Review

I wanted to enjoy Arx Fatalis, I really did.  It appeared to be a feisty little independent sandbox RPG with original, home-grown story and gameplay.  Unencumbered by anything like D&D 3rd Edition, or the particulars of licensed IP or even a prequel.  That's the setting for something really hearty and innovative, a chance for budding game designers to flex their muscles and show that they don't need to dutifully tread in the footsteps of Bioware or Black Isle.

The problem, I fear, may have been that Arkane Studios felt exactly the same way, and tried hard, a little too ambitiously hard, to maximize the opportunity.  Arx Fatalis feels like a systems demo rather than a complete polished game.  There's melee combat, but it's not satisfying.  There's a unique magic system, but it's cumbersome and under-utilized.  There's a seemingly expansive item-combination system, but it feels superfluous.  There are NPCs, but they feel like lifeless props.  There's an interesting world-setting, but it feels more like an excuse for things than it does an epic stage.

I played through maybe 1/3 of the game, and discovered that at some fairly early point I had inadvertently stepped over the velvet ropes that were supposed to be guiding me through the story arc, and as a result was suffering frustrating and confusing consequences.  Which brings up another issue: that Arx Fatalis has the trappings of a sandbox RPG, but frays quickly if you veer off the presumed linear course.  The game didn't outright break on me, and I suspect I could have soldiered forward perhaps all the way to the dénouement, but at the cost of actually enjoying the experience.

And rather than back all the way up to where I think I drifted off course, and replay things, I quit.  Which is unfortunate, I suppose, if there was in fact some genuinely enjoyable gaming to be had in the latter half of Arx, had I stuck to the trail.  But this is one of the (intended) consequences of playing games the way I do - namely a number of years behind the current crop.  I play games well after they're patched and with hardware that's actually caught up with them, and if they fumble and embarrass themselves on the first date, I hail a cab and move on.  Sure, I'll miss the occasional dessert in exchange for not having to eat copious servings of mushy luke-warm vegetables, but it's not like I go without dessert completely, so I consider it a winning policy.  Arx had begun to feel like a pile of cold mashed peas and carrots and I simply wasn't in the mood.  Certainly not with things like Gothic 2, Morrowind, etc.. still waiting patiently on the shelf.  I didn't need to suffer medicrity just to get a sandbox RPG fix.

But I don't want to part without saying some nice things about Arx, since it's not like it failed miserably -- mostly I just quit on it.  ("It's not you, baby, it's me.")

• Torches!  Yes, this is a common theme in my game reviews.  I'm not saying that if you put a carry-able torch in a game I hated (like, uh, Diablo 2), that I'd instantly think the game was the bee's knees.  But I would instantly think the torch was!

• The goblins and orcs are (this might sound silly) really likeable.  They're actually the best NPCs in the game (that I saw).  They just seem like the antagonistic, brutish, but endearingly simple-minded species that one always imagines they'd be.

• The auto-mapping and auto-journal are both solidly functional, which is a welcome perk.

• It uses the dual-mode UI that I first saw in System Shock, wherein you generally operate in first-person mouselook mode, but a single keypress toggles the curser-based click-n-drag mode used for inventory and character management.  I find this pairing to be particularly effective.

Ultimately, I'm sure I didn't see enough of Arx to judge it fairly.  But judge it I have, nonetheless. It seems like it was a decent freshman effort from Arkane Studios, who thankfully have survived and appear to be continuing to hone their skills in the genre.  I didn't dislike Arx in such a way that I would steer clear of subsequent games from the same crew, but I just couldn't justify sticking with it to the end when I've so many other (presumably capital) titles vying for my attention.