The Ardenfall Demo Has Left a Good Impression
Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2025 1:09 pm
So I've finally got the chance to play the new demo for Ardenfall on steam. It and elderscrolls like borrowing from Morrowind, Skyrim, and even a bit of Fallout New Vegas. The market it as a morrowind like but I think it smore accurate to say it plays more like a mix of skyrim (combat) and new vegas (Leveling up), with a more alien art direction from Morrowind. Though there's some wild potions of speed and levitate so there's some classical spirit in there.
What I'm now excited for after playing the game is the magic system. It largely relies on a mana system as a singular resource for not just spells, but scrolls and staves as well. Which is a bit of streamlining I feel mixed about, but I can understand not wanting to have have a separate enchantment resource you need to keep track of. What interesting is the spells are on slates that you map to your number hotbar/keypad. Each spell has a bit of a cooldown when you cast it. ... for that slate. What I found is if you have multiple slates of the same spell you can chain them or even cast them all at once for some wild affects. In case I mapped all ten of my number keys to the spell called fling, and I can effectively do crazy jumps and dashs/
I don't know if they're going to patch that out, but I hope they don't or at least maybe have me cast one spell at a time. But man with that and speed potions I want to know how wild this game will get at launch!
What I'm now excited for after playing the game is the magic system. It largely relies on a mana system as a singular resource for not just spells, but scrolls and staves as well. Which is a bit of streamlining I feel mixed about, but I can understand not wanting to have have a separate enchantment resource you need to keep track of. What interesting is the spells are on slates that you map to your number hotbar/keypad. Each spell has a bit of a cooldown when you cast it. ... for that slate. What I found is if you have multiple slates of the same spell you can chain them or even cast them all at once for some wild affects. In case I mapped all ten of my number keys to the spell called fling, and I can effectively do crazy jumps and dashs/
I don't know if they're going to patch that out, but I hope they don't or at least maybe have me cast one spell at a time. But man with that and speed potions I want to know how wild this game will get at launch!
