Wyrmlord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2008
- Messages
- 28,886
This isn't just some game you play for "historical purposes", or for idle curiosity, or for checking what that screenshot in MobyGames is like.
This is actually one of the most awe-inspiring gaming experiences you may ever have. If you have not played it, do so now. And if you have never played any Elder Scrolls game before, Arena may well be the most ideal choice for the only TES game you should play. It actually stands on its own merits, and isn't just another TES game.
To give the quickest summary, Arena captures the feeling of a long, struggling, labourious adventure that drains your character at each step, and yet retains that strong feeling of achieving something big in a virtual fantasy world. You are always arriving in new lands, always garnering new clues, and always trying to stay one step ahead of an omniscient villain who can reach towards you from across space and time.
This is actually one of the most awe-inspiring gaming experiences you may ever have. If you have not played it, do so now. And if you have never played any Elder Scrolls game before, Arena may well be the most ideal choice for the only TES game you should play. It actually stands on its own merits, and isn't just another TES game.
- The dungeons are huge. When you arrive at the first big dungeon of the game - Fang Lair - you find a giant mine larger than the Imperial City. So huge is this place that at any point of time, you only see one-twenty-fifth of the whole dungeon on your top-down map. You find entire railways for mine-carts that snake around in a random manner for kilometers before abruptly ending. There are entire networks of claustrophobic underground mine shafts in which you crawl before coming out back into the main mining surface. And that's only one type of dungeon. There are dungeons made of emerald and ice, and in which you move more slowly under the freezing cold.
- If you are a fighter style character who is without a Light or Invisibility spell, the game feels its most intense. You will never see more than two feet ahead of you in these giant dungeons. Enemies may suddenly come out of the darkness any time. They may attack you from behind. If you are splashing into a channel of water underground, a scorpion may come out of the darkness and paralyse you. And according to the game's rules, being paralyzed in water means you will drown and are dead. To top it off, the game has slow, gradual beats on a war drum always ringing in the dungeons, as if you are advancing slowly to your death in the middle of the darkness.
- You are always running across the continent, across burning hot deserts, across tropical lands, across snowing, blizzard-filled areas. At each step you are gathering small bits of clues from common folk on the streets or in the inns. Each one of those clues sends you running across another province, or towards a quest that may give you clues. The changing climate makes a big difference on your character, with a Redguard struggling to walk across a snowstorm or a Dark Elf struggling to walk across a desert city.
- The main villain is a powerful, clairvoyant, omniscient mage. He is always observing you, and always knows where you are. He initially disregards you, even though he knows exactly what you are doing. But if you are making rapid progress or are levelling faster than expected or are very close to a milestone, your screen blanks out and his furious face appears in front of you. He will tell you he knows where you are and he is teleporting interplanar monsters to your precise location so that they leave you no place to hide. Incurring Jagar Tharn's wrath means that resting becomes near impossible, as his assassins appear every hour. It's a strange, choking feeling that you could be running across so many lands, from Skyrim to Elsweyr, and Jagar Tharn always knows where you are, which inn you use, and where you are going.
- Finding good quality equipment is very very hard. Item lists for shops are not randomly generated, but fixed, and finding the precise equipment you require may force you to run across a dozen shops in each city or a dozen cities in each province. But finding the best equipment is even harder, such as Auriel's Bow or Lord's Mail. To get them, you must always observe rumours and buy valuable information whenever you get the chance. Then you must trek through eight dungeon levels (or two dungeons, four levels) in two provinces, until you finally find that item. Then it becomes a very regular affair to repair them, or they will be lost very quickly.
To give the quickest summary, Arena captures the feeling of a long, struggling, labourious adventure that drains your character at each step, and yet retains that strong feeling of achieving something big in a virtual fantasy world. You are always arriving in new lands, always garnering new clues, and always trying to stay one step ahead of an omniscient villain who can reach towards you from across space and time.
