26th March 2010, 12:28 PM
To go along with the OP, I played some Elder Scrolls I: Arena. It's pretty clear that it's the basis for the Elder Scrolls game to come, but it's a pretty good foundation and feels closer to its newer brethren than other RPGs from a similar time period feel compared to other modern-day RPGs.
Having said that, it's still somewhat archaic. For one thing, the game world is absolutely massive. Something 80 million square kilometers to roam through. The problem? Most of it's pretty barren and same-y. If you're looking for variety and cool little secret places that look different from the rest of the world, you're not going to find that here. If you got bored in Oblivion of seeing the same dungeon for the 10th time, we'll just wait until you see the same dungeons for the 1,000,000th time. That's basically Arean in a nutshell. There's also the "move the mouse across the screen to attack", which seems kind of cool at first but becomes annoying after a while. Modern TES games handle this so much better.
NPC conversation is pretty limited too. Most have exactly one line and that's about it. There's also a ton of repetition, even more than the newer games, because the game is so much more vast.
Anyway, I'm straying from my point, I think. Arena is pretty fun for what it is and I think I'd have more fun playing this than a lot of other RPGs from the same time period judged by the perspective of the passage of 15+ years. Between this and Wizardry 7, there's really not much else unfortunately. Perhaps some Ultima 7 or 8.
Having said that, it's still somewhat archaic. For one thing, the game world is absolutely massive. Something 80 million square kilometers to roam through. The problem? Most of it's pretty barren and same-y. If you're looking for variety and cool little secret places that look different from the rest of the world, you're not going to find that here. If you got bored in Oblivion of seeing the same dungeon for the 10th time, we'll just wait until you see the same dungeons for the 1,000,000th time. That's basically Arean in a nutshell. There's also the "move the mouse across the screen to attack", which seems kind of cool at first but becomes annoying after a while. Modern TES games handle this so much better.
NPC conversation is pretty limited too. Most have exactly one line and that's about it. There's also a ton of repetition, even more than the newer games, because the game is so much more vast.
Anyway, I'm straying from my point, I think. Arena is pretty fun for what it is and I think I'd have more fun playing this than a lot of other RPGs from the same time period judged by the perspective of the passage of 15+ years. Between this and Wizardry 7, there's really not much else unfortunately. Perhaps some Ultima 7 or 8.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.