The Elder Scrolls: Arena

The Elder Scrolls franchise is my favorite game franchise of all time. I started with Morrowind and have loved every game since. I'll never forget the first time I played Arena when Bethesda originally made it free. I rolled a character and entered the starter dungeon, only to get stomped every time I tried to complete it. It was only in recent years that I decided to go back to Arena and Daggerfall to give them a proper try and I'm very glad I did. While these games are absolutely unforgiving in the early moments, it makes it that much more rewarding as time goes on. This is an old school RPG in every way, having a lot more in common with tabletop RPGs than any modern cRPG (even among TES). You have to be smart when you create your character, crafting a build that specializes in one or two things, and you have to be cautious as you explore the world. That brings me to where this game is particularly brilliant. While a few RPGs had tried the open world at this point, most still focused more on a very simplistic story and party management. Arena doesn't do that. Instead, this game encapsulates the rawest version of the Elder Scrolls fantasy: create a character and go do what you want. Sure, it's not as sandbox or story-driven as Daggerfall and later games are but once you get out of that brutal starter dungeon, you're free to seek adventure in any way you see fit. The main flaw comes in the form of the features it lacks. Daggerfall would introduce all these awesome ways you can 'live' in the game world and interact with its people but Arena is more about building your character, exploring the world and crawling through dungeons. It's fun, but it's not very refined, as you're essentially always going to be some sort of warrior or wizard. As such, you really have to go in with the proper expectations. If you do, you'll find a fantastic old school RPG with every ounce of that Doom-era 90s game charm, tied together with all the nerdy fantasy you could ever want!

Remember to kill a rat, then sleep, fight, sleep, avoid dying at all costs, fight sleep level up and explore. I found a firstorm sword on my first character in the starting dungeon and it allowed me to kill everything and easier progression. So completeing the starting dugeon completely might gift you a powerful weapon, and is highly recommended. Fear the rats, but don't let them kill you, sleep near lit places is everything or you won't get too far in your first class.

If you are an Elder Scrolls fan on the verge of letting your curiosity get the better of you, let me give you all the points of interest and connections to future games this game has and spare you the ball twisting pain of actually playing the game. 1. All the provinces and many towns in them have the same names as in future games. 2. Many legendary weapons and artifacts in future games appear here first. Such as the Oghma Infinitum and Staff of Magnus. Their descriptions mention the same names but are only sometimes related to the modern lore. Magnus is simply a mortal mage, not a god, for example. 3. Most of the main quest levels are mentioned again in later games. Mostly ESO, such as Selene's Web. The Labyrinthian also appears again in Skyrim, but again, the lore is completely different. 4. Guilds like the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are enemies you might encounter as targets in side quests, all of which are procedurally generated. You sometimes get ambushed by enemies with text along the lines of "You are attacked by the Thieves Guild!" and such, but can interact with them in no way besides that. The only exception is the Mage's Guild, which has a building in every city and offers important services and sells items, but is not joinable. 5. Dwarves are mentioned, and you visit one of their keeps called "Fang Lair", it's also mentioned they mysteriously disappeared from Tamriel, and dwarven weapons are yellow. The similarities end there, Fang Lair is simply a normal mine. 6. The story is about freeing the Emperor Uriel Septim VII from Jagar Tharn. The emperor is the same one as from the start of Oblivion. And that's it! None of the enemies would really be recognized by the modern fan as being from ES. You have giant lizard people, homunculus, demons, just random stuff. The provinces all look alike mostly. The game also runs like absolute ass and is incredibly simple, yet quite long. Save yourself the time and skip to Daggerfall.

Good - Includes all continents from future TES games, which will probably take 30 years to develop the next time they attempt it - Spell customization lets you break the game as far as your creativity will allow - Fun unique dungeons, which is the entire game - Music and immersion - Fully open world rpg, in 1994! Bad - Kind of crashy - The wilderness area between towns is a digital wasteland with zero content