26th March 2010, 6:02 PM
Actually Arena doesn't model the entire continent. You cannot actually walk from one city to another in the game; you can just explore each city (randomly designed) and its randomly generated surroundings. To get from place to place you have to use the fast-travel map.
Also I remember the fact that the insides of buildings are identical continent-wide really annoying me... why are all the people inside the buildings in the High Elves' island normal white humans, just like they are everywhere else? I think it was like that at least...
And yes, NPC "interaction" is basically limited to asking for always-the-same sidequests, hints towards the location of the next story or quest dungeon, or asking where things are in town (an important function).
I do like "move the mouse across the screen to attack", though. Daggerfall does it the same way, and it's more interesting than the consolized attack system of Morrowind and Oblivion.
As for it vs. Wizardry 7 though... I'm going to go with Wizardry, even though it's much more annoying and frustrating to play, because of the much greater depth. That means that it's likely going to be less repetitive and samey as Arena (and all TES games really) gets.
Of course I've never really liked TES games, so that's probably not too surprising...
As for Daggerfall, I've only played a few hours of it, and even that was only the demo, but I still think that conceptwise and featurewise, it's easily the best game in the series by far. Gameplay-wise I don't know, I kind of dislike all of the TES games... they just don't hold my interest. Too big, too open, with too little actually interesting things to do and far too simplistic a combat system. Arena is actually the one I've played the most of the four, and I do have Morrowind and Oblivion. Arena's simple, but fun for a while... Morrowind has no fast travel which ruins it really, and Oblivion... eh. Haven't played much of it. Both of those are quite disappointing in their very small worlds though; sure, Arena and Daggerfall are all randomized, but the scale is so much more realistic and impressive that I don't think of them as worse for it. More realistic scale and random or all designed and small... I'm not sure which I like more, but I think I give the edge to the larger randomized world. Morrowind's world was tiny! I know that it had to be small because they were designing it all and with no fast travel getting places is a pain even with its "small" size, but still... towns being like a minute's walk apart is lame. Fantasy-game staple, sure, but lame, and quite unlike Arena or Daggerfall.
Oh, Daggerfall also has some decent graphics for the time. Arena's pretty archaic, with only flat rooves, those identical interiors, etc, but Daggerfall still looks somewhat nice... the fairly close fog is annoying, but still, it looks better.
Seriously though, overall I'd far rather play a Wizardry or Wizards & Warriors than anything in the TES series. Those are much better games in my opinion, or at least games much more like the kind of thing I like more.
... I still love Wizards & Warriors, it's lesser-known than Wizardry 8 (which came out just slightly after it), but the game really is just about as good... fantastic, fantastic game, and really one of the least well known great games I've played on the PC.
Also I remember the fact that the insides of buildings are identical continent-wide really annoying me... why are all the people inside the buildings in the High Elves' island normal white humans, just like they are everywhere else? I think it was like that at least...
And yes, NPC "interaction" is basically limited to asking for always-the-same sidequests, hints towards the location of the next story or quest dungeon, or asking where things are in town (an important function).
I do like "move the mouse across the screen to attack", though. Daggerfall does it the same way, and it's more interesting than the consolized attack system of Morrowind and Oblivion.
As for it vs. Wizardry 7 though... I'm going to go with Wizardry, even though it's much more annoying and frustrating to play, because of the much greater depth. That means that it's likely going to be less repetitive and samey as Arena (and all TES games really) gets.
Of course I've never really liked TES games, so that's probably not too surprising...
As for Daggerfall, I've only played a few hours of it, and even that was only the demo, but I still think that conceptwise and featurewise, it's easily the best game in the series by far. Gameplay-wise I don't know, I kind of dislike all of the TES games... they just don't hold my interest. Too big, too open, with too little actually interesting things to do and far too simplistic a combat system. Arena is actually the one I've played the most of the four, and I do have Morrowind and Oblivion. Arena's simple, but fun for a while... Morrowind has no fast travel which ruins it really, and Oblivion... eh. Haven't played much of it. Both of those are quite disappointing in their very small worlds though; sure, Arena and Daggerfall are all randomized, but the scale is so much more realistic and impressive that I don't think of them as worse for it. More realistic scale and random or all designed and small... I'm not sure which I like more, but I think I give the edge to the larger randomized world. Morrowind's world was tiny! I know that it had to be small because they were designing it all and with no fast travel getting places is a pain even with its "small" size, but still... towns being like a minute's walk apart is lame. Fantasy-game staple, sure, but lame, and quite unlike Arena or Daggerfall.
Oh, Daggerfall also has some decent graphics for the time. Arena's pretty archaic, with only flat rooves, those identical interiors, etc, but Daggerfall still looks somewhat nice... the fairly close fog is annoying, but still, it looks better.
Seriously though, overall I'd far rather play a Wizardry or Wizards & Warriors than anything in the TES series. Those are much better games in my opinion, or at least games much more like the kind of thing I like more.
... I still love Wizards & Warriors, it's lesser-known than Wizardry 8 (which came out just slightly after it), but the game really is just about as good... fantastic, fantastic game, and really one of the least well known great games I've played on the PC.