This is honestly a fascinating game, kind of. The world is massive, and while the majority of it is procedurally generated, there are still hundreds of towns to discover and plenty of large dungeons to crawl through. There is an ingame time system that keeps track of days and everything. You can barter with merchants both when buying and selling, and ask people for rumors and jobs. There are dozens of different weapons and spells for you to find and experiment with, and the class selection is vast. The lore, while not super fleshed out, is interesting and lays out a good formation for later games. The entire continent where the series takes place was created for this game, and you can visit every single city in every single province if you want, and many of them have their own themes and looks.
The caveat to all these cool things is of course that the game never really utilizes any of them in meaningful ways. The procedurally generated environments get boring to explore after 3 seconds, after you realize what little variety there is. The timer never comes into play at all, it's purely for show, and apart from the few quests that require you do do something within 3 days or whatever, you can go the entire game without having to look at the calendar once. The bartering is tied mainly to one stat, which isn't used for anything else. And while it is pretty neat to have all these different weapons at your disposal, they are practically useless due to how OP magic is. Not picking a mage class at the beginning of the game is basically a death sentence if you don't want to spend a fortune on potions.
To me at least, the two biggest problems with the game are technical jank and tedious combat. For the first one, I am at least partially willing to excuse it because of its age. Having expansive 3D environments in 1994 must've taken a lot of work, but that doesn't change the fact that the draw distance is so fucking bad. You can't see anything unless it's right in front of you, and this is honestly the biggest immersion killer in the entire game. The clunky movement isn't super frustratating, although I don't think it was necessary to have the swimming speed be 1 m/year. Still, this is a minor gripe.
The combat is an entirely different story however. First of all, just wildly swiping your mouse across the desk is not very intuitive. Second of all, who the FUCK was responsible for the rng in these fights. The damage and hit probability for both you and the enemies in this game vary so massively, that fighting a single enemy can go completely different ways. You might be lucky with your hits, take few in return, and dispatch them in seconds. OR, your foe might land three high roll strikes in a row, draining your entire health bar almost instantaneously. It is impossible to tell how a fight will go beforehand, and this uncertainty makes the dungeon crawling feel even more aggrevating and pointless.
Overall, Arena is a game that hasn't endured the passage of time very well. It is janky, tedious and frustrating to play, and the vastness of its different systems isn't enough to save it, especially considering how underutilized everything is. I've heard the sequel is way better, so let's hope the Elder Scroll experience improves.
The caveat to all these cool things is of course that the game never really utilizes any of them in meaningful ways. The procedurally generated environments get boring to explore after 3 seconds, after you realize what little variety there is. The timer never comes into play at all, it's purely for show, and apart from the few quests that require you do do something within 3 days or whatever, you can go the entire game without having to look at the calendar once. The bartering is tied mainly to one stat, which isn't used for anything else. And while it is pretty neat to have all these different weapons at your disposal, they are practically useless due to how OP magic is. Not picking a mage class at the beginning of the game is basically a death sentence if you don't want to spend a fortune on potions.
To me at least, the two biggest problems with the game are technical jank and tedious combat. For the first one, I am at least partially willing to excuse it because of its age. Having expansive 3D environments in 1994 must've taken a lot of work, but that doesn't change the fact that the draw distance is so fucking bad. You can't see anything unless it's right in front of you, and this is honestly the biggest immersion killer in the entire game. The clunky movement isn't super frustratating, although I don't think it was necessary to have the swimming speed be 1 m/year. Still, this is a minor gripe.
The combat is an entirely different story however. First of all, just wildly swiping your mouse across the desk is not very intuitive. Second of all, who the FUCK was responsible for the rng in these fights. The damage and hit probability for both you and the enemies in this game vary so massively, that fighting a single enemy can go completely different ways. You might be lucky with your hits, take few in return, and dispatch them in seconds. OR, your foe might land three high roll strikes in a row, draining your entire health bar almost instantaneously. It is impossible to tell how a fight will go beforehand, and this uncertainty makes the dungeon crawling feel even more aggrevating and pointless.
Overall, Arena is a game that hasn't endured the passage of time very well. It is janky, tedious and frustrating to play, and the vastness of its different systems isn't enough to save it, especially considering how underutilized everything is. I've heard the sequel is way better, so let's hope the Elder Scroll experience improves.