I decided I was bored of Skyrim, so I loaded up Arena for the first time.

The opening dungeon is unforgiving. You're likely to die the first time you see an enemy, because the game doesn't explain how to perform combat, and its not as easy as clicking the mouse. This is made worse by the fact that you have very little health.

If you don't save immediately after creating your character, and you die, you have to go back to character creation.

After getting through the dungeon, and dying more times than I care to recount, I finally got to the exit, a portal that will send you to a random city in Tamriel.

This portal will ask you a question before you can proceed, to answer which, you will need the game's manual. At first it asked me how much mana 'Wizard's Flame' costs, stating it was listed in the Known Spellbook, a section of the manual covering magic.

Hoping it might be the same as Skyrim, I said '6'. Then it asked me about another spell, upon answering this one incorrectly too, the game crashed, and I had to go back to my last save.

I found an online copy of the Known Spellbook and managed to escape the dungeon this time, and the port dropped me in, you guessed it, Amol.

Don't know about Amol? You may remember raiding Fort Amol better.

Yes, that's right, for all my effort, I was still in Skyrim in the end.

Amol is just a little ways, west of Windhelm, maybe two, three minutes walk in Skyrim distance.

So I set out from the northern end of the city to the southern. I think I walked further just to get to the south gate than I would've to get to Windhelm in Skyrim.

After going due east for about half an hour, I was still nowhere near Windhelm, and I needed to rest badly.

So I made camp, and was interrupted after a few hours by a burly Nord, who killed me in a single stroke.

A save loaded me back in Amol.

Fuck this game, and fuck Bethesda.

Arena is p. shit tbh

Daggerfall is the pre-polygonal 3D game you're looking for.

Yeah, Arena doesn't fuck around. When you want to go on a fun little amusement park ride with your pals and have your hand held the whole time you play Skyrim. When you want a serious adventure game you play Arena.

No arena just straight up sucks.

You have to fast travel everywhere if you wanna complete the game in this lifetime, because Amol, about as far from windhelm as the nightgate inn, is now 180km real world distance away.

Plus, you can get one shotted by enemies that randomly spawn on the wilderness.

Not to mention, the first thing I looted in the very beginning of the game gave me the vest weapon in the game.

It's just a bunch of ridiculous rng spaced too far apart.