The Elder Scrolls: Arena

Many of you may have played Morrowind or Oblivion, and you may be wondering where it all began. but even if your not, you will do well not to miss this rather amazing game.
Elder Scrolls games have always had an amazing sense of freedom, and a rather live world, despite the obviously dated look of Arena, it doesn't fail to deliver in these aspects.
The Manual (can be found online) states that the creators didn't want to create a game as such, but a 'world' which you can explore, and do whatever you want in, its not a matter of good versus evil as most games, in this case you can be a despicable thief or assassin should you wish, as well as a law enforcing knight, or just about anything you could wish for. For its time the freedom in this game is rather overwhelming. The freedom itself can rival any freedom in any modern game to be totally honest.
The map, although it all looks rather samey, is absolutely huge. If you thought morrowind or oblivion was big, this is actually over a thousand times bigger! Second only to Daggerfell, the second Oblivion game (hope that becomes freeware soon!).
The combat is rather unique, especially if compared to the latest 2 ES games. Rather then clicking to attack, you have to drag the mouse in the direction you want to swing your melee weapon, which is actually pretty fun.
The difficulty varies in this game, it really all depends on how fast you take things, you take it too fast and it will be very hard, you take it slow and it will be pretty easy.. although the starting dungeon is admittedly rather hard especially for first time players.
The map as mentioned before is absolutely huge theres about 400 towns, each with many npcs, loads of dungeons to keep you busy and plenty of quests.. the game is bigger then your mind could comprehend, believe me!
as a final note, this game is an old dos game, so it is impossible to get it running on windows unless you use an emulator such as DosBox (Google it, its easy to find). the game was released as freeware as a celebration to Elderscrolls 10 year anniversary.

Pros:

Amazing freedom
Huge game (in terms of quests and map)
More to do then you could in a lifetime!

Cons:

Map looks samey
Graphics dated
Can't play without emulator such as dosbox (can download free)

Review by KrazyKain