[swampfriend]

the sun has died and humans, goblins, and trolls have taken refuge from the permanent winter night in subterranean caverns. one man wakes up in goblin jail with no memory and a hankerin' for bludgeoning, stabbing, and cutting. i am that man



arx fatalis is the first game by arkane studios, who went on to make dark messiah of might and magic, and more recently dishonored. according to wikipedia it was originally intended to be ultima underworld iii but arkane couldn't get a license

here are some snapshots of my ongoing voyage into the depths. it is my first time playing and i'm enjoying the variety of environments they've been able to squeeze out given the setting



















(lots more full resolution screens here: http://imgur.com/a/CkckF#0 )

so far, similar to what i've played of dark messiah, it has what i would call "light rpg elements" (though not quite as light as dark messiah) and a focus on combat and exploration over character/equipment improvement. there is a bit of open-endedness to it that reminds me of deus ex. for example one quest required me to ask the troll king to clear a passageway, who agreed to do it if i brought him an artifact that had been stolen by goblins. further inside the troll compound, a troll in a jail cell said he'd clear the passageway if i released him, but i needed to kill the king to get the key. i searched the whole goblin floor and couldn't find the artifact, so i had to go and fight the king instead. it may also be possible to pick his pocket!

(it runs perfectly in windows 7 using an open source port called arx libertatis + data from a GOG copy of the game)
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[CubaLibre]

I was like: I own this on GOG and never got around to it, brb

Runs kind of like crap! Guess I need this libertatis thing.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Bingle]

A bit in, I went in the completely wrong direction and ended up at an impasse when I stumbled upon a RATMAN assassin grubhole with no apparent escape. I'm really loving the environment design and sound design coupled with it. Feels like a giant Stonefang.

I'll probably restart my playthrough because whenever I stumbled upon a quest I didn't know how to solve right away I resolved on murder.

[swampfriend]

it runs like crap for a kind of dumb reason:

[CubaLibre]

Any suggestions for character building? I almost always play stealthy/hitty guys and eschew magic because I like grittily realistic gritmen from grittown, but it seems like the magic system in this game is pretty cool.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[swampfriend]

so far the points i've put into stealth haven't really come in handy but i think later on if you combine that with equipment that increases stealth and ranged weapons it could be pretty powerful. i think from now on i'll probably just keep adding to strength and the stat which allows you to find cool hidden passages. the game doesn't seem very hard so i wouldn't worry too much about perfecting your build

the magic system works like this: you learn magic gestures which combine in sequences to form spells. you hold ctrl and draw the gestures with the mouse. so to light a torch the spell is a horizontal line followed by a kind of L-shape etc. you can queue up to three spells so that you don't have to fiddle with gestures in the middle of a fight, and scrolls have a one-time use of adding a spell to this queue even if you haven't learned the necessary gestures

i guess thinking about it now the rpg elements aren't as light as i initially thought
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[bza]

Ranged combat lets you cheese the game but melee is definitely doable.
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[CubaLibre]

Coming off DMMM I would've assumed Steath is all-powerful. Guess I'll be running around smashing people's heads in then.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Tulpa]

this game rules and has the best sound design of any dungeon crawler.
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[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I wish inventory items had physics instead of clipping through each other like Deus Ex but the game makes up for it by allowing you to cook a pie in the burning ruins of an outpost while a dying soldier watches.

[Tulpa]

I wish there was so much more to the baking part of the game.
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[CubaLibre]

I was so excited that I figured out potion making totally on my own, but frustrated that I couldn't figure out the last step. I look online and it turns out you need a special static distillery item that I haven't even encountered yet. Lame.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Bingle]

I accidentally reached the last quarter of the game without ever visiting the human kingdom, oops. Not sure how much stats matter, because I'm just level 4. My ultimate strategy in the game so far was hopping on top of a giant spider so it couldn't hit me, and I just wailed at it for a good 2 minutes.

[parker]

Why is it I punch things they all die in 2-3 hits, I equip a weapon and I go through like five weapons before the thing dies. I don't mind punching my way through the whole game I was just wondering if it was a bug or what.
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[CubaLibre]

FYI dudes this game pretty much fucking rules. I figured out the whole treasure hunt by myself! (There is a treasure hunt.) I delved deep without advancing the story because I couldn't figure out how, turns out I just needed to actually pay attention to every line of dialogue in an important cutscene and then actually react to it like a thinking human would. That was a nice feeling.

I am spoiled by modern checkpointing, I keep forgetting to save and then losing 45 minutes of progress to a crazy trap.

EDIT: Also I have so much money now. I already bought everything half decent from the blacksmith in Arx. Is there any other place to actually spend this or am I picking up weapons-to-sell for no reason? (FYI I did find the brother merchants with the good stuff to whom... things happen already)
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Let's Play, starring me.

[CubaLibre]

Beat this tonight. This game is fantastic and I'm frankly shocked I didn't hear anything about it back when it was actually released. This type of game was my shit.

After the last boss' terrible opening salvo that had me chugging healing potions, I managed somehow to bug him out so he wouldn't attack me. So I just stood there and hit him until he died. That's so 90's immersive sim. It gave me Morrowindian warm fuzzies.

The game came this close to blowing my fucking mind with a thing I figured out. Instead of cracking my brain open it just made a funny little easter egg. Too bad really.

Now that these guys are making successful AAA games like Dishonored, this game needs a decent-budget sequel, and badly. The worldbuilding is good enough to sustain a lot of other games.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[parkbench]

i love this shit. eat it right up. i am a proud new inductee to arx libertatis...windowed (my favorite way to dungeon crawl).

*cracks fingers*


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metafilter vs. youtube comments