ARX FATALIS

                  Review by Stefan Herber

Arx has been dubbed Ultima Underworld 3 in some circles. One can
understand why - it's set on a planet whose sun has died and where
all the races live underground. So unfortunately for those of you
who like the open air once in a while - forget it. The game
involves adventuring through underground cities, caves, mines and
every variation of the above. The graphics are beautiful so it's
not as bad as it sounds; also unlike its closest recent relative
"Myth Drannor" the levels don't seem to go on forever and at least
are varied. It made me realise what I have been missing in an RPG
for some time - a first person outlook. It is rumoured that it is
possible to even enter an Underworld mode by entering a certain
code - I however couldn't do it.

Anyway what's the story and gameplay like? Well - guess what - you
wake in a dungeon cell with no memory of who you are or how you
arrived there. In fact you remember nothing at all.  Obviously
therefore you must be the great hero sent from elsewhere to save
the planet from destruction. And that's exactly what you are. It
seems that one of the gods is getting too big for his boots and is
trying to leave the mystic plane to dominate the world. He has a
nasty requirement for human sacrifices so obviously this has to be
stopped.

The character generation is quite simple and you have nine skills
to play with allowing you in effect to be a fighter, thief or mage
or any combination of these. Unfortunately the spell casting
system is a pain - you have to conjure the spell by drawing runes
(not always recognised by the computer) using the mouse and can
only have 3 ready spells to hand. I played as a fighter mostly and
doubt in view of the latter whether it's actually possible to win
the game as a mage; the game is reported to encourage stealth as
opposed to all out gung-ho but as so many battles are unavoidable
I'm not sure how this can work in actual practise.  Fighting is on
the other hand easy - go into fight mode and swing your weapon..
The spellcasting aspect really needs addressing in the sequel,
which is already in production. As the game sold about two copies
in this country I can only assume it was more successful in the
German market.

But there's yet another problem - I would venture to say that it's
impossible to complete without a walkthrough and the only one I've
found was near useless. (Thank Heavens for game forums).  One
puzzle - you have to turn a misguided character who has turned
himself into a chicken back into human form. Huge numbers of bonus
points are at stake. The solution is to mix various vegetables and
a dragon egg in a specific cauldron.  Nowhere in the game is the
recipe available - so how are you supposed to know this without
recourse to a walkthrough? There are also allegedly secret runes
and spells - I'm not sure how they are meant to be discovered
either unless a friend of yours is one of the programmers. Equally
the game difficulty is not according to a learning curve. You'll
breeze through a quest and then find a very difficult battle as
the next thing to do, I'm still don't know how I won some of these
- more luck than skill I'm sure.

Overall 7/10. There's a lot of work needed to make the next
episode truly memorable.


















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