Arx Fatalis Review

At first glance, Arx Fatalis may look as if it would be a great game. This first person RPG lets you develop Am Sheagar anyway you choose, do missions however you want, and cast magical spells with a simple combo system. However, Arx just does not deliver the experience many people believed it would. What looks good on the cover is not what you get here.

Compared to the PC version of the game, Arx looks pretty much like crap. The textures are very bland and the character models are awful. There is a lot of clipping and a messy interface as well. A poor frame rate doesn’t help any of this either; all in all, it is very poorly done.

The sound in Arx Fatalis is horrendous as well. To start, there is no in-game music or catchy tunes to listen to, while traveling these boring worlds. It makes the game seem longer than it should and incredibly boring because of it. The voice acting in the game is terribly done as well. The voice actors just seem to mumble while they speak and just say the most stupid things at some times for no apparent reason. Nothing could be worse than this.

The gameplay is also another of Arx Fatalis’ weak points. The battle system is very off and clunky. Not that it’s difficult to learn, but it feels weird and you really cannot dodge the attacks of your opponents when you should. There are a lot of missions in the game that you can do whatever you want in. The problem is that most of them are boring and you have to travel across the world to complete them, then travel back to collect a reward (if there is one). This becomes more of a nuisance than fun.

There may be trolls, goblins, and magic here, but it may seem as if you were playing a cross between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Both of these, many people like, but there are a lot more that probably despise them. Arx is nowhere near as long as Morrowind is, but if you liked Morrowind and nearly completed it, you may enjoy this as a rental. There really is nothing special about the game that would warrant a purchase. I’d suggest burning it in your fireplace or nuking it in a microwave than playing it, you may have a lot more fun that way.