Well I've yet to make my way through Arx. Yet the most memorable part of it thus far is not being able to properly load /save a game in an entire Area that is the game's very name sake.
I agree with your consensus of graphics VS gameplay, but the mantra of developers nowadays is All Graphics and no gameplay.

Graphics in a RPG are so important. Especially RPGs from year 2002. So there is an exploit in the game because they tried to give you, you know, freedom in making magical stuff (items and spells). Big f***** deal. There were a LOT of exploits in Gothic as well, it is still a great game. It's a problem, but it does not ruin the game except if you have no self-discipline. Don't use them.
As for "the game can be finished at level 1 or 2 just by running straight to the end of it", it is a stupid argument for Morrowind and Fallout 3. You can finish at these levels because you are never forced to take a level when you have the experience, and because you have a knowledge before-hand of what you must do to finish the game. Fact is, no one at his first playthrough will finish the game "at level 2" because they don't know where to go and they will level when given the opportunity.
Oblivion is different because of the scaling system, it is actually YOUR interest not to level in certain circumstances. Which I agree is stupid.
And also, the fact that Fallout 2 and to a lesser extent Fallout 1 can be speedrun in less than an hour will no lower the fact that it is a great game. Hating Bethesda is so much more trendy. Just like Fallout. Just like Vampire Bloodlines.
Once again, the reasoning is "I don't like Bethesda because they do game for casual gamers, so let's find everything to spit on them, even though the games I like have the same problems". Plot of Morrowind too short ? Uh. It is actually much too long, and ends with a stupid escort mission, that's why everyone ends up level 80 with absolutely all skills maxed out, which makes the class system irrelevant. If the game was shorter, just like, say Arx Fatalis, or if the level were capped, like you know, Fallout 2 (and probably F1) you would have to specialize. Bethesda decided not to do this.
I agree, though, that being able to join all the guilds in Bethesda games from Morrowind onwards(except the choice between the house in Morrowind) is not great for a RPG. That's bad, but that's not awful. They are enjoyable without mods, and they are better with. Well, I prefer empty worlds myself, because I don't think a post apo world would have monsters at every corners. You prefer with more monsters - fine. This is a design choice, not a flaw.
Give the thumbs up to Bethesda for making their games moddable.

Now back to the subject :

Arx Fatalis is VERY different from Morrowind and other Bethesda games (Morrowind being IMO the best of Bethesda's, I'll quickly compare AF to it).

Generally speaking, magic and combats are much more interesting in Arx Fatalis, and much more difficult, while keeping balanced, so it is a fair game for this. The world is much, much smaller, but exploration is great (because it is one huge cave) and much more rewarding, both in terms of loot and in term of achievement. The world feels dangerous. In Morrowind, I was "OMG" only when I first arrived in cities. In AF, you often think "what the HELL is that ?"

The plot is much more thick and better, and the world changes as the plot progresses, which makes the plot better than Morrowind's. On the other hand, there are close to no side quest in AF.

Freedom of movement is much more limited, though (new areas are not officialy "blocked", but you ll die the first minute you put the foot in the wrong place at the beginning), and controls are more clumsy.

You have generally speaking much more sense of achievement in AF (like you really feel relieved when you reach a safe place after a dangerous place, or; well; the final level where you SPOILER the SPOILER with the SPOILER SPOILER you.

Overall, two very different games (apart for them being RPGs and First Person), I would say I prefered AF over Morrowind but with Morrowinds you have an hundred hours of fun, while in AF you have between 10 and 20 hours of fun.

Air max to a women is another kind of beauty. Fashion is a healthy, make you more happy attitude to life, in order to expand the material desires and Timberland Shoes for her families, look so good in Timberland. Also they will buy Other Shoes for different kinds of things todo. All they want to do is to make their life a kind of beauty and fashion.

Arx fatalis: start in a dungeon cell, escape, collect things, make potions, cast spells, open locks, sneak around, shoot arrows and hit things

Oblivion: start in a dungeon cell, escape, collect things, make potions, cast spells, open locks, sneak around, shoot arrows and hit things

Amazingly similar in my eyes.. I enjoy them both

"Start in a dungeon cell" - okay. Everything else seriously doesn't count because these are the things you do in each and every ye olde generic fantasy adventure (and "escape" is redundant).

Starting in a prison cell is the "you all meet in a tavern" of CRPGs. It gives designers an excuse to
(1) begin the game with dungeon action without prep time,
(2) supply the player with a grudge (a roleplaying hook) and
(3) provide a reason for the hero to start the game stark naked, which, in turn, allows for
(3.1) a learning curve and
(3.2) a greater difference between starting equipment (underpants and a blunt stick) and the shiny awesomesauce purplz of endgame.
(edit: typos)

I stopped playing it when I found out that the only way to identify magical items is to use your skill points on the object skill or whatever. The only game I know of where you can't just pay a shopkeeper to id stuff for you.

That makes it a gating skill, not all that different from level requirements on items in other CRPGs - it's just a bit more flexible because you can choose to upgrade it only as far as you need for the items you want, and you can do it quickly (better equipment at the expense of other abilities) or slowly (for characters that use abilities more than equipment). Also, it's a derived stat, and 3/4 primaries will increase it, reflecting its importance [and giving you some advancement "for free"].


There are other benefits to object knowledge that will make it worth increasing anyway - you get access to potion-brewing apparatus (you have been collecting all those herbs, right?) around the time that you start getting access to more powerful, complicated items; you'll want enough OK to brew healing potions (significantly increasing the total available in the game), which will also cover most items; it only takes a little more skill to identify the most powerful artifacts in the game.


I have a [currently stalled] game wherein I am running with rather low skills [and a pile of unspent points] so that I can identify minimum requirements for as many things as possible [I'm a dataholic] - you can do just fine for a long while without tremendously advanced equipment.

The main cost of low object knowledge that I'm experiencing is that I can only poison a few arrows at a time; however, it's easy to make unlimited poison potions [hint: you just need to create a source], so I carry a few stacks and I'm fine. (I just find bows to be fun, and despite lots of advice to the contrary, I have found poison sniping to be a highly effective midgame strategy, even with minimal training.)

Thanks Curunauth. Progress (for me) is turning out to be quite slow but your comments have given me hope that I will (eventually) be able to do more.

I have not gained any more skill points for a while and have no idea how to identify the 2 unidentified rings I carry around.

Question: can you leave objects lying around without them being stolen or deleted (like in Morrowind)? as Im running out of space in my inventory.. and I do love to collect things.

As for collecting herbs, I was short on cash so ground them to dust and sold them.. seems like option making is something to do far into the game.

I'd be fine if the skill kept you from just using an item. Then I could see what the item is, and decide if I want to up my skills/attributes at next level up to allow me to use it.

What I have a problem with is that the skill keeps you from knowing what the item is in the first place! I like loot in my RPGs. If I don't know what the loot is, that defeats the purpose.

Items are never deleted or stolen, whether on the ground or in a chest. I often fill the table in the library with potions and plants until I get access to the alchemy lab itself (and then end up doing the same in there).

If you make a character with high object knowledge you will get access to potion use right from the start. My favourite character type is a thief-mage; this bizarre combination is actually the most powerful character type. The combined influence of Mental and Dexterity will provide a lot of points for the Technical and Object Knowledge skills, meaning you can identify magic items, brew potions and pick locks easily; high Dexterity lets you deal more damage and get more critical hits, and its influence on Sneak makes it easier to make sneak attacks. Similarly, the magic prowess means you can cast powerful spells which helps tremendously in the later parts of the game; if you've got that far you know what I'm talking about. ;)

Getting Sneak to 51 or above (possible during character creation, if I recall correctly) lets you pickpocket NPCs, which is a great way of getting more money than you will ever need (as well as gaining easy access to almost every locked door and chest in the land), and when tied with mage skills you can actually turn invisible to pickpocket someone while standing in right in front of them, getting what you want at no risk to yourself.

There's a lot more going on in Arx because it's more condensed.

Morrowind feels like a virtual "Come explore New Zealand" ad that a travel agent would hand you on CD.

I'm really having a blast right now with Dark Messiah.

You can leave things safely in most places, but because I was leery about leaving too huge a stack, [and because organization, omg] I store important things in containers. The castle kitchen is excellent for this purpose [several barrels], and you will eventually get a room with a pair of chests as well. I have all my food in the kitchen, all my herbs and about 400 empty bottles in the lab (by the potion-making apparatus), and I've baked more fortified apple pie [add wine! it's FAR more nutritious and non-alcoholic] than I'll ever use, so I pretty much exclusively carry that (and whatever bits I pick up). I have some stacks of wine [goblin-town is a handy refill spot], and I left the kitchen water basin as water; I'm using one of the washbasins in town for . . . something more practical. ;-)

Also, do collect backpacks - you can have up to 4x storage space, and there are at least 4 backpacks in the game, because I've found at least one I could not collect due to already having max space. Each section of my inventory is dedicated to something different. I carry several full stacks of poison, some water and wine because why not, 30 or 40 fortified apple pies, my mithril and stealth armor sets, my plain bow and (self-made) Dex bow [note that enchanted items glow -- this *will* give you away in shadows, although very high stealth can make the detection range fairly short], and some melee options. Keeping with the "I'm not really combat trained" theme, the fast, always-poisoned ratman dagger both looks cool and is very effective if you have to use a "retreat a lot and quick-strike" melee technique. With fast/charging enemies (demons/Ylsides), I use unaimed bow shots for maximum poison delivery. I have also taken out a dragon by poison bow. A fairly ridiculous amount of bow, but bow nonetheless.


@Arkose:
yeah, my explorer is trained in mage-y stuff and uses invisibility liberally to assist his picking of pockets. I am trying to map the min required pickpocket/lockpick skill for various folks along with the key correspondences, which means I have a pile of unspent points and can't actually steal items requiring high skill in the game I continue forward; this has thus far left only a few though.

Invisibility isn't just awesome for practical thieving though - it makes a poisoned bow ridiculously lethal; for fun I took out the whole rebel camp one guy at a time by fading repeatedly into the shadows, enjoying the confused guards, and then nailing them for backstab multipliers as they searched or headed back to their posts [and then I reloaded, of course]. And as I said, my bow training isn't all that good, although I have pretty solid Dex . . . I tried upping bow training and WOW a trained, poisoned backstab bow hit from range can actually one-shot pretty powerful enemies.

Handy fact: bow shots do MORE damage the further they travel. So - figure out the ballistics, go out of visual range, draw to full power, and fire away. When you can get beyond-visual-range shots (often complicated / assisted by the curved trajectory), you are pretty much guaranteed a sneak-attack damage multiplier, and then if you time it right you could get the backstab multiplier too - my weakly trained dude [near the min. 30 projectile training] can two-shot the rebel leader that way with a non-magical bow.

BTW, you refill arrows by getting them repaired. This was not at all obvious to me at first.

And enchanting objects is very not intuitive - take out the object (ex: a bow) you want to enchant, drop it on the ground. Click the enchanting reagent in your inventory to get the item-cursor, and click on the bow on the ground. It glows now. Look at the bow on the ground, and cast enchant object - boom, it's enchanted!

You can only enchant once, and you can't make arrows indestructible to grant an infinite supply (but really, you don't need it - repair is cheap, and a few hundred arrows will kill a lot of opponents). I can't recall if enchant prevents poisoning, but bows are safe to enchant because you wield the bow and poison the arrows. >:-)

OH! and a trick with enchantment: you can use enchanted weapons to wield others you don't have the stats for. If you have 9 Str and need 10 to wield a particular weapon, you can enchant a dagger with +1Str, then sway the weapons using your 9+1 Str - it only checks when you ask to swap. ;-)


Also also also, everyone says that if you kill both clans of goblins, the traders get attacked and their chests of goodies are stolen. This is true, but they are not *gone* - go to where the third group of goblins had been hiding (by an exit, and even if you slaughter them first, they attack as scripted) - tucked off in a corner you'll find the two stolen chests, with all the goodies in them!! Steal to your heart's content! >:-)
[I discovered that last one while testing after I had already bought everything I needed.]

In any case, as with many RPGs, progress is slow at the start with most builds, but you'll hit a tipping point after which you get pretty powerful and flexible. Still, I appreciate that although my guy has been able to sneak to all the levels, there are areas that remain quite dangerous.

@kalirion:
Oh, fair point.

One thing you can do (if not playing ironman) is whenever you level, pump everything into object knowledge to see what you've got, then reload and only put what you want into OK. This is also a side benefit of walking around with unspent points; I can quickly check on pretty much anything now, although my saved OK is quite low.

Were I playing Ironman, I'd still save up my points and mainly spend when I can reach a milestone - 30 PROJ for bow, whatever OK is needed for some cool thing I just picked up, sufficient lock picking or pickpocket skill for something I've just encountered . . . with this diverse a set of utility skills available, I feel it's rather important to wait until you know what you need next before spending any points.

I find it funny when you irritate Oblivion players. They become so very shattered when you disprove that Oblivion isnt the greatest RPG of all time.

I am also finding it odd that everyone here has such strong feelings about Bethesda's games. At least Morrowind played like it was actually designed for the PC. Oblivion felt like playing Halo except I was restricted to only using mele

People seem to forget that quality voice acting in games is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back in the day games were voiced by pretty much whoever was available, quite often the developers themselves. It used to be rare for a game to have professional voice actors, and those that did were usually terrible because they blew their development budget on the talent.