Arx Fatalis - Almost made it

I have continued to play Arx Fatalis although I have had doubts about it. 

When I reached the secret temple and found the meteorite, I had to fight a demonlike spawn of hell in that very last moment. But I also freed a captured woman that was about to be sacrificed to the evil. It was that woman I stumbled upon later on in my travels through the caverns. After a short introduction she hit me in my head and I fell unconscious. When I awoke I had been taken to the rebels hideout. I soon found out that she was the rebels leader.

The rebels had one of the two items in their possession but was only willing to depart of it if I could give them something else of great value. We struck a deal. I promised I would bring them a magical shield in return for the item. I was then released and this Rebel camp worked like a small city. There was a blacksmith there that could repair my equipment and his shop also contained some powerful items that I had the amibiton to aquire by collecting gold. 

Part of the serpents lair

So I left the Rebels camp and explored through the caverns filled with orcs and ogres and finally reached the serpents world. They was also in possession of the other important item but the only way for me to get hold of it was to go through "Test of illusion". It was made up of several rooms with lesser and major puzzles to be solved in each one of them until I at the end got hold of the item. I have to admit I had to cheat at some point or I would have got stuck.

The problems could be from pulling levers in a specific order to use a scroll of reveal to show me the real lever amongst many faked ones and finally to have me go straight through a wall since it was an illusion. That kind of things that could get you stuck for hours without solving it.

Anyway, I finally got hold of one of the important items here. I then continued to explore the caverns. The game consists of many levels and they are connected by stairs or paths leading up and down. There could be several exits on each level and each level is divided into parts that are not always accessible from each other. This means there is a lot of running around to find the right paths. Fortunately I finally found several teleporters of the ones I wrote about in my last post. I activated them and now I have at least fast short cuts that takes me to a few of the major places.

But my mission is not done yet. I have to find the rebels shield but I am not sure where to look. So to make a break in that part I opted to go down the Crypt in the city. I knew a girl had dissappeared nearby and I had finally got the keys to get down there. 

The Crypt, quite an atmospheric place

The Crypt is a very atmospheric and eerie place with strange sounds and fogs. It did improve the game a bit. Down here i had to solve several small puzzles in order to continue. I am not really sure why I am there but I plundered every grave I could find with my pickaxe and found valuable items as well as small inscripted stones which I believe will be important later on. 

The Crypt spans several levels, each one getting harder and harder to solve. There is a lot of closed portcullis, doors and traps that has to be overcome. This actually turned out to be the hardest part of the game so far puzzlewise. You have to find all levers and preassure plats and activate them in a certain order to be able to proceed. I was close to give up and had to cheat myselves through parts of this complex. 

The special stones with inscriptions is the key here. You have to find all six of them and use them to retrieve the Shield in the end. I could also, If I wished plunder the last treasure grave to give me a magical helm but the escape from that part was way to hard for me to overcome. I was chased by Liches and had no way of escaping. The helm didn´t feel really worth it.

I quickly returned back to the rebels camp and was able to switch the shield for the last magical artifact I needed. I returned to the temple and equipped both magical artifacts to be able to destroy the meteorite. I was just heading back to the city to communicate my victory when I noticed everything had changed. Enemy snake women had infested the caves. Tough opponents but I was able to kill them. I had just crept out from the caverns into the city and found it full of evil Ylsides (heavily armoured guys with huge swords). They had taken over the town. 

Even though I had saved 3 full levels of attribute and skillpoints and now spent it to maximise my close combat to over 100 and my defense and strength, I had no chance to kill any of them. They are just too powerful for me. After four hits I go down. They are also extremely fast so I cannot use hit-and-run tactics.

I also lack a supply of healing potions at this stage and don´t have much money after all repairs I have made to my equipment. So after 3 tries I just gave up. If it where only one of these I might keep trying but it seems I have to take on one after another. A wounded soldier told me that all of the survivors are being kept in the castle prison. 

I googled for this part of the game and it turns up it is a heavily ill-balanced part of the game and mostly so for the warrior type character. The hints are to sneak past or use poison and spells. Neither of which I tried since I haven´t put anything into magic. I give up on this game. I think I am not too far from the end which frustrates me but it isn´t just worth it. I even failed in finding a cheat that would help me. It feels like a waste of time to spend on a game not to finish it but in the end my meagre time could be spent on something more enjoyable. 

Coming up is the review of the game.

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.