Shovel Knight (PC, 3DS, Wii U, Mac, Linux, PS Vita, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, and select digging implements everywhere)

 

In a world of knights, kings, ancient magicks, hordes of treasure, and 16 bits there was an inseparable and unbeatable duo of knights, Shovel Knight and Shield Knight. Their adventures took them far and wide to the prestigious and dangerous Tower of Fate. A mysterious amulet wrought a dark spell around Shield Knight. As Shovel Knight came to Shield Knight was gone and the Tower was sealed. With a burden of shame too great for him — and the tower locked in any event — Shovel Knight went into exile. Some time later news reached him that the kingdom was dominated by the brutal Order of No Quarter lead by a bewitching Enchantress. The Tower of Fate has been unsealed and Shovel Knight vowed to figure what happened to his dear friend, no matter how many adversaries crossed his spade.

History

Shovel Knight is the inaugural title of Yacht Club Games, a collection of Way Forward Technologies employees who split from the company to go all in on this game. They started a Kickstarter Campaign to fund the project and it was backed three times over again. It was delayed for almost a year before its final release and it still has unimplimented features. There are three additional campaigns planned, with one released and two more on the way, and a battle mode in the works. All of these additional features will be free when they’re finished, I should note.

Shovel Knight draws a lot of inspiration on games from the past, Megaman especially.

Shovel Knight was planned for release in September 2013 but was actually released on June 26th, 2014. It’s competition was 1001 Spikes ( PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, 3DS, WiiU, Goddam everything), Valiant Hearts: The Great War( PC, Xbox One, XBLA, PSN, PS4), and Oddworld New N’ Tasty (PS4).

Experiences

Shovel Knight is like a lost and hidden gem of an experience. I bought it, beat it,  beat it again, and then bought the soundtrack. This was one of those deep binges. I completed the whole thing in three days, I just couldn’t get enough. I cannot think of another 2-D platformer in which I was more emotionally invested in the story. I wanted so dearly to see what had become of Shield Knight, what united the Order, and what happened in the Tower of Fate.

Gameplay

The Kingdom serves as the overworld map for the game and it’s a akin to Super Mario Bros 3 in many ways. Shovel Knight travels across it to different towns filled with helpful NPCs and upgrades, treasure troves filled with sweet loot, and enemy strongholds filled with baddies and a Knight of the Order –oh yeah, they all contain fun as well.

Complete with ominous clouds to prevent you from seeing further than you’ve unlocked.

Shovel Knight’s control scheme is shockingly simple. He can jump, strike with his shovel, and bounce on enemies — different enemies offer varying levels of bounce. For such a little guy he can dish out and take shocking amounts of punishment — and he’s agile to boot. Don’t be too afraid of dying though. The only thing you lose is treasure and there’s always more of that to be had.

The shovel is both a weapon and a tool in the hands of a capable Shovel Knight. As such he can dig through earth and enemy alike. Secret treasures, relics, and music sheets lay hidden everywhere so keep your eyes peeled and give your shovel a swing at any suspicious piles of dirt of background.

The Gush

SHOVEL KNIGHT IS SHORT! I mean literally, he’s a short character, as in not tall. I can’t rightly say why but I really like that. The last character I remember playing who had difficult time reaching the highest kitchen shelf was Lil’ Mac from Punch Out. That’s some serious under-representation of shorter characters.

The music in this game takes the limitations of 16 bit sound and makes them shine. Jake Kaufman truly outdid himself with this memorable and bouncy soundtrack. It perfectly builds mood and atmosphere along with the beautiful art direction

The difficulty curve here is incredibly smooth and well calibrated. This game will challenge you, it will be tough but there’s never a situation or enemy that is unfair. Everything has a tactic or ability you can use to counter them, you’ve just gotta figure out what they are.

Except for these Green Fan jerks. They’re LITERALLY impossible to figure out.

The story is scarce but it provides a skeleton of sorts. The player-base can brew their theories but there isn’t a lot of definite proof/ are not a lot of outright answers. I mean this all in a good way though. We’ll imagine a story that suits

Each of the relics you can find provide a powerful and interesting new ability for our digging implement related hero. They acentuate his strengths or cover up his weaknesses and in any event they provide a playground of design.

Every so often random minibosses will appear on the overworld. Should you cross their paths then there will be a rumble. Each of these opponents provides a quick but challenging boss fight — and a little treasure to sweeten the deal. Many of these were also created by Kickstarter backers who fronted a lot of money for the project.

The Kvetch

When Shovel Knight gets hit he gets knocked back just a bit. This will lead to many deaths due to pits or spikes. But the thing that frustrates me about it is that Shovel Knight gets knocked back relative to what direction he is looking instead of which direction he was struck from. It’s unexpected to bump right when Shovel Knight gets hit with a projectile that was coming from the same direction simply because he’s walking away from it.

Take damage in a section like this is a near death sentence! Also, sweet flame rod.

Trying not to spoil things but Shield Knight is dangerously close to being a damsel in distress when that’s definitely not in her character. A few small tweaks and I think this game would be a little more woman friendly.

This one is really small but I wish there was a quicker way to access Shovel Knight’s relics. I can scroll through them with A and S but enemies are still moving during that time and it’s extremely stressful. The alternative is pausing and opening the relic menu and selecting what you need. It’s just a little too slow for my tastes.

The Verdict

Shovel Knight retails on Steam for $15 and I would say that pricing is perfect. If you were itching for an old-school platformer or you wanted to understand what your dad’s been railing on about all this time then Shovel Knight is a great place to start. Oh yeah, I did mention something about an expansion pack right? Well…

Next Week: Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows

Medieval II: Total War (PC)

The year is 1080 AD, the time of knights, crusades, and high chivalry. Across Europe men are dying in droves for their kings and lords. You play one of these kings and control the nation — , no queens though, no girls allowed (Well, unless you have a pope who’s secretly a woman but I’m getting ahead of myself). As a king you’ve got to perform administrative tasks like commissioning buildings, recruiting troops, and assigning agents like merchants, spies, and diplomats. Oh yeah, and you command those troops and DESTROY EVERYTHING THAT LAYS BEFORE YOU! BURN ALL THAT BURNS, STEAL ALL THAT SHINES! Or… maybe you could do that whole chivalry thing if that’s your bag.

History

There’s not much gossip or incident about this game but I can offer some basic information. Medieval II was designed and created by Creative Assembly, who worked on sports games until their breakout title Shogun: Total War, sparking off the Total War series. It was published by Sega, of all companies, who purchased Creative Assembly in a bid to maintain a presence in the North American and European game markets.

Medieval II: Total War was released on November 13th, 2006. It’s competition was Gears of War XBox 360, Final Fantasy XII (PS2), and Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch King (PC).

Experiences

Medieval II’s trait system guarantees that you’ll eventually have the most ridiculous king or lord ever in the history of the game. From Faradoc the Fat who died 8 years into his rule after going hopelessly insane. Or a general of mine in the Britannia campaign who’s name escapes me. A man who faced and killed William Wallace in single combat, who’s health was so immense that he became brutally scarred which further increased his health. The trait system is one of the most fun parts of this game. Priests can secretly be women, and if she reaches the rank of cardinal, and if she’s voted for pope, THEN THE POPE CAN BE SECRETLY A WOMAN! Factions can be held aloft by the extreme Chivalry or Dread of their King and when he dies things might fall to pieces. It’s just awesome.

Gameplay

The game is basically split between the administration section of the game that takes place in the overworld map and the real-time combat. When your governing you can commission building projects, adjust taxes, have agents like spies and assassins perform actions, and move your armies and navies around. Every county has a city in it which is either a town or a castle the difference being towns make oodles of money and castles (generally) produce superior military units.

Behold the starting map position and county names.

Your armies march around and generally stomp your enemies. You can support these troops with family members who will command them, their command stat adding to your troops’ attack, defense, and morale. Your lords aren’t just for fighting though. They can govern your towns increasing their income and decreasing their building and troop costs — unless they have garbage traits. And traits are everything. Your most level-headed general might charge without command if he hates the French and he’s fighting his hated foes.

When your armies clash the world map will give way to randomly generated but terrain influenced combat map so try to fight someplace that works to your advantage. Combat in the field is all about shocking your enemies and breaking their morale at which point they’ll run and, unless they have a truly inspiring or terrifying commander, won’t turn back.

If your playing a Christian faction then you’re gonna have to deal with the Pope because he hates it when everyone’s fighting and being all non-Christ-like. If you work with the pope then you can call crusades on religious cities and get some free passes to attack other nations. If you don’t listen to him then your faction might get excommunicated and that’ll make your people really upset — It can also make you a target for enemy crusades. Muslim nations don’t have to answer to anyone but can only use their Jihads to re-take cities they’ve lost.

If you’ve got cardinals you can control their votes to elect a new pope and if you’re faction controls the pope then you can do just about whatever you want.

There’s also a multiplayer component to the game but you can only fight over the internet. If you want to run a campaign with your friends then you’ll have to do it hot-seat style — and have a gentlemen’s agreement to only autocalculate combat between player controlled factions because the AI isn’t as good as you are.

The Gush

I love a siege. Nothing gets my blood up like defending some walls. None shall pass says I. No matter how grim things get defending troops have a morale bonus and will flee to the center of town instead of abandoning the field. The larger the city is the more defenses it has and it may even have an inner set of walls. The siegers will be hard pressed to get their siege engines that far into the city.

Come and get me.

I love seeing what crazy pile of traits I can have on one character. I already mentioned the pope being secretly a woman but there’s nothing like my Danish king who was accompanied by an old war buddy and an classically trained Berserker.

Nothing like playing Milan. Milan gets their best military units from towns instead of castles so they have both economic power and military strength.

Sometimes things from history will happen in the game. I was playing as Egypt and born to my king was a son with the trait Born to Command and the boy’s name was Saladin. Naturally I threw him into every battle that I could and I couldn’t help but keep his chivalry high.

The Kvetch

There’s no real naval combat in this game. All you can do is auto-calculate naval battles so there’s no real skill involved. I also don’t understand exactly how they work. I don’t know what makes a good navy.

In this image is all of the game’s naval combat. You can auto-calculate or run.

The fog of war in this game is your worst enemy. If you’re marching your army and it runs into another thing be it another army, a merchant, or a princess — doesn’t matter — they’ll get stopped dead in their tracks. They also lose all of their movement until the next turn. It’s just annoying for normal armies but it can kill a Crusade or a Jihad because if the army stops moving then the soldiers will desert as they doubt your devotion to the cause. I generally cheat to disable the fog of war because I can’t deal with inching along to avoid it.

Does anyone know how merchants work? Could you drop a comment? Because I’ve been playing this game for 5 years and I have no fucking clue. I know that if you put them on a resource they’ll earn you extra money and they can try to acquire assets from enemy merchants. But enemy merchants typically have such high skill that mine fail to acquire their assets and are often destroyed in retaliation. It just feels like a waste of 550 florins.

All of the non-English voice acting sounds incredibly awful and maybe even a little racist. I keep it on just to laugh and cringe at.

The Verdict

This game gives me “one more turn syndrome” so badly. I’ll turn it on play 50 turns real quick but why not 51? Oh, wait, I really want to finish this siege. Ope, a Crusade? I’ll just finish that up real quick and then I’m done. It continues like this until my weekend gets destroyed. This game is fantastic. It’s 25 dollar Steam price tag is just a testament to how well it’s aged.

Next Week: Iji

The Wolf Among Us (PC, Xbox 360, and PS3)

The fables and characters within that we know and love weren’t actually born on the page. They lived in their own world, a place they referred to simply as the Homelands. But  were driven out by The Adversary and his empire which lead them to our world. They consolidated their survivors, forgave their past crimes against each other, and established a community in New York City. There’s another community upstate called The Farm for the inhuman characters — don’t worry about it, no one else does… You play as Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fabletown. Something’s stirring in the rotten underbelly of this city and Bigby’s going to get to the bottom of it — because detective things.

History

I can sum up the development of The Wolf Among Us in one word, delay. The game was announced in June of 2011 and announced again –for some reason–  in on October 2012. It got named in February of 2013 and was going to be released in January-March of 2013 and was postponed until June-August of 2013. The first episode was finally released in October of 2013.

Fun Fact: Adam Harrington is the voice of both Bigby and the Woodsman. As such, Harrington spends a lot of time talking to himself.

The Wolf Among Us was completed on November 4th 2014. It’s competition was Flashback (Playstation Network and PC), Batman: Arkham Origins (PC, WiiU, PS3, and XBox 360), and Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut (PC).

Experiences

The Wolf Among Us offers an incredible experience as an investigator, the detective that CSI has taught us to think we are. Telltale gives us the choice to play our Bigby however we want and I chose to play him with one simple rule: Everyone gets one warning, no more, no less. And sometimes that bit me in the ass. So it’s your Bigby and your rules. The replay value of the game is seeing what happens under different circumstances cleverly disguised as offering the pleasure to make a different Bigby.

I mean, is it worth it to be the fairest? But being a tyrant is fun.

Gameplay

The Wolf Among us is a narrative and choice driven walk and click adventure with quick-time-event combat sprinkled in. You control Bigby, walking around, picking stuff up, looking at evidence, and talking to people. And you’ll do a lot of talking. Every dialogue section has 4 options — and silence is always an option. The other big part of the game is choice. Every so often the game will offer the player a mutually exclusive choice i.e. if Bigby goes somewhere he can’t be in the other location at the same time. Meanwhile, anything could happen in your absence. Telltale, as always, does a wonderful job of making your choices feel like they really matter even when they might not. Especially considering some of your choices can have huge impacts on the state of the game.

Sometimes it’s literally a matter of life…

… And death.

The Gush

The music in this game is wonderful. The menu music puts me in a contemplative mood and the chapter beginning music gets me all fired up to play. It creates this moody and sleazy atmosphere for this modern film noir setting.

The story is top notch. It reacts to your decisions marvelously and those decisions aren’t always cut and dry. The story also tackles big issues that people face today like the nature of government, law enforcement, and fear. You’ll learn something about yourself going through the story.

This is the only game where someone can experience the Fables setting and it’s a treat to see. Being a fan of the Fables comic enhanced my experience but it’s not a necessity, the game does a great job explaining the setting on its own. It’s also just wicked fun to be Bigby — such stronk, much wolf punch.

It’s also beautiful watching Bigby and Snow be awkward as hell.

This game looks great, it’s incredibly stylized. Everything just pops out even though it’s gritty and grimy. The setting design naturally draws the eye right to where it needs to go.

The voice acting is evocative and incredibly emotive. From Toad’s cheapskate complaining to Gren’s rebel without a cause attitude every voice actor is bringing their A-game.

The Kvetch

The combat is a little weak. It gives the player a sense of agency when it comes Bigby’s violent side but the failure scenario just takes the player back to the beginning of the fight. It’s a tough situation from a design perspective. They couldn’t just hold the player’s hand because that might seem insulting and taking it away from the player means they’d be lacking agency during the fights, like they were watching Bigby and not controlling him. It all just seems a little odd because Telltale games are about choice and in combat I get incredibly worried that I’m going to mess up, not make the wrong choice.

We get it, Bigby will beat ’em up.

The Verdict

The Wolf Among Us is a wonderful Telltale game and a wonderful narrative driven experience in general. That being said, the player doesn’t actually do much. They’ve got a lot of input, they’ve got a lot of options, but it’s a very passive game. If you want a game where you’re doing stuff all the time then this is not be for you. This game is much more thinking about the character you’ve got int your head and what they would do or say, then the game generally does it for you. If that sounds like the sort of experience you want then go for it. It’s going for $25 on Steam right now and I’d wait until it dropped to about $20.

Next Week: Space Funeral

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition (PC, OSX, Linux)

 

Faerun’s west coast, known as the Sword Coast, is no stranger to peril, war, and upheaval. Far from it, these things love to rear their heads like uninvited guests on a regular basis. The latest trouble is an iron shortage. No problem on its own but the situation is made worse by frequent — one might almost think scheduled– bandit raids on ore shipments. You play as the adopted child of the sage Gorion (Because they needed there to be a reason you could play any race.) living in the library/castle of Candlekeep. Gorion has become more and more agitated of late — even given his humorless and private demeanor. One day he tells you that you must leave Candlekeep behind. With some gold for your equipment you prepare to face the world outside wondering why Gorion is in such a hurry.

History

Baldur’s Gate was developed by Bioware, as a matter of fact it was THE FIRST RPG THEY EVER DEVELOPED — do you like Mass Effect? This is where it all started! And it shows. They also made the Infinity Engine for the game. At this point Bioware was 60 people and they were so green that none of them had released a game by this point. They worked together with Interplay, creators of the Fallout series, because they had experience adapting a role-playing system to a video game and were a veteran company of the time.

Fun fact: Fallout was meant to be based on the GURPS roleplaying system.

Baldur’s Gate was released on December 21st, 1998. It’s competition was Starcraft (PC and N64), Fallout 2 (PC), and Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven.

Experiences

This is a game that demands to be played correctly. It might seem like an open world but that’s an illusion, a dangerous one at that. You CAN play it your way but it’s bound to leave you destitute in the gutter without two gold pieces to rub together. At this point you’ll be pawning your equipment to rest at the inn or try to get enough cash to bring your allies back to life at the local temple. Get a guide or make a plan because it’s the only way to get the stuff you need to adventure properly so you can start taking risks. It’s an utterly merciless experience. But! The Enhanced Edition comes with the benefit of highlighting important areas of your world map. I guess your character has adventurer sense — which almost makes sense in the fiction.

No longer is a fan-made map like this NECESSARY to figure out where to go.

Gameplay

Baldur’s Gate runs on the same rules as 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons — as such it’s a bit of a confusing mess. What you need to understand is that you want to keep your hit points high and your Armor Class low. Now the dungeon delving is pretty simple; go in to the camp/cave/ruin, kill everything that looks at you funny, and then loot the bodies. The problem is in figuring how to destroy the monsters and, oh yeah, fucking traps. There are goddam traps everywhere — I mean, there are so many traps that I seriously question who built so fucking many and who fronted the money for all these god forsaken lightning bolt spells.

Lightning Bolts are literally hell. They will kill you and your whole party in one go.

It’s your job to create a party of fighters to fight, clerics to heal, rogues to find traps, and wizards to cast spells in the right combination to handle the traps, wizards, ogres, armored thugs, and hoards of gnolls. Unfortunately your party is more likely to be made of the other adventurers that you’ll find and some of these guys don’t generally get along — I thought the paladin and the sadistic murderer would be fast friends!

The Gush

The plot is genuinely compelling, especially for the first time experiencing this sort of story, even if you know nothing about Faerun. When I was playing it as a kid I was reading books in game to figure out more about what was going and — this game got 14 year old me to read fake books. It asks a pile of questions and then drip feeds you answers IF you dig a little.

This game oozes with charming characters. Between Khalid’s anxiety, Erwin’s blatant evil, and Minsc’s pet miniature-giant-space hamster I’m more than content to interact with everyone just to see if they’re cool people. All of these important characters are marvelously voiced and if they start to grate on you just mute ’em.

Behold Minsc and, his adorable companion, Boo

The only Advanced Dungeons and Dragons based game better than Baldur’s Gate I is Baldur’s Gate 2. And it would just be untoward to play the second game before the first. It’s not just untoward, skipping this game will leave you in the dark pretty hard.

The Kvetch

Luck should have nothing to do with whether you complete a quest or not and Baldur’s Gate has got dice role quests. A 50/50 chance between 500 and 2000 experience points based on the roll of the dice is just bad design. There’s not even anything you can do to effect the outcome and it’s just lame.

Almost every fight at the higher levels include a spellcaster, usually of the arcane variety, who will typically cast all of his defensive spells before you even walk through the door. You’ve got no chance to interrupt them and they never seem to run out of spells. I don’t know what level they are but I’m level 8 and they’re casting spells I’ve never scene and that I don’t know how to avoid or overcome.

Ah yes, I remember the days when winning a boss fight meant simply summoning as many skeletons as possible.

For some, plot based but otherwise unexplained reason, if your main character dies they are dead forever and the game is over. Reload from your last save and do it better. As such it’s really fucking hard to play as a wizard or any other class that doesn’t come with buckets and buckets of hit points. It’s possible but it’s an uphill climb on a sheer cliff.

I really wasn’t a fan of the music. It felt dull, repetitive, and undynamic. I eventually started playing my own music and muting it for character dialogue or to read something.

The Verdict

If taking a trip down Second Edition based memory lane sounds like a keen way to spend your time then I recommend giving Baldur’s Gate I, enhanced or not, a look. The game may begin with the illusion of an open world but after a few chapters of linearity it DOES make good on its open world promise. The enhanced edition even has multiplayer so you can play this game with a friend if you don’t want to rely on the less optimal NPCs. I recommend Baldur’s Gate to anyone with an interest in roleplaying games and a firm knowledge of D&D.

Next Week: The Wolf Among Us.

Darkest Dungeon (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, and PS Vita)

A distant Uncle(?) has left you the family estate but, like Luigi’s Mansion or the estate from Eternal Darkness, all is not as it seems. As it turns out this Great Uncle(?)  dug too deep, performed dark experiments, communed with Outer Gods, and basically did every bad thing Lovecraft ever wrote about. As the sole beneficiary it lies to you to restore the homestead and the nearby hamlet. And defeat the evil your… Father(?) unleashed. Hire some eager adventurers and set them on the monsters of the dark — or have I gotten that the wrong way around?

This disclaimer shows up everytime you boot up the game reminding you that this isn’t a game you win, it’s a game you survive.

History

Darkest Dungeon started out as a conversation between Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman about how a real person might react to a crazy dungeon delving scenario filled with monsters, demons, cultists, undead, and giant vermin. Inspired by psychologically heroes, particularly Hudson from Alien, they formed Red Hook Studios in order to make this a reality. They funded the game through Kickstarter, raising $75,000 for the project. Darkest Dungeon is still in Early access and as of yet is incomplete.

Darkest Dungeon entered Early Access on February 3rd, 2015. It’s competition was Hand of Fate (Linux, PC, Mac, PS4, and XBox One), Oddworld New and Tasty (PC, Mac, Linux), and Evolve (PC, PS4, XBox One)

Experiences

It’s natural that the player connect with the party… and doing so will hurt you. Eventually the character you rely on will fail you. The best of them will go mad and jeopardize everything. The one you love the most, the one you named after yourself perhaps, will die. At this point, after 30 expeditions, I’ve grown cold to the lives of the adventurers in my employ. I send them with no supplies sound in the knowledge that if they die then I can replace them. If they survive they’ll soon join the higher ups who perform the really dangerous tasks. The whole while the cash keeps coming in and I keep getting ready for a huge expedition with my most powerful party members. But the bodies are piling and I almost feel a tinge of guilt that my best must stand on the corpses of so many others… almost.

So far, the dead number 22 and the game keeps track of their names and how they died.

Gameplay

You take control of a party of adventurers who are about to learn what horrors live below, and in, the estate — I love the eagerness they begin with and how it turns into jaded paranoia and fear of having to go back. They move forward in a formation of four ranks, with certain combat abilities only being usable in and of certain ranks — your opponents will try to fuck up your formation… but you can also mess up theirs. Every quest has a certain objective and when it’s complete your people can go on home. They can also leave prematurely but that’ll stress them out.

And too much stress is really dangerous.

Speaking of stress, when your characters reach 100 stress points they’ll reach a breaking point which will typically cause them to acquire an affliction which makes their behavior more unpredictable and stresses everyone else out — but rarely causes them to fight more powerfully against the darkness. When a character reaches 200 stress they suffer a massive heart attack and die. Characters don’t die when they run out of health, they instead enter a state called ‘Death’s Door’ at which point the next attack against them has a chance of killing them.

Being on Death’s Door stresses them out and it’ll stress you out.

Completing quests nets you Heirlooms, gold, and trinkets which you can take back to the Hamlet and spend. The Hamlet is equipped with buildings that relieve stress, train and upgrade your adventurers, buy trinkets, and remove negative traits from characters such as phobias or diseases. Buildings are upgraded with heirlooms– which can never be taken away– and adventurers are improved with gold — which can easily be spent on expeditions that end in disaster.

The game has got his marvelous pre-Victorianesque setting where crossbows and flintlock pistols cohabit.

The game’s still in early access and as such has no definite goal. Doing quests in areas unlocks bosses and conquering the challenge is a reward in itself but other than that there’s not great conclusion yet.

The Gush

The designs of all the characters is unique and expressive. The different color palettes of the heads alone allow me to differentiate between characters of the same class. After so many battles animations get a little old and sometimes they drag and make battles seem like they take forever. The characters convey a lot based on appearance alone.

There’s something immensely satisfying about my party having their back to the wall and someone reaching their breaking point and becomes virtuous. The pause between the initiation and the reveal builds so much tension. It’s a small victory and I usually pump my fist or launch my hands into the air shouting, “YES!” repeatedly whenever it happens

YOU GET ‘EM PLAGUEY!

The game has created this bizarre system where the town’s upgrades are really what push the difficulty down. Nothing can be done to harm it or undo the work you’ve done to it. You can dump comically large sacks of money into an adventurer, keeping their mind and weapons sharp, when they suddenly turn into a critical hit magnet and die.

If you put together a particular team of adventurers the game will sometimes give them a themed title. I don’t know why I like this so much but I will occasionally mix and match team members just to see if they’re ‘The Misbegotten’ or ‘The Merciless’ or something.

The Kvetch

This game relies a lot on luck. Between your crits, enemy crits, getting surprised, surprising other parties, where the goal is in the dungeon, whether you scout or not, what every interactible item in the game does, and what enemies you fight, it’s difficult to determine where your strategy ends and the Random Number Generator begins.

Sometimes you get the triple crits, and sometimes they get you.

The game has got this really weird difficulty curve. Instead of getting more difficult as the game goes on, the game kind of gets easier. It takes more time to keep your high level characters in ship shape but it’s easier now than it’s ever been to me to reduce the stress of my characters or upgrade their gear. The big reason my people keep dying is because I use them like cannon fodder and pinch my pennies a little too hard, not because the challenge has gone up. Then again, higher level enemies grow more powerful to match the skills of your higher leveled characters.

The Verdict

This game scratched an itch that I didn’t even know that I had. It’s wonderfully eldritch and addictive in the same way that the Binding of Isaac is but it gives me a little more control. I’m really curious about what they turn it into, what classes they make next, and what or if there will be a grand conclusion to this all. I’m not sure if it’s worth 20 dollars but it’s definitely worth 15 so I’d recommend catching it when Steam runs its next sale.

Sacrifice (PC and Mac)

 

In another world there was once a man, a wizard named Eldred. He was not a hero, he was more a villain in truth. Wanting to destroy his enemies he summoned a creature that had a hard time differentiating enemies from everything — perhaps it was a cruel bit of irony as Eldred saw enemies everywhere. In any event Eldred fled across the astral void to another world. This world had five gods vying for power and would appreciate the service of a capable wizard. But… history has a nasty way of repeating itself. Run, cast spells, endure death, and choose your deity wisely in this third person Real Time Strategy game.

History

Sacrifice was made by Shiny Entertainment, the makers of Earthworm Jim and MDK. David Perry directed the project with music by Kevin Manthei and creature design and modelling by Joby-Rome Otero. The total team was around 25 people. Sacrifice also had stellar voice acting. With performances by Brad Garret, Tim Curry, Jennifer Hale, Tony Jay, and Paul Eiding — this game has got a near dream team of talent voicing it.

Sacrifice used the same engine as their previous game, Messiah which drew a lot of fire from expectant fans and people who opposed its religious connotations. These attitudes lead Shiny’s director, Perry, to make Sacrifice in total silence only breaking it months before release to advertise the game.

Sacrifice was released on November 17th, 2000. It’s competition was Megaman Legends 2 (PS1), Banjo Tooie (Nintendo 64). and Tomb Raider Chronicles (PS1 and Dreamcast).

Experiences

When I played through the game I was a goody-lil’-two-shoes 12 year old so naturally I chose to follow Persephone, the goddess of justice– justice spelled in all caps while decapitating something–, because I’m a good guy and that’s what good guys do. I played through the game and beat the big bad and felt accomplished because I saved the day but then I wondered what happens when I play someone else. As it turns out, the story is exactly the same but there’s so much more going on than any individual god is aware of. Playing through every campaign is the only way to get the full story. Some of the events and betrayals and backstabbing blew my mind.

Gameplay

Sacrifice is an odd game. It’s a third person real time strategy game and it’s just as weird as it sounds. Instead of playing an omniscient commander who has full knowledge of the battlefield who orders things around, you play as a spell casting ground commander with no combat capabilities — soooo you’re Gandalf without the swordplay. Every wizard serves one of the five gods of the realm except for a few who are freelancers or mercenaries.

The wizards have such interesting designs and the altars are so spooky.

Wizards can summon creatures, cast spells, and order troops.. A wizard can only produce as many troops as it — and there are some wizards that are ‘its’ and not ‘whos’– has souls. Wizards can purify souls captured from enemies in order to add more souls to their supply and some creatures are worth more souls than others. Contrary to popular adage wizards do not die when they are killed, they are merely rendered incorporeal and incapable of casting spells until they get enough mana shoved back into them. As such the goal of most missions is to desecrate your opponents altar which banishes them from the realm.

The Gush

It should come as no surprise that the voice acting in this game is super good. Tim Curry’s voice is delightfully sleazy while Tony Jay’s is appropriately wise and yet off in some way. Everyone delivers an absolutely amazing performance — except some bit parts and peasants which sound like they were recorded from across the room.

The Good Old Games version of this game comes with a digital version of the manual and each of the sections concerning the gods is written in that deity’s voice. It also includes an abridged history of the world which sheds some light on situations in the game. If you get the game get it through Good Old Games.

The creature design is really great. Even the palette swapped creatures look incredibly different from their counterparts and it’s explained that all the palette swapped creatures are the same creature but raised in a different environment — nice save developers, nice save.

The way the textures slide over things makes everything look alike but not the same.

Everything in this game is oozing with character. From the gods and the wizards with their taunts and incidental dialogue to the creatures and their descriptions and actions in the game.

The Kvetch

There are some situations where I wish so dearly that the wizard had a melee attack. No matter how weak or useless or utterly crappy it would be I wish they could do something besides getting punched in the face. Naturally, wizards have attack spells but the cooldown on them is so long that there’s usually not enough attack spells to go around. What really irks me is that some wizards even have weapons — the Hachimen have a sword — and they make no use of them.

SWING IT! SWING THE SWORD! IT’S RIGHT THERE!

Melee attacking creatures are typically not very good. It stands to reason that they’re meant to take out weaker ranged attackers but enemies can move out of the way and sometimes they do so seemingly out of reflex. The only thing Melee units are really good at is destroying structures but if they’re something guarding it then they’ll usually die before they can rush the gap.

The main mechanic of a real time strategy game is selecting units and ordering them around but the 3D environment makes this really difficult. It’s usually best or easiest to order a unit to guard you or a structure and let them make their own decisions.

This game has got multiplayer but I’ve never been able to get in a game. The community’s probably too small to support a multiplayer atmosphere. So it’s just this bizarre vestigial limb or redundant organ that no longer serves a purpose.

The AI is really predictable and gets easy to counter.

It’s really difficult to select and order units without using control groups. If you don’t keep on top of what creature is where then it’s really difficult to get things in order. The minimap is useless for controlling multiple units because everything on it is just a colored square. Are those my melee guys or my ranged guys? I don’t fucking know they’re all just white dots! This game demanded that I be more organized than ever and it was a real chore.

The Verdict

This game is rock solid. It’s well worth the ten dollar price tag. It’s an experience that wasn’t recreated until Brutal Legend did something similar. It’s got a compelling story and just enough character to keep me wishing there was a sequel.

Dungeons of Dredmor (Windows, Mac, and Linux)

The evil lich Dredmor held the world hostage with his host of monsters and magical ability. The wizards of the age, a little drunk and completely tired of Dredmor’s shenanigans, locked him away magically and physically deep beneath the earth. Dredmor, tenacious as he was, wiggled his body and soul until he was able to slip the bonds. The King and his court are certain that he means to take over the world again. He’s sent you, an eager young adventurer, to “prove your worth” by slaying Dredmor. With skill sets like Tourist, Fungal Arts Student, and Tinkersmith uh…. good luck kiddo.

Hop to it, Eyebrows.

History

Dungeons of Dredmor was published and developed by Gaslamp Games and a small team of five people. The main developer, Nicholas Vining, had been working on the game since 2006 and when Gaslamp formed in 2010 things really got in gear. Vining is known in the game’s industry for making something so bad that it inspired Penny Arcade to create the Fruit Fucker 2000 apparently — whatever it was Vining has redeemed himself by making Dredmor. PC Gamer US awarded Dungeons of Dredmor the Indie Game of the Year for 2011.

Dungeons of Dredmor was released on July 13, 2011. It’s competition was Bastion (XBLA), Ms. Splosion Man (XBLA), and Catherine (PS3 and XBox 360).

Experiences.

I’ve been playing Dungeons of Dredmor for three years and I’ve seen Dredmor once — at which point he threw a spell at me that obliterated my face. I cannot think of another game in which I’ve had such trouble. My latest and most successful run was interrupted by a vacation to Diggle Hell in which I got bushwhacked by Vlad Digula. In short, this game is hard. I created skill combinations that made me unable to defeat the first enemy I ran into. And yet, I can’t stop playing. I can’t stop trying to kill Dredmor with weirder and weirder skills. I know I can probably beat him with a martial artist, shield master, archeologist but can I beat him with a perceptive, burgling, Tourist?

For reference, that’s a diggle on the left — look at the cute little guy. That’s Vlad Digula on the right. The jump in difficulty is equivalent to the jump in creepy.

 Gameplay

Dungeons of Dredmor is a dungeon crawling Roguelike. It’s got everything a growing dungeon needs, item-crafting, traps, levers, secrets, side-quests, magical anvils, vending machines, shops, and monsters — a fuckton of monsters. Every floor is randomly generated from randomly generated rooms with random items on the floor and bequeeth to you randomly generated artifacts — items that have additional random stat ups and downs with randomly generated names — oh yeah, and all the rooms have random names. You can even randomly select your skills but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your goal is to get to the bottom floor and kill Dredmor, leveling up along the way, and trying to find good loot. The game is turn based so when you move or act so will everything else, in turn — although it all looks instantaneous.

And you’ll die… a lot. But dying is fun too!

The Gush

I love this games sense of humor. Sometimes monsters taunt with bizarre and funny phrases — I’ve seen screenshots of Vlad Digula remarking that he’ll “be in his bunk.” You can destroy statues of Dredmor in the dungeon and are awarded experience points for engaging in heroic vandalism — or so the narrator booms. There are even skills like Totally Not Drizzt — for all you Forgotten Realms fans.

Seriously, there are a lot of skills.

I love how crafting tools have a bunch of incidental crafting recipes that aren’t related to their primary use. It’s super cool that I can use my ingot press to make grilled cheese sandwiches and omelets.

I really like the design of all the different dungeon levels. Each floor of the dungeon is like an entire dungeon from another series. There’s the fungus floor, the ship floor, the sewer floor, the space ship floor, IT’S GREAT!

The monster design is bizarre and interesting and they don’t pallet swap too many monsters. I mean, I’m totally comfortable fighting a mustache spirit on one floor and then a grandfather mustache 3 floors down because that’s hilarious. The funniest monsters are the ones they reuse.

And every floor has a new kind of diggle who wants to kill you.

The Kvetch

The game is meant to be played on a meticulous level that really breaks the flow. Don’t want to step on a trap? Then you’d best take your steps really slowly unless you’ve got skills that increase your trap spotting range. But this is all in line with it’s Rogue roots.

It’s really easy to get screwed really fast. Open up the wrong door, take the wrong path, or walk on the wrong satanic displacement glyph and your adventure will be over faster than you can say Diggle. This game is designed to kill your character and it’s difficult to get it not to.

They have entire rooms devoted to it — but but but… loot!

The music is this sort of 16 bit synth stuff and I kind of like it although I’d rather listen to my own music or a podcast in the background as I play.

The Verdict

This game is a heckuva deal. For 5 dollars, and three pieces of DLC — total cost being 11 dollars. This game is definitely worth a look if any of the above aspects seemed interesting to you. This game is a solid and difficult adventure that will test your skills and ingenuity. The systems have a lot of depth. Dungeons of Dredmor will have you laughing through the fury.

The Bard’s Tale (2004 Release for PS2, Xbox, PC, Mac, Blackberry Playbook, Android, Linux, and Ouya)

And I think this game is the most widely available title released since Tetris.

A long time ago in that fantasy land that’s pretty accurate to actual legends and tales while still being campy and hilarious — you know the one– there lived a young boy who was tired of being hungry. He learned that travelers were paid just to sing songs at the local tavern. He dreamed of doing that someday. Having learned a magical tune that summoned a rat he stole a musical instrument and headed for the hills. He then traveled from town to town eliminating rat infestations he created with his rat summoning tune. You play as the sarcastic, pragmatic, sardonic, insufferable, kleptomaniacal, and rather roguishly handsome Bard as he uses his magical tunes and power of summoning to free a capture enchantress –seems pretty straight forward, what could possibly go wrong?

Everything probably.

History

The Bard’s Tale is a game with a pedigree that goes back to the barely graphical text adventures of the 80s. The classic games didn’t actually feature the Bard as a playable character. The stories were the stories the Bard was telling to his audience. The final game in the Bard’s Tale trilogy was released in 1991. It came as a mild surprise to people when a new Bard’s Tale game was announced to be released in 2004 — I just imagine the conversation that lead to the game’s creation. At InXile headquarters two old nerds are chatting. “Do you remember those Bard Tales games?” one game dev asks. The other looks to him and says, “Yeah. But we never did figure out what the Bard’s story was, like where he came from.” Then I imagine they both start shouting in unison like a crescendo broken only by them running to their computers, getting to work, frothing at the mouth, and shouting “Make it! Print it!” repeatedly.

The class games were real groundbreaking stuff. It had color and everything.

It was 1985 and this was state of the fucking art.

The game is a lot like Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance and that would probably be because they both run on the same engine — which seems to happen a lot with fantasy games. One fantasy game comes out with a good engine and the other developers all jump on it.

The Bard’s Tale was released October 24th, 2004. It’s competition was The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2, XBox, and Gameboy advanced), Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Gamecube), and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2).

Experiences

I can’t think of the last time I had as much fun or laughed as hard when I was playing a game. The Banter between the Narrator and The Bard is comedy gold — especially when it’s ripping on videogame tropes. It was one of the games I played where I was having so much fun I didn’t care if I found all the loot. I stopped worrying about what I had missed or what would have happened if I had acted differently. It was one of the first games where I relaxed and had a good time.

Gameplay

In the game you control the Bard as he travels and completes various quests — and argues with the narrator. The signature system of the game is the snarky vs. straight dialogue system. In conversation the game will prompt the player to make the Bard respond with a sarcastic snarky quip or to play it straight. It might seem worthwhile to spend the whole game being honest and at least a little polite but that’s not the case. It’s very important to learn when the Bard can throw his weight around or whether he should just keep his mouth relatively shut — besides, being snarky is much more fun anyway!

It’s always tempting which to choose just to see what The Bard will say.

The Bard isn’t the greatest of fighters or thinkers. Thankfully, if he upgrades his instrument, he can employ various allies to help him in and out of combat. Some summoned minions help in combat like the Mercenary who can dish out immense amounts of damage with his axe or the Witch who only ever learned healing spells. Some minions help in other situations like the elderly Explorer who can disarm traps, pick up loot, and find secret passages –if you’re going dungeon delving this guy is a necessity– or the rat who can earn you extra coin by frightening tavern keepers or frighten other enemies in combat. The Bard’s adventures will take him far and wide across the countryside so it’s important to mix up his minions to match the situation.

The Gush

The voice acting cast in this is really good. The Bard is voiced by Cary Elwes– though you might know him better as Wesley from the Princess Bride– and the Narrator is voiced by Tony Jay — though you might know him better as the Claude Frollo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Oh yeah, and all the dialogue from the lowliest NPC is great.

A game about bard’s has got to have music! And music the Bard’s Tale has. Every tavern features a new song for the Bard to perform or listen to. Every minion has a different tune that The Bard plays on instruments from the lute to the Shadow Axe — minions can even be upgraded by finding more music for their song.

The Bard’s only loyalties are to food, coin, and cleavage — not necessarily in that order– and I love that about him. Saving the world is just a means to the end of getting into the Enchantress’ pants — well it is if you’re snarky. To him, it’s not about saving the world and I’m able to connect to the character more because he doesn’t have a lofty quest.

Even the game advertisements showcased this perfectly.

Something small but I really liked how the enemies dropped sellable loot instead of money. What Trow runs around with a coinpurse? None of them. But someone would pay some silver for a Viking’s sword.

The Kvetch

The Minions actually have personality, in some situations they can offer important advice and that’s good. What’s not good is listening to the crone wail, “Be healed!” Or hearing the Mercenary talk about how much The Bard is gonna owe him for this one for the thousandth time.

That being said, they at least all look awesome.

The combat in this game is really clunky. Thankfully the minions do most of the fighting for you but in the early sections of the game The Bard will have to do the fighting himself. So it creates a weird downward difficulty curve where the game starts off more difficult that it ends… and that’s not how difficulty curves are supposed to work.

The game isn’t really great to look at. I liked the character designs but the background designs were usually stock and uninteresting.

The Verdict

This game is awesome. It’s for anyone who’s played Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment and needs to take a break and have a laugh. The combats a little clunky but it couldn’t kill my good mood. This is a marvelous title and if you buy it on Steam then you get the original Bard’s Tale games for free if you feel like pulling your hair out through he laughs.

Next Week: Dungeon’s of Dredmor.

Poker Night at the Inventory and Trusting the Designers (Windows and Mac)

Deep in the bowels of the city there’s a secret speakeasy, The Inventory. It was established in 1919 in anticipation of the passing of American Prohibition. The owners of the establishment had also heard that the 18th Amendment was going to outlaw games and amusements, something they would not stand for– as proprietors of a games and amusement company. The Inventory served game enthusiasts and creators for years and began to cater to game characters as well. They remained hidden for 90 years and they’re still open for business, offering games, gambling, and liquor to those who find their establishment. You are a gambler of some renown who has come to The Inventory to make some scratch playing some high stakes Texas Hold ‘Em.

And down we go via secret street elevator. You can even see Sam in the background.

History

Poker Night at the Inventory was born of the desire to create a sequel to Telltale’s Texas Hold ‘Em, that game’s focus on banter, and a conversation between Telltale employees about “what videogame characters do when they’re not ‘on the clock int he games we play.” Telltale already had the license to Strong Bad and Sam and Max because of their work on the modern Sam and Max installments and Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. They then focused on acquiring a Team Fortress 2 character as the designer’s themselves enjoyed the game immensely. It was these talks with Valve that created a healthy relationship between them later on.

Poker Night at the Inventory was released on November 22nd, 2010. It’s competition was Super Meat Boy (PC), Call of Duty Black Ops (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), and Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii).

Gameplay

Texas Hold ‘Em is one of the most popular and simple iterations of Poker. At the beginning of each round each player is dealt two cards face down. These cards belong to them and only they can use them to build a five card hand– the game automatically chooses the best hand your cards can make. There’s a round of betting. Three cards are dealt face up, these cards may be utilized by anyone to build a their hand. There’s a round of betting. A fourth card is dealt. Another round of betting. The final card is dealt followed by more betting. Then everyone reveals their cards and the most statistically unlikely hand is declared the most superior.

Ranked from most rare to least.

The real draw of the game is learning the tells of the other players. They don’t have perfect poker faces, they let go of little bits of information regarding the quality of their hands all the time. It’s up to the player to figure out what action correlates to what hand state. For example, if the Heavy slams his fist on the table he’s got bad cards. It’s most difficult to learn the tells of the cartoonish characters Max and Strong Bad but they do have them and I think they’re pretty funny.

The other gamblers at the table are Strong Bad from Homestarrunner.com, Max from the Sam and Max adventure game duo, The Heavy from TF2, and Tycho from Penny arcade and they act just like you’d imagine them to. Every so often one of the characters will offer collateral instead of money. Defeating them will earn the player an in game trophy and out of game loot– as in special items in other games, not a pile of jewels or something.

Such as Strong Bad’s one-of-a-kind special Dangeresque prop glasses.

Experiences

The enjoyment a player derives from this game is directly related to how much they trust the designers. I told someone that I was playing this game and they said that it didn’t matter, that the game was rigged, and that the AI could just count cards whenever they wanted. I think that’s an unjust estimation. The big difference between me and my friend here is that I trust the designers not to allow the game to work that way and that he didn’t.

If the designer loses the player’s trust then there’s no way for the player to have fun. That being said, I saw time and again how the characters were loyal to their character– The Heavy or Max plays just about exactly as you’d expect him to. The game earned my trust by sticking to its rules. None of the players ever present a tell in an attempt to deceive– sometimes a character might perform the tell for a bad opening hand but turn it around by the end.

The Gush

The Banter is really where this game shines. I think it’s really funny and it doesn’t present the same conversations too often. Some of it’s way out there and really deep into the mythos of each of the characters but some of it’s based on something as simple as the character’s appearance.

There’s also something delightfully silly about someone scooping up poker chips with a shovel.

All of the characters have character and I really like that. It comes through in the repeated attitudes. Strong Bad dislikes Tycho and will often insult him. The Heavy considers Strong Bad to be a little Heavy. I hadn’t even heard of Sam and Max before this game and it’s Max’s playing… style that got me interested in them.

I mean, the resemblance is uncanny.

A deck of playing cards goes for anything between 2 and 20 dollars. At 5 dollars, Poker Night at the Inventory measures up pretty well to the cost of a deck and it throws in the experience of hanging out with a bunch of silly characters to sweeten the pot.

The Kvetch

Eventually every mine runs dry. It takes a long time but eventually you’ve heard everything they’ve had to say. I pick it up every once and awhile but I’m not sure if I’m hearing something new or if I forgot I had heard it.

The aesthetics can get a little dry after a long time. It’s always the same guys, table, and Inventory every game. There’s no way to change it up.

The Verdict

 I’m fond of poker and I’m fond of videogames. This game is like the peanut butter cup of these two ideas, it’s goddam delicious. This isn’t a game that brings on long play sessions it’s more of touch and go and come back to experience. It’s definitely worth the 5 dollar value if you purchase it on Steam. I’d say you’d enjoy the game if you’re familiar with at least half of the characters and enjoy poker.

Next Week: The Bard’s Tale

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor (PC)

This game is a little confusing because it’s got two introductory cutscenes. The first of which depicts strange alien creatures washing up on a beach’s shore. They argue briefly and then part ways. When the player begins the game the cutscene depicts a scavenger hunt that’s going to determine who’s the rightful lord of the province of Harmondale — And you thought women distributing swords was a poor form of governmental selection. You’re playing a group of contestants enrolled in the scavenger contest because they’ve yet to realize what a pain in the ass leadership is — don’t worry about the beach people, the game will get back to them in about 20 hours.

History

This game was the adventure game tie-in to Heroes of Might and Magic III or it’s more likely that it’s the other way around considering that the Might and Magic series has been running way longer than the Heroes series. Where the Heroes series was just hitting it’s stride the Might and Magic series was just beginning its decline — so sayeth the fan base. Blood and Honor uses most of the monster designs from the Heroes series but sometimes there are inconsistencies that are a little baffling.

A comparison of goblins between Heroes (on the left) and Blood and honor (On the right). I’m not sure if there’s a lore inconsistency or if there’s a breed of sub-goblin or something.

Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor was released on May 1st 1999– a month after Heroes III. It’s competition was Ape Escape (PS1), Pokemon Stadium 2 (N64), and Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Arcades).

Experiences

Playing this game for the first time was like trying to bust down a brick wall like I was the cool-aid man but instead of the cool-aid man I’m just myself who is also naked. In short, it was an unpleasant experience that took a long time of getting used to but felt really rewarding when I finally succeeded. I finally started completing quests and figuring out how the game worked and it only took minimal looking at walkthroughs. I learned that I couldn’t just make a party of fighters and punch my way through the game. I tried again with a balanced party and it was now like I had clothes and some football pads while I threw myself against this wall.

Gameplay

You play as a four headed hydra made up of an adventuring party– which is apparently composed of some sort of hive-mind or consensus because they do what you say and never disagree on anything. They go everywhere in lock step and never split the party, these guys and gals all lock their arms wherever they go.

There are nine classes that mix and match between the magic of self (Body, mind, and spirit), arcane magic (earth, wind, water, and fire), thief skills, and combat skills. As usual, they can each make up for their weaknesses in a certain way, sorcerers can use telekinesis on trapped chests or knights can just eat trap damage with their faces. Each class can learn a series of skills but certain classes can reach levels of a skill that others cannot i.e. only knights can become Grand Masters of Full Plate and only Druids can become Grand Masters of Alchemy.

Of course there are rats too. Lots of rats.

The rest of the game is pretty simple. You walk around, travel, find quests, and complete them. That’s really all there is to the game. There are some ancient lost treasures to plunder and artifacts to find but the only reward is in itself.

The Gush

The sound design is lovely. The little noise that the game makes whenever I pick up some loot fills me with a feeling of glee. In a game where money and the acquisition thereof is vital it’s important to make it feel good.

There comes a point in the game where a well built party is unstoppable. Where me and the gang can fly around a battlefield, nearly immune to damage, showering the warriors below with magical barrages and laser weaponry — did I mention this game has goddam lasers? Well, it does… about 30-40 hours in.

Exploring is actually really fun and rewarding in this game. There are all sorts of lost treasures, characters, contests, and locations hidden around each and every map. You never know what you’ll find but it’s certain to be pretty cool at the very least.

For 1999 the visuals present a solid looking 3-D environment. I was never blown but that’s just a result of the times.

The Kvetch

I couldn’t find who did the music for this game but it couldn’t have been the guy who composed the Heroes soundtrack because the music in this game is garbage. It’s all very fantasy, with violins and chanting everywhere, but every area has music that repeats every 2 minutes or so. Sometimes it’s on point but it’s mostly boring.

Death can create a bizarre lock on the player. Dying empties the players treasury, breaks some of their possessions– usually the important stuff like armor, and drops them back at Harmondale. It’s possible, especially at early levels, to have so much broken gear that it’s nearly impossible to keep the game going. The only saving grace is that time passes in game, aging your characters, but also respawning enemies to grind for loot and XP. It’s like a saving grace, if grace were as frustrating as solving a rubix cube.

The characters in your party talk all the time. They shout something every time they get hit. I want nothing more than to hear, “Was that supposed to hurt?” every second. It’s great. Most of the voice actors have really grating voices. Thankfully each voice isn’t matched to a character portrait so it’s possible to mix and match but I shouldn’t have to dodge the voices that are annoying.

The early levels in this game are such a grind. Just for kicks I used a character editor to raise all my character’s stats to 300 and they were still losing an 8th of their health getting attacked my living trees. It’s basically all about gear and the character’s stats don’t really matter a lot and that’s something that’s rubbed me the wrong way about DnD for a long time. I don’t want to feel like a pile of loot and gear, I want to feel like I HAVE gear that helps me do things.

The only choice with any impact in the game is choosing between godly virtue and despicable malevolence. This impacts the ending and what promotions characters can get but there’s no real character impact from the decision. If you join the bad guys then you’re evil now and that’s all there is to it. There’s no deeper meaning to either decision really .

Oh… no… my portraits are all red and black. I’m evil now, better go be evil and do mean stuff like steal things and cast the Armageddon spell.

The Verdict

Playing this game is like revenge against a bully. There’s a sickening sweetness, a lot of maniacal laughter, and a lot of shit talking something that’s down and out. But it also involves getting pushed around until you’ve had enough and a lot of frustration. The reward for mastering this game is the very act of having mastered it. The sense of character is non-existent, the plot’s weak but funny, and the lore of the game is so deep and byzantine that it holds relevance only for those deeply familiar with the series.

Next Week: Poker Night at the Inventory