"Arktwend - The Forgotten Realm" is a total conversion to The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and it's english now!
Arktwend is a very ambitious mod, but lacks polish. Clearly, SureAI wanted to make this at least as detailed as Morrowind. The game world is absolutely enormous, but is more restrictive than Morrowind's world. This can actually make it feel smaller than Morrowind at times. Also, there is only one highly inhabited part of Arktwend, which is the north west area of land surrounding the city of Stormwend. While this makes other parts of Arktwend seem mysterious, it also makes it generally harder to explore these parts. This is probably what SureAI intended, but it definitely contrasts sharply with how Morrowind has towns scattered everywhere.
Another aspect of Arktwend that is both good and bad is the huge number of enemies in certain areas. The world is extremely dangerous if you just decide to start exploring at a low level, or even at a high level. I once ran across an area that was completely overrun with monsters. While encountering a huge number of enemies such as this should be exciting, it's actually not that interesting. This is because of Morrowind's clunky and repetitive combat system. It makes killing giant swarms of enemies simply too tedious.
I also encountered some places that seemed like they were cut from the final game, even though they still existed in the game world. For example, there was a village that was affected by a seemingly important event that I won't go into detail about to prevent spoiling the game. In this village, I ended up killing some monsters and their leader and collecting an item. Even though what I did seemed important, it never actually had any consequences. In addition to this, this seemingly important item never needed to be used in the main quest (and the main quest is what this item was related to). I'm not sure if this was due to me simply not playing the game enough, or if this actually was cut from the main quest. It would be nice if the game would force players to explore places such as this.
Probably one of the best mods for Morrowind at this time, especially wonderful work done on the immersive cities and distinctive landscapes, completely different visually speaking than the original game.
The only particular aspect is that the overall design is more linear and offer less possibilities for free exploration in the wilderness but this detail is quickly forgotten after few hours of gameplay.
For your information this mod is a "total conversion", meaning like a new game based on the Morrowind game engine's mechanisms replacing Vvardenfell and thus requiring to start a new character.
Also most of the mods existing are not compatibles with Arktwend, except pluginless and graphics mods (such as textures, meshes replacers, MGE XE...).
In resume, interesting plot, immersive places, uniques and refreshing landscapes, a masterpiece of modding!
And so it was that Morrowind had his great favorite Total Conversion. Another great mod with a compelling main story, at times poetic and with one of the most fascinating cities explored.
Maybe it needed a little more development about some side quests or some balancing or for ex. some empty houses..but the story is enthralling and reveals the great talent of the modders
Biggest problem I have with it is the level design and writing. It’s clear that there was more than one person on the team doing interiors, and one of those people should not have been allowed near a computer. Like, ever. I almost want to say it was the lead dev's little brother or something, because these interiors were just that awful.
Writing is kinda boring, and feels like a lot got lost in translation. On the plus side, the main quest in terms of design and gameplay is great (skiing, airship piloting, wars, yay!) even if the plot is kind of loose.
Would have been so perfect if it weren't for some game breaking bugs :(
especially the one when entering Stormwend for the first time