PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,182
I completed this old beast yesterday for the first time, well, sort of completed. In order to play it, I had to install the Arx Libertatis community mod, as the default game is buggy as hell and just doesn't run properly on more modern machines. When I first tried running it, the movement was all sped up, with your character strafing and moving at light speed for example, but the mod fixed all of that. However, I guess it introduced some of its own bugs, as the final battle went very "interestingly" for me. After unloading on you with his tractor beam/damage/summon demon minion barrage at the beginning of the fight, Akbaa stops attacking and just stands there while you strike him the rest of the fight. Not very satisfying, I dare say. Apparently it's a known bug on the mod website, but it's marked as having been patched/resolved back in 2013, and I am pretty sure I am using the latest version, so ... Oh well, since I can't fix it, and I did defeat him and saw the final cinematic, I will just chalk it up as completed.
So, the game itself. I really like AND really hate it. It does certain things so well that in the end, on the balance, I will have positive memories of it, but at the same time, some parts are just so frustrating.
One of the things I really love about it is the game world. Most RPGs consist of mostly empty space, with dense settlements or points of interest in between, but in Arx, you have an extremely dense world filled to the brim with content, which is locked away behind walls, secret doors, and puzzles. When I first started playing it, I saw the map with eight blank levels and how much space I already covered doing the early tutorial stuff on goblin prison level and the one below it, and thought to myself, this game is tiny! But what I didn't realize at the time is how the levels actually consist of many separate areas, not necessarily connected to each other (or at least not in obvious ways). So later on, I came back to those levels in different places, and discovered a shit-ton of other stuff.
Another thing I love is how "active" the game is. NPCs tell you only very high level instructions, and it's up to you to figure everything else out, using exploration, hints, logic, and sometimes trial and error. This is a far cry from the modern hand-holding approach with quest compasses and high prescriptive quest journals, and make you feel very satisfied when you are able to progress.
The graphics are very pretty, even for such an old game (the NPC graphics and animations for example, put Morrowind, which came out at around the same time, to shame), and I've really enjoyed the magic system, with runes that you can collect and that combine their base effects logically with each other to create spells, as well as having to draw the rune symbols in order to cast. Not very deep, but does make you feel like an actual magician.
The story is nothing special, yet another variation of a hero saving the world from a great evil, but the setting is really cool, and I think based on the closing cinematic and the idea of Guild of Travellers, they had some cool plans for it in the future. The world interactivity is also awesome, although I feel like it should've been used more in quests than it was.
Then we come to the puzzles, which is where my love/hate relationship with the game really takes off. Puzzles are a huge part of Arx, and you will have to solve (or look up online) many of them in order to get anywhere. Like many games that heavily feature puzzles, Arx is a mixed bag when it comes to their quality. I feel like the game is at its best when the puzzles are organic, that is, are just some natural obstacles in the game that can be overcome with observation and logic. For example:
There is a whole bunch of these in the game, and they are great. But then there is the dark side of puzzles, the ones where you have to examine every inch of every wall for secret buttons or levers, or areas where there are 10 different levers and it's unclear what they do exactly, so you have to run around for hours experimenting with all this tedious stuff. Or stuff that's really not very obvious at all, and almost requires a guide or online info. Things like:
I am a pretty patient person and not the worst in the world when it comes to puzzles (used to be really good at it when I was younger), but these days, my patience is too short for this kind of bs. So yeah, love/hate it is.
Overall though, I really enjoyed Arx. Not a perfect game by any means, bugs, shitty combat, some frustrating as all hell puzzles, but a very different experience.
So, the game itself. I really like AND really hate it. It does certain things so well that in the end, on the balance, I will have positive memories of it, but at the same time, some parts are just so frustrating.
One of the things I really love about it is the game world. Most RPGs consist of mostly empty space, with dense settlements or points of interest in between, but in Arx, you have an extremely dense world filled to the brim with content, which is locked away behind walls, secret doors, and puzzles. When I first started playing it, I saw the map with eight blank levels and how much space I already covered doing the early tutorial stuff on goblin prison level and the one below it, and thought to myself, this game is tiny! But what I didn't realize at the time is how the levels actually consist of many separate areas, not necessarily connected to each other (or at least not in obvious ways). So later on, I came back to those levels in different places, and discovered a shit-ton of other stuff.
Another thing I love is how "active" the game is. NPCs tell you only very high level instructions, and it's up to you to figure everything else out, using exploration, hints, logic, and sometimes trial and error. This is a far cry from the modern hand-holding approach with quest compasses and high prescriptive quest journals, and make you feel very satisfied when you are able to progress.
The graphics are very pretty, even for such an old game (the NPC graphics and animations for example, put Morrowind, which came out at around the same time, to shame), and I've really enjoyed the magic system, with runes that you can collect and that combine their base effects logically with each other to create spells, as well as having to draw the rune symbols in order to cast. Not very deep, but does make you feel like an actual magician.
The story is nothing special, yet another variation of a hero saving the world from a great evil, but the setting is really cool, and I think based on the closing cinematic and the idea of Guild of Travellers, they had some cool plans for it in the future. The world interactivity is also awesome, although I feel like it should've been used more in quests than it was.
Then we come to the puzzles, which is where my love/hate relationship with the game really takes off. Puzzles are a huge part of Arx, and you will have to solve (or look up online) many of them in order to get anywhere. Like many games that heavily feature puzzles, Arx is a mixed bag when it comes to their quality. I feel like the game is at its best when the puzzles are organic, that is, are just some natural obstacles in the game that can be overcome with observation and logic. For example:
- There are some closed rooms on the first floor of the crypt, with a statue standing in front of them with an empty bowl, and a name plaque. Nearby there is a grave with the same name that describes this person as a vampire, and there is a vial of blood nearby. So using a little bit of logic, you pour the blood into the bowl, and voila, the doors open.
- The Goblin King won't see you to open the room with the troll idol, but you find a note describing his allergy to alcohol, so experimenting, you add some wine to his cake dough before the cook bakes it, causing him to run out of the locked throne room to the shitter.
- Getting to the ice dragon area by levitating to that whole hidden away part of the level, then levitating around and using stalactites to get around the cavern, then using common sense to melt the ice blocking the hallway with fire, and finally researching the dragon scale number in the kingdom library to know what to bribe him with.
- Trapping the black beast on the dwarf level in the magma pit.
- The Goblin King won't see you to open the room with the troll idol, but you find a note describing his allergy to alcohol, so experimenting, you add some wine to his cake dough before the cook bakes it, causing him to run out of the locked throne room to the shitter.
- Getting to the ice dragon area by levitating to that whole hidden away part of the level, then levitating around and using stalactites to get around the cavern, then using common sense to melt the ice blocking the hallway with fire, and finally researching the dragon scale number in the kingdom library to know what to bribe him with.
- Trapping the black beast on the dwarf level in the magma pit.
There is a whole bunch of these in the game, and they are great. But then there is the dark side of puzzles, the ones where you have to examine every inch of every wall for secret buttons or levers, or areas where there are 10 different levers and it's unclear what they do exactly, so you have to run around for hours experimenting with all this tedious stuff. Or stuff that's really not very obvious at all, and almost requires a guide or online info. Things like:
- In Temple of Akbaa, in order to shut down the security system, one of the notes you get says "first locks the second", which apparently refers to the first pair of doors in one of the hallways needing to be closed to open the second one. Wtf? Given the vague description, would anyone get this on their own without trial-and-erroring stuff for ages?
- On the third level of the crypt, to get to the Shield of Ancients, you need to put the carved rocks you find on the stumpy pillars with the opposite symbol to that of the clan. This makes no sense at all, because the narration tells you to honor the clans. How are you honoring them by putting the opposite symbols?
- To get the fifth Akbaa Rock to open the final fight room, you need to use a candle on the skull on Iserbius's desk. But again, this is a really stupid puzzle, because there is no logical reason to do this, other than I guess the candle was there, the skull was there, and the skull is highlighted, so let's just trial-and-error everything clickable with everything nearby. Really bad design approach.
- On the third level of the crypt, to get to the Shield of Ancients, you need to put the carved rocks you find on the stumpy pillars with the opposite symbol to that of the clan. This makes no sense at all, because the narration tells you to honor the clans. How are you honoring them by putting the opposite symbols?
- To get the fifth Akbaa Rock to open the final fight room, you need to use a candle on the skull on Iserbius's desk. But again, this is a really stupid puzzle, because there is no logical reason to do this, other than I guess the candle was there, the skull was there, and the skull is highlighted, so let's just trial-and-error everything clickable with everything nearby. Really bad design approach.
I am a pretty patient person and not the worst in the world when it comes to puzzles (used to be really good at it when I was younger), but these days, my patience is too short for this kind of bs. So yeah, love/hate it is.
Overall though, I really enjoyed Arx. Not a perfect game by any means, bugs, shitty combat, some frustrating as all hell puzzles, but a very different experience.
