Arthurian Legends - Witchaven-like medieval first-person slasher

[udm]

Just finished it after wading through a whole bunch of glitches. Performance dropped dramatically in Episode 3. Also kept getting corrupt quicksave/quickloads, meaning every time I died or nearly died, I had to quit the game and boot it back up in order to quickload properly. I was very close to giving up and calling it quits at E3M6.

One of the Steam reviews said the game becomes somewhat repetitive towards the later sections. That's kinda true; I felt that Episode 2 and 3 dragged on for too long. Some of the levels looked quite similar (although this could have been exacerbated by the annoying repeated need to quit and reboot the game). However, overall I'd say the game has some fantastic level design not seen in many FPSes. I'd go as far as to say the general feel (fun + presentation) of the levels surpasses Blood and rivals DN3D. It mixes up wide landscapes and claustrophobic corridors with good monster, brush and furniture item placements so you're constantly challenged to use whatever you have at your disposal. In fact, all items are useful, even the Antidote. I think I used Strength Potions the least but that's more due to me forgetting about them. I'm also constantly kept on my toes, wondering what the next encounter is going to be like, looking out for sudden surprises. The game gets very intense in Episode 3.

Would easily give this 4.5/5 for overall design, but the glitches pull it down to a 3.5 or 4 (if I'm feeling generous). It doesn't try to do anything new, but thank god for that, it doesn't have to. It takes 90s FPSes' mechanics and refines them to a point where it's all very well-balanced and well-executed.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Yeah the game is rough as fuck around the edges, but it makes you feel like playing through some 80's Spielberg/Williams romp, and let's face it, that is just something truly special in this day and age.

 

[SharkClub]

I've been playing this game on and off for the past week or so on the highest difficulty mode and I gotta say it's pretty fun. As of this post I have just beaten Chapter 2.

I've actually finished the first Witchaven game in the past, and it was excruciatingly annoying pretty much the entire time. I have never beaten Witchaven 2 because the first one was so fucking bad it turned me sour on it. The comparisons between this game and Witchaven are definitely somewhat there, but it's kinda like if Witchaven wasn't fucking annoying the shit out of the player at every opportunity and was actually fun instead. It has the same core combat loop of picking up weapons and engaging in meaty (though extremely simple) melee combat with enemies until those weapons break and then juggling different ones for certain encounters. The collectible relics, magic runes and off-hand options are all great also.

I particularly love that all of the secrets are telegraphed in some way and the game isn't a wallhumping simulator. You'll either have to do some platforming, bash in a visibly cracked wall or simply be perceptive when looking for gaps in the walls hidden behind the 2d billboard props. Witchaven's biggest problems are to do with the fact that it has completely un-telegraphed traps and (sometimes mandatory) secrets, for example there are a shitload of fake floors in Witchaven that will result in instant death if you step over them, but they do not look any different at all from a normal floor, they are simply able to be fallen through on to a pike that will impale you; killing you instantly. Which is what turns Witchaven into a fucking savescummy trial and error shitfest instead of playing to its strengths with fun combat encounters. This sort of garbage is completely absent from Arthurian Legends, so it's taking the best of a Witchaven title (namely the weighty feeling melee weapons and enemy variety) and getting rid of the worst of it at the same time. All environmental dangers and traps I have seen in Arthurian Legends so far are telegraphed, give you time to react or are otherwise fair and not total bullshit.

The visuals also work for me, the art style is pretty good for a grimdark medieval fantasy setting. The only thing I have a gripe with art wise (and this is going to sound a bit silly) is the Doom-style head on the HUD, to me it just seems a bit cliched and out of place for this game. On the other hand I don't really have a problem with the protagonist's paper doll existing in the inventory screen, I dunno. For the longest time looking at this game from the sidelines without actually looking into it, I believed it to be yet another GZDoom game, like a Doom total conversion, turns out its on a different engine entirely that isn't even related to Doom, and it has its own distinct look and feel because of it. It would probably be hellish (or outright impossible) to try and create some of these levels in the Doom or BUILD engines without a bunch of source port hacks, the levels are put together in a way that is like it's made from Minecraft blocks more than anything.

On the bugs/performance front: I have noticed a few dips in performance when I'm in very large areas, but my computer is quite good so it doesn't totally shit the bed at any point. Bugs wise the only thing that annoys me is that if I'm playing in windowed mode, the game will sometimes retain focus even after alt-tabbing, so you can't use your mouse to click on things outside of the game until you quit the game entirely. Multiple alt-tabs don't have any different effect when it gets stuck in this state, but oddly it only seems to happen after you've already alt-tabbed out and back in at least once. I haven't noticed any problems with saving and loading but that's probably because I only save once per level at the start of each level and if I die I just load back to that save, I am definitely not using the save/load feature enough to notice the problems that were mentioned with it.

 

[udm]

Yeah it is a great game despite all the technical issues I had with it. Few games can make me weather through their technical problems. Out of curiosity, what difficulty are you playing on?

 

[Curratum]

Tried the game on a completely new system and GPU. Now it crashes entirely...

Dev just never tested on a single AMD GPU it seems like.

 

[Tacgnol]

Has there been any signs of life from the Dev? He seemingly disappeared into nothingness.

 

[JarlFrank]

Tried the game on a completely new system and GPU. Now it crashes entirely...

Dev just never tested on a single AMD GPU it seems like.

Yeah I gave up trying to get a decent performance on my system. My CPU is 11 years old by now but I can run games like Dishonored 2 with no problem, and my GPU is pretty recent and hasn't had problems with any game I tried to run on it.
The only thing is... both my CPU and GPU are AMD. And everyone with AMD systems has been having performance issues with this game.

No matter what I try, it runs like shit to the point that using ranged weapons is impossible since I can't aim when it stutters that hard.

 

[SharkClub]

Yeah it is a great game despite all the technical issues I had with it. Few games can make me weather through their technical problems. Out of curiosity, what difficulty are you playing on?

Whatever the fourth (highest) difficulty is called.

Very sad to hear that people on AMD can't play the game, I don't mean to rub it in while singing its praises but it's definitely worth playing if the dev ever ends up fixing it for you guys.

 

[Bad Sector]

FWIW the *demo* seems playable on Linux with wine-staging and DXVK after installing a bunch of prerequisites and using Goldberg's Steam Emulator (...the developer checks if Steam is running FFS...). Performance is 60-65fps in the first few areas (counted via MangoHud - funny enough it wouldn't show up without the --dlsym parameter which is used for OpenGL, but the HUD says it uses Direct3D and would crash at start if it was enabled by default... WTF is that engine doing?).

I don't know how the full game would fare though, considering the technical issues it has. Might buy it in a sale in case it doesn't work.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

FWIW the *demo* seems playable on Linux with wine-staging and DXVK after installing a bunch of prerequisites and using Goldberg's Steam Emulator (...the developer checks if Steam is running FFS...). Performance is 60-65fps in the first few areas (counted via MangoHud - funny enough it wouldn't show up without the --dlsym parameter which is used for OpenGL, but the HUD says it uses Direct3D and would crash at start if it was enabled by default... WTF is that engine doing?).

I don't know how the full game would fare though, considering the technical issues it has. Might buy it in a sale in case it doesn't work.

all you have to do to play it on steam is click play, werked fine for me on linux

 

[Bad Sector]

all you have to do to play it on steam is click play, werked fine for me on linux

Last time i tried it didn't work, the game was crashing on startup. Though thinking about it, it might be for the same reason MangoHud caused it to crash if it was visible by default since i have the Steam overlay FPS counter always enabled.

Also i want to remove the Steam dependency from games i get on Steam whenever i can so i can have my own offline copies.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Radeon users beware that AMD has changed its OpenGL drivers a couple of months ago. They made them faster, but it could also break compatibility. Perhaps try to go back pre-22.7.1 (I believe?) and try that.

 

[SharkClub]

Finished it, breddy gud. It's not some outstanding masterclass achievement of game design or anything but it is a solid above average first person action game.

Total death count by the end on the stats screen was 10, without savescumming (1 save at the start of each level).

 

[Curratum]

Finished it, breddy gud. It's not some oustanding masterclass achievement of game design or anything but it is a solid above average first person action game.

Total death count by the end on the stats screen was 10, without savescumming (1 save at the start of each level).

 

[Curratum]

I already refunded it once because it ran like a turd. I don't know if the demo will be different from the current full build but the demo simply crashes back to Windows. I think it ran on in windowed mode but you can't see your health and status bar that way.

 

[thesheeep]

This game not only harkens back to the old days for graphics and gameplay, but also for getting the damn thing to run in the first place.

I have a new PC since the last time I tried to run this (and it was unplayably laggy). Makes me wonder if a 3k$ PC can handle this beast...

 

[Curratum]

This game not only harkens back to the old days for graphics and gameplay, but also for getting the damn thing to run in the first place.

I have a new PC since the last time I tried to run this (and it was unplayably laggy). Makes me wonder if a 3k$ PC can handle this beast...

If the GPU is NVidia, it will run fine. If the GPU is AMD, it won't run at all, simple as that.

 

[thesheeep]

This game not only harkens back to the old days for graphics and gameplay, but also for getting the damn thing to run in the first place.

I have a new PC since the last time I tried to run this (and it was unplayably laggy). Makes me wonder if a 3k$ PC can handle this beast...

If the GPU is NVidia, it will run fine. If the GPU is AMD, it won't run at all, simple as that.

It's not quite that simple, as I use Linux.
On ProtonDB and elsewhere you can find reports of people with AMD cards who were able to run the game fine using Proton or "pure" Wine - still with performance issues, mind you, but that just seems to be a given with this game.

Aaaand... I gave it another try, and indeed it works fine with my AMD GPU (using specifically Proton 5.0-10 as nothing newer seems to work).
So, yay me!

 

[Curratum]

Imagine...

Imagine being SO INCOMPETENT that your game runs better on Linux that it does on Windows...

 

[thesheeep]

Imagine being SO INCOMPETENT that your game runs better on Linux that it does on Windows...

That's not really surprising in general if both versions are made with the same quality.
Windows is a monstrous resource hog and Linux is sleek and fast.
So given the same thing, Linux will run it better.

Why do you think I use it? I'm certainly not one of those "muh privacy!" or "MS bad!" people, I use it simply because it is faster and better for everything I do with my PC, including gaming (and I don't care about the few titles that won't run on Linux).

However, what IS surprising in this case is that Proton runs the Windows version better than Windows itself (at least with AMD?).
That's definitely a rarity.
But: If it does happen, it usually happens with older titles that are troublesome to get to run on modern Windows at all. So even in this, the game harkens back to the old days

Either way, though, I'm gonna shelve this game again until I actually have time to play it properly. Other games to get through, first.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Imagine...

Imagine being SO INCOMPETENT that your game runs better on Linux that it does on Windows...

AMD linux drivers are exceptionally good

 

[Bad Sector]

AMD linux drivers are exceptionally good

Makes sense since with Linux they can take advantage of the work other developers put on Mesa for decades :-P. AFAIK Intel's Arc GPUs also do not have the issues with older APIs that they have on Windows too.

 

[Curratum]

Hawwwwwww yes, boys!

Decided to try the full game again to see if it's just the demo that crashes when I run it and pirated a copy. Even an older near-launch version worked fine, locked 60 fps at 110 fov and increased visibility distance.

Time to purchase and actually enjoy it! <3

 

[udm]

Hawwwwwww yes, boys!

Decided to try the full game again to see if it's just the demo that crashes when I run it and pirated a copy. Even an older near-launch version worked fine, locked 60 fps at 110 fov and increased visibility distance.

Time to purchase and actually enjoy it! <3

Congrats! What was it that changed between then and now?

 

[Curratum]

Hawwwwwww yes, boys!

Decided to try the full game again to see if it's just the demo that crashes when I run it and pirated a copy. Even an older near-launch version worked fine, locked 60 fps at 110 fov and increased visibility distance.

Time to purchase and actually enjoy it! <3

Congrats! What was it that changed between then and now?

I got a while new PC, mobo, GPU and CPU, but even on that, the Steam demo just crashes back to desktop.

The pirated copy I tried this morning ran fine...