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Arkane Finished Arx Fatalis for the 1st time

Child of Malkav

Erudite
Joined
Feb 11, 2018
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I know, I'm a bit late to the party, but damn it my love of immersive sims just couldn't let me pass this one up.
I got the GOG version plus Arx Libertatis.
So, my thoughts: pretty good game. However, to say that it aged poorly is a massive understatement.
Anyway, on to...
The good: interesting story and setting, interaction between environment and items is really cool, switching from navigation to inventory and interaction mode is awesome (probably my favorite part, you don't go through a bazillion menus, it just opens up a small window at the bottom and can interact with the items really easy, wish more games implemented this), the spell casting system where you draw the symbols (however this is also a negative), you can pull some cool stuff with spells, use telekinesis through the bars to activate levers, steal one of the eggs, levitate let's you fly around, you can turn invisible (really helps with pickpocketing or just speedrunning through some areas), you can destroy some doors, steal merchant inventory, especially runes etc. And various other combos. Typical immersive sim stuff.
And now on to ...
The bad: Since I played a mage I'm going to start with the spell casting (the combat is really bad, going for mage is kind of natural). It's cool, interesting at first but it has issues. When I had to draw the G rune (forgot it's name), or the 2 rune (needed for telekinesis) or Taar rune (needed for projectiles) it just wouldn't register. Regarding Taar it was a nightmare, it either registered as movis or something else no matter how well I drew them (and I did draw them a lot). A workaround for this was just save and quit and re-enter the game. That seemed to solve the issue. The combination of spells can be found in the spell book and I wished I could just cast them from there, maybe at a higher cost or something. It really becomes tiring near the end of the game especially when encountering tougher enemies.
Overall the system I cool, I got what they tried to do but honestly, if a system like this isn't working flawlessly I hope I won't see it in a future title. It's too frustrating when it doesn't work as intended.
Fireball and Harm really are the best damage spells. I invested only in the Mental stat, went for casting at 100, object knowledge at 80 and technical at 100. Finished at level 8. Probably could have gotten to 9. Ylsides went down with 1 fireball at close range, demon went down to a stack of 4 Harms as well as the final boss.
Regarding the story, I payed attention to every cutscene, read, stole every note and book and I still had to consult 2 walkthroughs because I sequence broke some stuff. For example, I got in the storage of level 6 Sisters and they attacked me. So I killed them. All of them. Explored the thingy, got one of the rings, found out I really wasn't supposed to do that (killing them that is). Later on, when I needed to speak with them I couldn't since they were dead. I also couldn't inform the chick back at the castle of this heroic deed so that maybe she could tell me where to go next. Eventually I got taken by the rebels, explored their area, couldn't get out, went to explore some highly protected zone, went invisible, found the other ring, went back out, everyone and their mother wanted to kill me so I just harmed my way out of it. Eventually found a key that I could use to get out. There was something about a shield that I was supposed to find. Then I found out that I shouldn't have killed the rebels (extra xp and stuff). Got a feeling of deja-vu. Went to the king, couldn't tell him the rebels were dead. I thought he hated them. Whatever, explored levels 7 and 8, ran from the beast, went down a ladder in a cavernous room and the creature followed me down there, did some Benny Hill levels of trolling, climbed the ladder and beast couldn't and it remained there with me free to explore the rest of the level.
Didn't know what to do with the Akbaa stones, I remembered the Ylside Outpost, went there to a room with 5 pedestals, I figured that they would fit and they did, however I still needed one more, searched the whole place, consulted the walkthrough and it said that the priest who attacks you before entering the Outpost has it. Wtf? Most of the time those priests didn't have anything of note on them so I stopped checking their corpses only to find out the last important item on one of them.
And others. Obscure as fuck.
Puzzles in general weren't tough. In the Sisters Outpost where you look through the globe and see a lever, it basically shows you the order in which to pull them but they all look the same so I just dropped items in front of each lever and everytime I looked through the globe I saw the item there and yeah, easy.
What I liked the most though was the premise. The Sun died, humans went underground. Maybe Arx 2 could be about humans returning to the surface in small numbers, setting up villages, cities, in a Fallout like wasteland. Anyway, a lot of potential.
Started a new playthrough to experiment with some other stuff.
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Regarding the story, I payed attention to every cutscene, read, stole every note and book and I still had to consult 2 walkthroughs because I sequence broke some stuff. For example, I got in the storage of level 6 Sisters and they attacked me. So I killed them. All of them. Explored the thingy, got one of the rings, found out I really wasn't supposed to do that (killing them that is). Later on, when I needed to speak with them I couldn't since they were dead.

That one's a classic.

Now that you have finished the game anyway, watch some speedruns. There are some mad shortcuts through arx fatalis - most of which seem like breaking the game. But I don't think any of them really do.
I have never tried a "kill everyone" run though. It certainly makes no difference with the rebels and later on "cleaning" Arx isn't much of a problem either (killing Lunshire even earns you a pretty nice sword), but I wonder what happens if you...

...kill Suiberis early.
 

Child of Malkav

Erudite
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Regarding the story, I payed attention to every cutscene, read, stole every note and book and I still had to consult 2 walkthroughs because I sequence broke some stuff. For example, I got in the storage of level 6 Sisters and they attacked me. So I killed them. All of them. Explored the thingy, got one of the rings, found out I really wasn't supposed to do that (killing them that is). Later on, when I needed to speak with them I couldn't since they were dead.

That one's a classic.

Now that you have finished the game anyway, watch some speedruns. There are some mad shortcuts through arx fatalis - most of which seem like breaking the game. But I don't think any of them really do.
I have never tried a "kill everyone" run though. It certainly makes no difference with the rebels and later on "cleaning" Arx isn't much of a problem either (killing Lunshire even earns you a pretty nice sword), but I wonder what happens if you...

...kill Suiberis early.
Gonna try that.
 
Joined
May 31, 2018
Messages
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The Present
I played for the first time in 2010, I think. I didn't care for the story. I played a Mage/Thief though, and had an excellent time exploring. I probably completed 80% of the game before I even advanced the plot beyond first arriving at town and meeting the ruler. Drawing the runes to cast spells is made far easier if you use lower resolutions. I believe I used that mod, but still reverted to lower resolutions because of how improved it was.
 
Joined
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Messages
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The Present
Lowering the res improves the drawing? Good to know.

Yeah, I remember reading from authoritative modding sources that it should help. I can't remember if I settled on 800x600 or 1024x768, though my gut tells me 800x600. Those resolutions sound archaic, but I didn't think it looked notably worse.
 

Peachcurl

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The bad: Since I played a mage I'm going to start with the spell casting (the combat is really bad, going for mage is kind of natural). It's cool, interesting at first but it has issues. When I had to draw the G rune (forgot it's name), or the 2 rune (needed for telekinesis) or Taar rune (needed for projectiles) it just wouldn't register. Regarding Taar it was a nightmare, it either registered as movis or something else no matter how well I drew them (and I did draw them a lot). A workaround for this was just save and quit and re-enter the game. That seemed to solve the issue. The combination of spells can be found in the spell book and I wished I could just cast them from there, maybe at a higher cost or something. It really becomes tiring near the end of the game especially when encountering tougher enemies.
Overall the system I cool, I got what they tried to do but honestly, if a system like this isn't working flawlessly I hope I won't see it in a future title. It's too frustrating when it doesn't work as intended.

I think it's a very cool magic system, but I agree that it
a) can become tedious with spells you repeat often and
b) is subject to annoying confusions, such as taar mistaken for movis.

Point b) is at least partially due to the implementation. I'm fairly sure the game industry learned a thing or two about gesture recognition since Arx Fatalis was released. So, if a decent dev would approach this today, I'd bet the experience would be much better in that regard.

It's a shame that so few games try to be really innovative with their magic systems. Some at least have a decent approach towards building/combining your spells: Two Worlds 2, Outwards (in a very limited way), Fictorum, Magicmaker.

(Probably, there's a bunch of cheap mobile or console games that employ a similar spell system like Arx Fatalis. Not that I'd be likely to try those.)
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Could it be that the casting state (when you draw the runes) somehow breaks cutscenes?

I saw a speedrun that basically cancelled out the entrance of the black beast by walking into the dwarven settlement while failing a spell in spell casting mode.

I wonder if drawing spells was added later in development. That might explain some of the problems with it. It always felt like an independent system the game could have done without to me. In fact (but also obviously) they had to change the entire thing for the XBox version, where casting is more like doing a fighting-game styled button combination if I remember correctly.
 
Last edited:

Child of Malkav

Erudite
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Feb 11, 2018
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Yeah, restarted recently, tried to kill Suiberis early but he's immortal, Bethesda style. Gonna keep trying as I'm making some progress.
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
The magic system was very innovative but really not that great despite of the effort.
You could save the spells which made it less annoying but also kind of watered down the whole idea.

Something like that can't function in a real time game and make fun.
I can see it in a blobber but that would turn boring very fast as well i think.
 
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I was gonna say that it'd work well having no precasting if the gesture recognition was better, but considering how powerful magic was I'd actually say no precasting, with the game's shitty gesture recognition, would in a way be ideal. I actually like the idea of a powerful magic system that's difficult to use, but it's hard to implement that in a way such that difficult means player skill. Arx Fatalis did that well, even if it was unintentional.
 

Peachcurl

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I was gonna say that it'd work well having no precasting if the gesture recognition was better, but considering how powerful magic was I'd actually say no precasting, with the game's shitty gesture recognition, would in a way be ideal. I actually like the idea of a powerful magic system that's difficult to use, but it's hard to implement that in a way such that difficult means player skill. Arx Fatalis did that well, even if it was unintentional.

I think it's possible to do that without crappy gesture recognition. An easy way to do it would be to increase the number of gestures required for a certain spell (also: increase number of gestures according to power of spell).

And with respect to precasting: I'd like something in between. No fully precast spells, but gesture sequences should be possible to be kept active for a while, untill some trigger gesture is performed.
 

RoSoDude

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
727
I'm even later to the party, but I just finished Arx Fatalis about 40 hours over the span of 8 days. I've become a little obsessed with the game during that time -- I even had a dream about exploring some dungeon layout that my unconscious brain made up but which I couldn't remember when I woke up...

I did a little write-up on my experience with the game. Okay I lied, it's actually over 4500 words. I criticize a few things, but it's mostly glowing praise for the stuff you guys already know, with the one major caveat that I argue bows are great. Bows are great!

https://rosodudemods.wordpress.com/...of-arx-fatalis-a-very-biased-review-critique/
 

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