morgan. There are a lot of things happening but it all ends up to the fact that the major quests are issued by Jon Morgan himself for the rest of the game.

The story is simple and totally linear and I have to admit I cannot really say what it was all about because 99% of the time you are out fighting and moving around in the world and only at a few moments you read about your quest. This is way far from a story driven adventure as seen in for example Dragon Age II. You do get some information from books you find but they add only more incomprehensible and useless information about the quite uninteresting world.

The gameworld in itself is huge though and spans in total four cities, dozens of different complexes, tombs, dungeons, ruins and everything you could wish for, inclusive hidden treasures and riddles. Scattered around are an enourmous amount of monsters - different in each environment - you have to fight in order to proceed.

Rating: 1.5

Economy

I found the economy balance in the game excellent until the last fourth of the game. From the beginning you will have just enough gold to buy rations and trying to stay alive for the first level increases. Then you will need the money to get better weapons and eventually spells which costs a lot of money. You really have to prioritize when and whom should improve their skills or get a new item or spell. Rations is important because they allow you to rest and restore all health and mana points but you could only carry a small amount at any time. It will increase when you visit other taverns in other cities but it is only in cities you could get them.

There are quite a broad range of weapons, armours and magical items in the game and shops seem to randomise new stocks after awhile. This is good because it means replayability is higher. In the last fourth of the game, however, I find myself having too much money and too little to spend it on. There are a limit on how good weapons actually become. The most expensive weapon I´ve found was around 25.000 gold and when I have over 100.000 gold I don´t find any use for them. Relics is the best items you can find and they could not be bought. They level up with you for four levels, improving their abilities for every level. 

I could buy potions that increase my attributes permanently by 1 point for around 10.000 gold. And I might find some very good magical items but still, in the end you have it hard to find something worth to buy. I was playing on the harder warrior difficulty where everything is more expensive. I can imagine this was even a greater problem on the adventurer difficulty. Apart from that it is a solid experience for a very long time.

Rating: 4

NPC & Interactions

This part is easy to rate. You have a few NPC:s in the game. Mostly in towns or castles. If you disregard all trainers there are very few that have anything important to say. Some give you sidequests for the luxury of training you. There are no dialogues whatsoever in the game. You just read a few lines and accept. That´s about it.

Interactions in dungeons consists of triggering preassure plates, pulling levers or press symbols. You cannot throw items or interact with the environment in any other way.

Rating: 1

Monsters, tactics & combat system

It is here the core of the game lies and it is a very solid experience. There are a huge amount of different monsters. All of them have different abilities both in regard to melee and ranged damage, resistances, spells etc. Your job will be to try to use the enemies weakness against them by selecting the right type of spells both in offensive and defensive.

Monsters always appear up to around 4 hexes away and gradually close in on you except if they have powerful ranged abilities which they use. As I´ve stated in previous posts there is no such things as flee or retreat. Win or die is the mantra here. The tactics from your side is to combine and use your group to its best potential both to shield the group and make full use of your offensive capabilities. This is heavily dependent on which combination of classes you have in your party which makes this game highly replayable combatwise.

Combat is fun and very rewarding. I cannot really set my finger on it but they have succeeded in not having too many fights and yet you fight almost all the time. It probably has to do with the fact that combats always blocks your progress. You cannot avoid them and every winning fight opens up a new section to explore with quite good and varied graphics. And you are always close to reach a new level, get more gold for your next item or finding a special item. 

You always have a single action per party member but each one can develop abilities, skills or advanced careers that gives another parry or block chance, the ability to hit all opponents at once etc. I have found that I use quite many different spells in this game which often is not the case in similar games. But here you have to and that is a good thing. The combat system is quite simple but very flexible within that system and that is one of the games major strengths. 

Rating: 4

Magic System

There are many different spell schools available in this game. Each of the elemental ones plus a few other ones. In my playthrough with two freemages I missed out a few of the odd ones and could not reach the highest level of the available ones. But it gave me a good idea of the variations between the schools. In the end, I preferred the fire, earth, light and air magic schools but for the ending part of the game I wish I had pursued darkness more. All really have their strengths and weaknesses and I think the game is quite balanced. 

The spells ranges from lightning spells in your dungeon travelling like torchlight through spotting hidden things, single and group enemy attack spells, single and group healing and protection spells and so on. There are also a few really unique spells like identifying magical items and spirit beacon to allow teleportation. 

Rating: 4

Character generation & development

Character generation is fun and I love the hard choices that has to be made. Out of 12 classes and four races you could only choose four and each one has an promotion class as well with powerful special abilities. 

When in game you could develop your characters in many different ways. For every level increase you get four attribute points to spend and some skill points. You have to carefully think where to put it. At least on warrior difficulty and the feeling of reaching new stages in skill development like expert, master or grandmaster is very satisfying and often you do notice the effect.

There are many different combinations of classes and skills you could use in this game so replayability is quite high even though I never replay games.

Rating: 4

Map design

Maps in the game are often squarelike but not all. There are some very irregular places - including the overland map. Environments differs much and I found the map layout overall very satisfying to be a step-by-step hex game. The square based underlying maps are not visible when you look in first person view, you only notice it clearly when you navigate through your mini-map. 

Rating: 3.5

Manual

It doesn´t happen often but this time I hardly read the manual at all. Which probably is a good thing because I spent the time in the game instead. The manual per se is quite ordinary and fills it function but I really lack a list of spells and skills. You have to select magic schools in the start but you have no clue which spells come with them. Quite idiotic I think. For example, in game there is no information about which abilities you get if you promote your class. 

Rating: 2

Graphics, sound and interface

The graphics in the game is quite good albeit not very detailed in high resolutions. It uses the unity engine. It works very well though and is quite fast so I have nothing to say against it except its lack of details. 

The sound in the game is also quite good but the few pieces of voice acting is terrible and should have been used much more. The theme score at the beginning is excellent and already included on my youtube playlist I listen to at work. The other pieces of music have left me unnoticed though but there are environmental sounds and musical pieces here and there. 

What this game really shines in is its excellent interface. Big icons, obvious alerts when you find items, gaining a new level etc. The inventory, skill tab and magical tabs are excellent and very easy to understand and look at. Small tooltips helps along the way. I really like the help when selecting which items are the best. You are always getting information about the currently equipped item when deciding if a new item is worth wearing. This is the games strong part. 

Rating: 3.5

Gameplay

This game turned out to be much better than I would hope for. The developers really struck a good balance between old-school gaming style while trying to use the best interface available. It is easy and quick to play. Even the fights are often over within a minute or two. The sound of progress is everywhere from experience points gained to items looted. You feel like you progress and everything you find stay valuable until the last third of the game which often is very hard to accomplish in games like this.

What the game do lack is a proper story. They could have done it so much better with more voice acting, more feeling, better written dialogues, more cut-scenes etc. But they didn´t. This is truly a hack´n slash game but it didn´t let on the repetitive feeling until the very end. The last part was really quite boring and I only wished it to end. 

The worlds shifting environments with new monsters helps build up new curiosity in your travels.

The poorly executed end got me stuck for almost 10 hours without knowing how big that is beforehand. You cannot retreat to build up your characters in case you find yourself too weak in the end as I did in the last battle. That is very frustrating. If it should be this difficult at least I should be able to go back and complete sidequests or buy equipment to be able to return and make another try. Nope, it´s all or nothing. Remember that when you enter Karthal during difficult times later on in the game. 

Small things that would have improved things are a scrollable mini-map, the ability to set a way point and let the party travel there. You have to run back and forth through already cleared areas for countless of times which only takes unneccessary times. Since there are no random encounters that should have been mitigated somehow.

I don´t know how people that have no experience in old-schools games or previous might and magic games will receive this but for me it is one of the best games made lately, just as good as Legend of Grimrock. I had more fun with Might and Magic X than with Eschalon: Book III even though it is two very different games.

Rating: 4.5

Section	Rating
Gameworld & Story	1.5
Economy	4
NPC & Interactions	1
Monsters, tactics & combat system	4
Magic system	4
Character generation & development	4
Map design	3.5
Manual	2
Graphics, Sound and Interface	3.5
Summary CRPG value	27.5
Gameplay	4.5