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TES: Arena Review


A Black Circle

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THE ELDER SCROLLS ARENA...

 

...is a fun game. I'm going to show my overall opinion at the front of the review. There's no reason to hide it because the lot of you are just going to scroll down to see it anyway.

 

TES Arena was released in 1994, and originally started as a gladitorial combat game. RPG elements were worked into game and slowly took over, producing... this. The other major 3D RPG at the time, Ultmia Underworld, confined you to a single (large) dungeon. Arena players could explore an ENIRE CONTINENT. And when they said explore, they meant explore EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY. There are 2 main areas in the game: Towns and Overworld. Each town has its own individual overworld that contains inns, temples, dungeons, and the like. Towns can be initially very confuing to navigate through, but you get used to it. The overworld also feels a bit lacking at times. Unlike later games in the series, the world was designed randomly, which reminds me...

 

RNG. I usually hate RNG. I prefer everything to be predictable, and having it in excess can be a turn off. Though this game's random-ness can be frustrating, it's overall not the worst. Other than the main quest, shop inventories, and the maps (excluding dungeons), everything is random. Again, this should be a turn-off, but AJ brought up a very good point that RNG makes more unique experiences. She's right, and some of the things I've found would feel a bit less special if it was the exact same. The RNG can feel really awful if it isn't coded well enough, and in terms of loot, this was handled very well. Monsters, however, can be unpredictable and prone to extreme annoyance, especially human enemies.

 

As for the dungeon crawling and side questing itself, as that is the bulk of my experience (don't care about the main quest... it's just linear dungeon crawling.), it's fun and addictive. As I've said before, the loot balance is good, the monsters not as much, but I will put in a complaint that the size of these dungeons is either WAAY too big or WAAY too small.

 

I wouldn't leave the review without mentioning this, but the music in this game is amazing. I'd say that Eric Heberling did just as good a job as Soule in making really good compositions.

.

 

In closing, this game is good, but really flawed, mainly in its monster placement and repetitve nature which can make it occasionally annoying. I'm going to give it a 73 (keep in mind that 50 is an average game).

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