Arx Fatalis was found by my son and I in the bargain bin at Gamestop. I'm always suspect of games I've never heard of for less than 8 dollars, but it was buy 2 get 1 free, so this game was free!

While my son played Legacy of Kain and Fable - The Lost Chapters, I explored the sunless underground world of ARX. It is a typical fantasy dungeon RPG in real time. You start off in a goblin dungeon and eventually you are asked by the human king of Arx to save the whole underground world from the coming of Akbaa some demonic creature from another dimension that a strange cult has called up. Along the way of course, you get to face goblins, trolls and of course a DRAGON. What dungeon crawler doesn't feature a dragon at some point? You upgrade your stats, including strength, intelligence, magic, stealth and object skills. You can use better armor and weapons as you advance.

As you go through a fairly linear plot with a few side quests you can earn gold by mining, fishing, tomb raiding and then use your hard earned money to buy what you want from the town merchants. Later on you can even learn to pickpocket, I was able to steal the keys to the kingdom from the king of Arx himself later in the game.

Despite being Cliched, it was FUN!

Alright, you've read the above and it sounds like every other dungeon crawler out there. However, the plot actually was interesting and got me involved in the world of ARX. Doing things have definite results. In one fit of anger, I may have killed all the goblins in the goblin kingdom. Now the trolls, who worked for the goblins in the mines were free! Yet, Pog, king of the trolls said you no longer trolls friend, you killed goblins, we no longer get gold. My character told him, he felt that Pog should have reacted better to freeing the Trolls from slavery. All the characters are voiced too, and although some phrases get repetitive, overall, the voice acting was good for a video game and often entertaining. I did get sick of the goblins calling me a smelly human.

The people of Arx

The various races that live in Arx all have their own agendas. The humans just want peace, although there is a lot of political intrigue going on. The goblins want to make money and eat pies, and keep the goblin troll relationship as is. The trolls are simple and work for the goblins for a fraction of the gold earned. An order of priests want to bring Akbaa, a nether world god back to Arx. An order of snake women help the humans and have their own agenda. The dwarves mine the lowest levels for mithril and the dragons just want to be left alone. You get to meet and interact with them all. Unlike other games, there are only a finite number of folks who live in Arx. It took me about 10 minutes at one point in the game to wipe out the whole of the goblin kingdom, because there are only about 10 goblins that live in the goblin compound. Although there are lots of caves, crypts and mines to explore, the number of actual inhabitants is fairly small.

Magic

Although certainly not as in depth as Morrowwind, this RPG has a pretty good in depth system of magic. You acquire runes that can be assigned to quick buttons or drawn out by hitting the right buttons on your control pad. (I opted for the quick cast, which is in the options menu). You can also create potions as your character levels up. Pick flowers, get a pestle and mortar, grind the flowers up, put them in an empty bottle, and then put the whole thing into a still and boil it up, and you have any number of interesting potions from the health saving life potions to invisibility potions.

Cooking

You have cooking skills in the game too! You can kill chickens and pigs (and rats, yecch) and cook em up in a fire. You can make a fishing rod and catch fish! Your character doesn't like sushi though, so the fish must be cooked too. You can even make an apple pie or get drunk on wine!

Graphics

The graphics aren't bad, although not quite as good as some X-Box games. Faces of humans can look a little bland, but textures and environments are interesting. Occasional glitches in the graphics cause things to be stuck in the wall though. Graphics were good enough to keep the game interesting, but had a definite "old school flair". Graphics were on par with Morrowwind the Elder Scrolls on X box. Other Playstation 2 and X box games look better like Champions of Norrath or Baldur's Gate.

Sound

I liked the sound in this game. There are eerie ambient sounds throughout the game that can be downright creepy. I also enjoyed that every character in the game actually speaks, you don't have to read all the dialogue. The goblins were the funniest to listen to.

Controller

The control scheme was easy to use in most respects. One controller moves your character, the other controls the camera angle. The buttons and control pads let you access actions, magic and your inventory. You can precast spells so that you can cast them with one quick button rather than the more elaborate system of choosing your magic book, picking a spell and then casting. That could be difficult in real time combat that this game uses. Inventory, although it is supposed to have hot button assignments, was always a pain to scroll through. I couldn't get the hot buttons to work, and even then you only get two (the black and white buttons). Therefore to get to any item in your inventory, you literally have to scroll through everything, which can be a pain, especially when you want to quickly pull out a key to open a door and escape. Pickpocketing on the other hand was pretty easy once you learn it. A small symbol appears on the screen when you can pickpocket, and then you just hit the back button, and you can take everything out of their pockets with no consequences.

Did I have Fun? (a.k.a. the summary)

Despite the shortcomings in the game, it was funner than it sounds from its faults. I loved some of the side quests you can take, some official, some not. One unofficial quest I took upon myself was to rob the bank of Arx. I was easily able to pickpocket the banker for the keys to the vault, but not to get in without the guards turning against me. However, in one chapter of the game, the guards aren't around. I took the opportunity to clean out the bank! On an official quest to the lowest levels of the crypts, I was truly creeped out. A combination of ambient sounds and graphics being five levels underground in a crypt was one of the games scariest parts. Overall, even though the game is a bit linear and not as in depth as other dungeon crawlers, ARX FATALIS offers a pretty fun play.


Recommended: Yes