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Arx Fatalis | 
 enlarge | From: Encore Software
Category: Video Games
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 19561
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Xp
ESRB: Mature
Media: CD-ROM
Number Of Items: 1
Age: 17 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 1.4
Model: 28000
UPC: 705381280002
EAN: 0705381280002
ASIN: B0001GJBTY
Release Date: January 30, 2004
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| Features:
| • | Windows 98/ME/2000/XP 256MB RAM Intel Pentium III 900MHz, or compatible DirectX | | • | 8.0 comptaible 32 MB 4x CD-Rom DirectX 8.0 compatible sound card 750 MB HD | | • | Encore | | • | PC |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Great fun January 12, 2008
This is a great game. Lots of fun. Amazing environment and a very interesting story. What more to ask?
 A good idea, poorly implemented June 28, 2005
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
Arx Fatalis is one of those games that seems to start well but eventually wears on you. It's like hearing a good song and then having to hear it over and over again. First of all, I liked the idea. Your character starts out in a goblin prison underground and must find out what evil has arisen to destroy humanity (and others). At least in the beginning, it's an interesting dungeon crawl, with some decent graphics and very well-done sound effects. However, several hours into the game you'll find yourself backtracking a lot through dungeon levels, wondering aimlessly for clues, stumped by some outrageously hard puzzles, and generally frustrated with the little information the game provides about your quests. It's really a shame, because Arx Fatalis could have really been a great game. However, some poor design decisions by the developers have doomed it to be simply a decent game, if you can force your way to the end.
Gameplay: The interface takes some getting use to, however, controling your character is much like other first-person shooters. There are not many options when it comes to character creation, but there are enough to roughly make a fighter, magic-user, or thief character, or some hybrid. Combat is fairly straightforward, but the magic system never appealed to me. You literally have to find rune stones and then trace (using the mouse) a series of symbols in the air before you can use the spell. Fortunately, you can store up to 3 spells--you would never last in combat if you had to cast spells on the spot. The game has a limited variety of foes, largely spiders, rats, goblins, and trolls. Also, while you'll come across a few varieties of equipment, very little of it seems up to snuff. The armor and weapons seem to break rather quickly and are inconvenient to have repaired.
Unfortunately, this game has a few major problems that just drain the life out of it. These issues are aside from the minor annoyances of a near-useless journal, an inventory screen that opens a little too often, and no way of gauging the health of your opponents. First, there is just too much going back and forth between places. If you were being asked to travel to new places and see new things, that would be one thing. However, much of your time is spent going between the city of Arx and one or more of the same old dungeon levels. It gets real old fairly quickly. It seems that the developers anticipated this, and your character is informed that there is an easier, quicker way of traveling between levels. However, in true Arx Fatalis style, my character never came across both of the runes that would have allowed him to teleport between levels (and no one in the game gave him a clue about where to find them).
Besides the repetitious travel, there are some puzzles in this game that make absolutely no sense. Without a good walkthrough guide, the average person will not be able to finish this game. There are not only the annoying "find the hidden button," "make a crazy jump," "guess who to talk to next" kinds of puzzles, which are bad enough. There are puzzles that I honestly don't know how any intelligent person could figure out without consulting a guide. One involved making a mithril sword that had several steps that involved three separate rooms, three different machine processes, and fighting several foes, with almost no hints about how to accomplish it. If you get through this one without help, it would be no more than blind luck. It is rare for me not to complete a game, but after running into one particularly outlandish puzzle (the star map one in the crypt) I finally decided that the game was more pointless head-scratching than entertainment and called it quits.
Graphics: One thing that Arx Fatalis definitely has going for it is atmosphere. Some of the caves are truly creepy, and some of the visual effects can be downright chilling. The game is played from first-person perspective, so you do occasionally feel that you are in the game. Character animations are decent, but there is not a wide range of face models. Overall, the game has a good appearance and does make you feel as though you were underground in dark, foreboding dungeons.
Sound: This area is generally well done. The caves and dungeons have all sorts of strange and scary sounds. The voice acting is decent, and there was nothing wrong (or particularly right) with the music.
Bottom line, if you play Arx Fatalis, do so knowing that you are in for an atmospheric dungeon crawl with a good story, but also a heavy dose of frustration and mind-numbing repetition. Given that there are much better games out there like Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, and Gothic 2, I can't really recommend Arx Fatalis. It is really only for those gamers who don't mind spending hours lost in dungeons or stumped by puzzles, or who don't mind making progress with the generous assistance of a walkthrough guide.
 First-person fantasy role-playing immersive simulation October 9, 2004
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
This is, without a doubt, one of the best games I've ever played. I haven't finished playing Morrowind or Ultima Underworld, but it's definitely similar to those. The graphics are much newer than Ultima Underworld, but not quite as new as Morrowind. The gameplay and story are excellent, regardless of the age of the game.
One particular feature that some players will doubtless find aggravating is the necessity of "drawing" magic runes with your mouse to cast spells. If you have good enough manual dexterity to be playing a first-person role-playing game in the first place, you can get used to it, but it will be annoying at first. Casting spells in combat is virtually impossible. Fortunately, you can pre-cast up to three spells before combat, then trigger them instantly by pressing the 1, 2, and 3 keys. Spells scrolls are also available that don't require any rune-drawing at all. If you really have trouble drawing the runes, you can just rely on scrolls for the few cases where magic is really required and focus your character development on combat and stealth instead of magic.
The world of Arx is amazingly interactive. You get hungry from time to time, depending on how much you've been exerting yourself. To feed yourself, you can make a fishing rod, then catch and cook fish to eat, or mix and bake bread or pies, butcher animals for meat, or throw a fireball at a chicken, resulting in a whole roasted chicken. You can find vegetables to eat and various other sorts of plants that can be ground up and used in a special apparatus to make magical potions. Your armor and weapons will wear with usage, but you can either learn to fix them yourself, pay a blacksmith to fix them, replace them, or enchant them with a certan rare magical element that makes them indestructible. You can even smith your own weapons and enchant them.
Although the main plot is, as usual, relatively fixed, the many side-quests and sub-plots are very open-ended. You can approach much of the game in whatever order and at whatever pace you choose, which is not always a good thing. You can end up in an area swarming with enemies that are too difficult for you to handle with little warning. The solution, of course, is to run away and go get some more experience somewhere else first. You'll end up playing in roughly the order of increasing enemy difficulty anyway, but it will be your own decision to do so, not a pre-defined series of keys required to open the next door. It's a subtle difference, but it makes the game feel more like you're in control.
A final word of warning is in order with regard to technical support. I had some difficulties in certain areas of the game, possibly because my sound card was flaking out. I don't know whether it was just my hardware, a flaw in the game, or some interaction of the two, because I couldn't get any useful support from the publisher, JoWood Productions. They did try, and perhaps some of their staff have a better handle on the English language (JoWood is in Germany) but after a dozen or so emails back and forth, no progress was made in diagnosing, let alone resolving, the problem, and I ended up finishing the game without ever finding out what was wrong. At least I was able to finish the game, even if I had to reboot and reload from time to time.
5* fun(bottom line) 5* overall September 3, 2004
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
No hype, no flakey online dweebs. This is a serious RPG in the spirit of Ultima Underworld. Except you are a nameless one who has to find his Identity and his way. Voice acting great, graphics supurb, sound mysterious and subtle, but the game play is the feature that really stands out(and that is the bottom line). No long reviews here, go get the title!
One of the best RPG's ever. August 21, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is probably one of the most unknown, yet incredible RPG's out there. Released without much fanfair, around the time Morrowind came out. Morrowind stole much of the focus from this game - which a great game in its own right, I think this game is as good and possibly better!
A VAST and fully interactive world, with engaging characters, superb graphics, tons of subquests and plots, and intricute interactions with NPCs. Don't let the date of release fool you, this game has graphics that rival most games released this year so far!
If you, like most of us, missed this gem at the time it was released, buy it, don't wait, buy it now! You won't regret it. In this day of overused genres, poor products, and contentless games, this one stands out.
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