Arx Fatalis

DISCLAIMER: I did receive the game for free for pre-ordering Dishonored, but if you enjoyed Dark Messiah of Might & Magic or enjoy old-school RPGs in general, Arx is a unique gem that is 100% worth the $5.

The predecessor of Arkane's next greatest hit, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. This is regarded by many to be a "hypergem" or "supergem" by many fans because the exact genre it embodies is just so rare, and has been made even rarer because the RPG formula has been streamlined so much that many of the systems that are implemented are now considered vestigial and archaic. This unique blend of Old-School RPG, immersive sim, runic magic system, puzzles, dark atmosphere, kicking and object physics systems come together in such a way that's extremely difficult to nail down. On top of all this, it even has its own cooking, crafting and stealth system and is fully voice-acted. This all may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but most of these systems (besides magic) are fairly intuitive and should be fairly digestible. While many players may struggle with progression through the story if they don't pay attention to every detail, the world itself is extremely rich, responsive, and varied, despite having such a dark atmosphere.

My Recommendation:
Play through as much as you can without a guide, and finally read a guide when you get frustrated to wit's end. I guarantee that most players will probably spend hours in the interesting world of Arx, and quite possibly play it more than once after they learn the most optimal route in completing the game's objectives.

Also, make sure to use Arx Libertatis, as it is the modern open-source port of Arx Fatalis, aimed at fixing bugs, compatibility, and QoL issues.

tl;dr Unique Old-School RPG immersive sim game, that not only stood the test of time, but remains a true classic gem that has yet to meet its match in modern times.

the most atmospheric dungeon crawler

I get so in aw of old video games. I'm not joking. You deserve to play this game and at the same time this game deserves your time (and maybe a quick youtube search when your stuck once in awhile). One of the most interesting rpg sandboxes ive ever played. Made in 2002. How we dont have more like this ill never understand. 9.5/10. One of the greatest first person rpgs of all time. Playing this 23 years late feels like a crime.

The only half-decent game Arcane Studios ever made. Everything since has been politically correct d0gshit with deliberately ugly characters. They were one of the fist studios to go woke, & they were one of the first studios to go broke. Rest in pi55.

This is an *extremely* good game for its time period and genre. I really enjoyed it, and put in a lot of hours just messing around. I got it during the Chinese New Year festival sales, and I feel like I got every last dime of my money's worth from it.

I give it 9/10 stars and would highly recommend.

Pros: If you like a story-based quest progression game in a swords&sorcery genre, then this fits the bill. It's not mind-numbingly expansive like Skyrim or Witcher3, and it's not truly open-world (areas are restricted until you progress the main quest), but it's loads of fun and decent exploration. I searched through every last nook and cranny of the game world, finding hidden treasures or the occasional easter egg.

The game is relatively easy to learn, and the combat is pretty simple if you're into combat. It's nowhere near Dark Souls difficulty, and you could probably run this game on a well rigged potato. Having said that, you WILL want to download the community "patch" (Arx Liberatis) to make the game playable on modern systems (it was almost entirely unplayable until I did so because modern mouse sensitivity kinda destroys the magic system and you *must* have *some* magic on your character to make the game work...ish).

In 136 hours, I had no lag or stutter, and not a single crash or "have to reload" bug....not one. I only dropped through the world geometry requiring a reload (I never enabled the console) *once*, and I was really trying very hard to get somewhere players were clearly not meant to go at the time. ;)

The economy is great (I never struggled for cash, but you have to manage some resources like torches mid-to-end game), and most of the loot makes sense (you get a couple pieces a wee tad too late for my tastes, but I'm greedy). I only did a very minimum amount of savescum grinding out of a personal desire to max out my character for kicks and theft.

You're not buying this for sandboxing or jaw dropping graphics, you're buying this to tell/reveal/experience a single main story and save the world. Again...this isn't Skyrim and you can't "live" in this world long-term. Think of it more like decent-length digital one-shot solo D&D campaign.

My one complaint is that the absolute end scenes after *everything* was done and/or defeated felt a wee bit . . . underwhelming. I guess I wanted accolades of some sort. I'd love to see the company revisit and reboot this title someday...expand some side quests, add some content (I really wanna be able to talk to the king about a certain letter I found....). Still, I've loved everything I've ever played from Arkane, and this is another great title.

ultragem

I like having to repeat the first part of the game multiple times because my fat fingers can't trigger a lever.

11/10

Probably one of the most unique fantasy settings in existence.
Probably the most unique magic casting mechanic in videogaming.
If hand-crafted feel and experimental originality can beat out polished refinedness for you, this one is for you.
It's quite old, so it obviously won't blow anyone's socks off graphically, but the specifics of the setting ameliorate any technical limitations of the engine. As an upside it'll run on a potato.
Sadly, if you're gonna be playing this on anything other than a potato, you'll need a community port to run it at modern resolutions (beyond 1080p) - Arx Libertatis has your back there.

Regrettably, the maintainers of the port use some 3rd party launcher that pings antiviruses though. If you're afraid of the antivirus notification, and are running a modern system, you can just extract the x64 binaries (or the x86 ones if you're running a potato) from the port's folder structure and avoid the launcher - truly baffling decision by the port maintainers.

guid to arx fatalis magic system

1 install arx libertatis
2 get really fuckin high
3 draw pretty pictures :)

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A classic immersive RPG with phenomenal sound and ambience, decent melee combat, and an epic (albeit perhaps a little janky) magic and casting system. It would've been better if a few parts of the world were a little bit more fleshed out, such as the remains of the dwarven kingdom, and the world and its characters were more reactive to your actions in general, but still, what is there is quite good.

i lik it

Classic dungeon-crawl. Open world gameplay in a closed world.

Bake pies. Roast chickens. With a fireball spell. At the same time. While wearing bunny slippers. 10/10.

⠀

Poodle, Poodle, Poodle, Hamster.

Won't run on my PC. Shame cause I wanted to try it.

Great game, awesome atmosphere but you'll probably want to read a guide before building your character. I don't think I've seen a game outside of an old Sierra point-and-click adventure game let you screw yourself so hard early on but not realize it until many many hours later.

Save yourself the trouble and put points into magic. Don't bother with stealth or archery and unless you want to try exploiting the AI don't play a pure melee build. I didn't want to but I had to cheat to make progress later in the game because I fucked myself in character creation without knowing it.

Other than balancing issues Arx is great lol.

An utter darling favourite of mine. I will defend this game to the end of my days. Morrowind can go and die in a hole.

This is a slow and clunky but very entertaining experience so far. The creativity makes this game feel like a real adventure compared to most.

Awesome game. I would still recommend to download mods like Arx Insanity and Arx Libertatis.

I'm Amo Xingar

Despite its design flaws (laborious menu switching, poor rune tracing, messy journal), Arx Fatalis nails a few key elements which make it good for several playthroughs. The atmosphere is top notch, with level and sound design which are sure to immerse you into the claustrophobic nature of the game world as well as convey a sense of isolation. What little crafting the game has is simple and satisfying. Environment reactivity is very good and character building is fairly straightforward. The story is a bit simple but I enjoyed it nonetheless due to the protagonist's unique nature.

Yeah, this is Ultima Underworld 3. Not the setting, of course, but they've got a nice world of their own here surrounded by mystery with an excellent atmosphere.

The biggest flaw is the low number of precast spells you can have. The sign-based system means that you then have to navigate the environment without the mouse since that is used to draw signs, so you end up with what is comparable to sorting the inventory in System Shock 2 while being chased down by zombies through the crew quarters. Somehow, that is still mostly a problem early on.

Arx is pretty slow and some people will have a better time with Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Still as janky, but basically the action-version of this (and commonly known as THE kicking-people-off-ledges-simulator). That one might also interest Dishonored-fans, playing like some proto-Dishonored (medieval-edition).

But man, Arx - it's just cozy.

Very fun RPG. The story is fun, the exploration is fun, inventory is great.

While the magic system is interesting, it is an absolute pain in the a** to cast spells. You have to do so by drawing the runes with your mouse but 8/10 times the game doesn't want to recognise the rune you're drawing or just assumes you're drawing a different rune altogether which makes casting a single spell sometimes take a whole damn minute.

But that's really my only gripe with the game, with the exception of your first encounter with the Ylsides. These are powerful enemies with very tough armour and melee resistance. However, when your first encounter them you might as well just focus on stealth and skip their combat as much as you can. When I met one, I fired 3 fireballs at him, and he didn't die (despite many guides telling me that Ylsides die to 2-3 fireballs) and absolutely demolished me. I tried various spell combinations including incinerate, fire field, paralyse, and so forth and nothing would kill the damn guy so I resorted to stealth.

Would I recommend the game? Yes, absolutely. But get yourself a mod to make the spell casting to be workable most of the time rather than not. And brace yourself for the Ylsides because they're the game's biggest pain and the difficulty spike once you encounter them is immense.

This game is awesome. Combat is a little janky to but you quickly get used to it. Very cool premise, very cool creatures, and a unique setting. Highly recommend!

Great game that has some really bad bugs even with the basically required Arx Libertatis fan fix. The game has an active but small modding scene so I have around twice to three times the play-time since the mods are separate exes not registered by steam.

The breadth of small things you can do make the game for me, the alchemy system while basic is fun to use, the magic is neat but a little buggy and arduous sometimes, the melee is simple but fun, lore is fascinating and story is really cool, and voice acting is a combination of funny and professional. I honestly just wish the areas were a little bigger and more intricately designed. Almost the perfect immersive dungeon crawler.

Lots of content was cut or unused (a little of which is re-implemented using mods but nothing major), it's very much a repurposed Ultima Underworld script retooled in a really really cool way.

If you like dungeon crawlers or immersive sims, it's worth a look, one of my favourite games ever so I'm definitely bias.

the way the player can interact with the enviroment is so fun, especially when you cook da bread :))

Amazing game. Lots of jank, save often. Classic dungeon crawler with some cool mechanics. Movement is clunky but combat is moderately rich. Good mix of melee and magic throughout the game. Radiant world adds a lot, but quest progression may be difficult without a guide. Guides are available online. Old school cool dungeon crawler with proper integrated puzzles and traps. And rats.

Cool lore, style, puzzles, magic system, secrets, and more. Surprisingly fun.

There's so much to discuss about this game - good and bad. I'll start with what I liked.

The atmosphere of Arx Fatalis is palpable. Similar to its contemporary, Thief, there's layers of ambient sound, NPC chatter, primative 3D environments, and an air of mystery that makes the world unforgettable. The story is decent and the gameplay, while not groundbreaking, serves to carry the player through some cool dungeons and situations. The magic system, specifically, is very immersive. I found myself slowly memorizing spell sigils as I progressed, sticking to a few basics and at times fumbling over them in the heat of the moment. Excellent!

Now for the bad. This game is obtuse - not a sole sin of Arx but generally of games at this time. There is no hand holding, which is great, but several things get in the way. For one, you walk pretty slowly with no real option to run except a speed spell I never found. This was such a problem that I relied on a weird glitch where if you press F5 to quick save while moving forward, the player zooms across the map. Helpful, but very odd.

Ultimately, I needed a walkthrough for several areas. There were puzzles and areas I never would have figured out on my own. I'm not the best at puzzles to begin with, but still, it was rough.

Did I like this game. Honestly, I loved it. The old-school 3D environments, the excellent ambiance. the odd bits of humor, the constant surprises as I realize the developers add lots of things to find (including cutscenes and hidden instances most probably will never see)... this was such a fun game to play through.

If you like older RPGs or even games like Tomb Raider or Thief which have this totally unique style of the late 90s/00s, check out Arx Fatalis. It's blemishes are far outweighed by its charm.

Reviewing every game I've played in my Steam Library. Game 6.

A classic, great atmosphere and story, very interesting magic system, some builds are harder than others to get through the game.

Also features cooking and crafting.

You need some mods and stuff to make it more playable. (this is why my play time is low)

Haven't finished it.

This game is in need of a remake.

Unfortunately, the game just... isn't very good, like at all, despite the intriguing mystery premise to lure you in right at the start. The UI is clunky and unituitive for a first person immersive sim and your flow is constantly interrupted by having to stop and navigate through the menus; you have to waste time backtracking constantly for every little thing; and the magic system is too much of a hassle to be useful in combat. I actually couldn't even get it to work at all despite drawing out the patterns correctly. No, this thing just wasn't fun at all, and was basically a waste of my time. A shame too, because I would have liked to know more about the story, but even that couldn't keep me going to suffer through the mediocre gameplay. And if the game isn't fun, then why bother at all in this day and age?

Don't bother wasting your money on this. What you should do is go buy Dark Messiah of Might & Magic instead, which is also by Arkane, but this time they are far more experienced and made a game that actually has fast-paced and chaotic combat, thanks entirely to the marvelous source engine and the sheer God-like physics that allows developers to utilize and players to play around with. In fact, that game makes this game completely obsolete because it's basically what Arkane wanted to do in the first place but couldn't because the technology just wasn't entirely good enough yet. You'll have far more fun with that than you could ever hope to have with this. Let this game succumb to the dark recesses of the underground where it now belongs.

A very old and at times clunky game, but great nonetheless. I recommend installing the Arx Libertatis mod to minimize graphical glitches and add some QOL updates to the game.

Incredibly addictive and gripping old school RPG. If you like something like Morrowind this is a must play.

The game doesn't bother holding your hand and requires patience to get over the initial learning curve but is so satisfying to grind through once you get going.

This is easily in my top 5 games ever. The sun has gone dark and the world's population had to go underground to escape the cold. It's an amnesia memory recovery plot set in a particularly large cave network full of fantasy monsters. The gimmick is novel -- learn base rune words and use the mouse to draw them out in sequence to make spell words. It's the only game I can think of where if you, as a player not a character, are adept at the magic system (rune identification, not meta knowledge), your anticipation of the rune words can actually make a significant difference on the outcome of a fight. It's a lot of investigation, problem solving, puzzles, and RPG generally, and every few years when I get the urge to play it I'm left with feelings and a desperate wish that there was more. Be sure to download the Arx Libertatis mod which cleans up some of the rough edges and modernizes the system settings.

TL:DR; This game is great, totally worth the price, download Arx LIbertas (it isn't a virus), disable Alpha Cutout AA (It crashes the game)

Arx Fatalis is a game that does nearly everything right! While that may sound off-putting at first, I mean this in the best way possible. I enjoyed nearly every minute I had exploring the world of Arx and its 8 levels. The world was incredibly interesting, the gameplay is phenomenal, exploration is engaging, and the magic system has got to be one of the most ingenious implementations of magic I have ever seen in a game before. This game is certainly worth your time and pennies (I got this game for less than two dollars, lol).

However, I said it does NEARLY everything right. What it gets wrong, it gets quite wrong. My complaint mostly boils down to the fact that its super easy to play this game out of order, which can render the game nearly impossible without a guide. For me, I accidentally killed the snake ladies who tell you about how to enchant the greatest weapon, which could have bricked my game if I didn't resort to the internet. There's a lot of these moments, such as not being told you have to go to the crypt, or not being told about the key ring (which is VITAL for maintaining sanity). Also, the final boss SUCKS and is perhaps the worst final boss I've ever fought (probably an exaggeration). While this is annoying, it is par for the course for older games, so just don't be afraid to crack out a guide once you get lost on the eighth level before you're even sent there.

I would note that, to have the best experience, you must download the free program Arx Libertas, which dramatically enhances the game (the machine says its a virus, but it isn't). Also, disable Alpha Cutout AA. That was crashing my game on load.

Shows its age but a very good game and it's easy to see why Arkane has gotten as much renown as it has.

Weird game that I played in my early teenage years. Pretty cool how you can interact with the world. The magic system is neat also

Incredible game. Has been my favorite for 15 years. Incredibly thoughtful gameplay and story line, with surprising complications. Get past the graphics, and you are in for one of the best play throughs ever.

This was a surprisingly fun game for being lumped into a bundle for practically free. id highly recommend giving it a try to anyone who loves the classics!

With the Arx Libertatis Mod, this game feels amazing to play, despite being an early 2000 game!
The dark fantasy atmosphere is perfect, the inventory management is also great and the spellcasting is very unique, as you have to 'write' runes in the air.
I wish there were more games like this or Dark Messiah nowadays.

I like old games. While this one isn't that, it has not aged well at all, unfortunately.

So far the game has held up really well. I haven't had to look anything up really, which is unusual for old games (unusual in a good way). I've been playing with the Arx Liberatus mod which fixes spell casting.

Peak.

Classic

ok so apparently this game falls into 2 categories:

really enjoyable with slight problems.

or

nearly unplayable buggy mess.

for me, it was the first one for the first 2 thirds, and the last one for the last third. you could do worse for 5 bucks for sure but i have to say that its infuriating beyond believe not to be able to finish the game. add that to the fact that some enemys just...wont die, or 1tap you if they feel like it, i was this close to give a thumbs down. its low price is the only reason it gets my upvote because as mentioned above...you could do alot worse for 5 bucks.

Play it with Arx Libertatis and if you liked the Thief games, you will love this one!

Really good, old school game for rpg lovers, which you can completly fuck up by loosing one of the items or killing wrong npc's. Play with Arx Libertatis mod, in case of loosing or selling key items, you can at least cheat them into existance without replaying 5 hours of the games.

Rating(s):

Game:
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ (5/5) stars

Technical/port:
★★☆☆☆ (2/5) stars

Review:
Arx Fatalis goes down as my favorite IP from Arkane. It is better than dishonored, prey, you name it. This was my favorite Arkane experience for a few reasons:
The world of Arx Fatalis is unmatched, in the time this was made the atmosphere and immersive world built is just impressive. The story stands the test, never feeling like it is dragging on and always keeping the puzzles interesting. The characters are genuine and the story really captivates. Combat, more specifically spell casting will go down as my favorite spell cast system in gaming. It is unique, unmatched and highly enjoyable.
The game just feels great and it is great, but its age shows and the technical port is very bad.
I enjoyed the game so much I felt I had to separate the game from the port. The game needs a mod called "Arx Libertatis" likely before you even play it for functionality, even then a tremendous amount of frustrating bugs are present. Most cinematic cutscenes leave you stuck and clipping into the terrain upon exit. Loot items can disappear and clip through the map. Many graphical and hitzone areas are inconsistent. npc AI can sometimes corner you and force a save roll, etc. The technical and port problems of this game are extensive, but it is worth the ache for this game. you will love it.

unplayable mess, shame