This was the first computer RPG (Role Playing Game) that I ever finished. I was in grade school at the time and was quite proud of the achievement afterwards!
It was one of the first true party based RPGs available for computers, and featured a very intuitive interface for dealing with your party of heroes.
Graphics: 6/10
The graphics were quite rudimentary even when compared with some of the better titles of its day, like say, King's Quest; but in terms of achieving the immersion required by the game they were very adequate for the times.
This was the first computer RPG (Role Playing Game) that I ever finished. I was in grade school at the time and was quite proud of the achievement afterwards!
It was one of the first true party based RPGs available for computers, and featured a very intuitive interface for dealing with your party of heroes.
Graphics: 6/10
The graphics were quite rudimentary even when compared with some of the better titles of its day, like say, King's Quest; but in terms of achieving the immersion required by the game they were very adequate for the times.
It featured two distinct styles: A top down "gameboard" view and a vector 3D view inside dungeons. The "gameboard" view made sense for the party system of the game and was surprisingly immersive
when looked at with a bit of imagination. The 3D view seemed "stapled" into the game for gee-whiz reasons and if anything distracted from the gameplay and consistency.
Sound: 7/10
The sound effects were very rudimentary, but the music is, today, considered a classic of early video gaming. Enough said!
Gameplay: 8/10
This game featured a very unique (for it's time) party system.
It started with the standard character creation process now expected from an RPG and which emulated its pen and paper cousins like Dungeons and Dragons. You got to choose from standards like Wizard, Fighter, Cleric etc. and roll rudimentary stats for them. Here is where the first bit of strategy came into play for the game. You had to decide which classes best made up the four slots available for your questing party and with the variety available, some experimentation helped here as well as added to the longevity and replayability of the game.
After your initial party was decided, you were able to enter the lands of Sosaria and begin your adventure. The wilderness was a hostile environment where foes like orcs, trolls and brigands would be lurking in every forest, field and mountain range. Safe haven was to be found in towns and castles, where you would go to buy goods to equip your party and to receive clues about your quests, with the main figure for quest giving being the famous Lord British himself.
Talking to the inhabitants of towns consisted of you hitting the "T" key to transact with them and them usually giving you a one sentence response which you would hopefully write down on a sheet of paper. Piecing together all these bits of information and deciphering them, is what eventually led you to solving the game!
In the wilderness and dungeons is where the fun began. You could roam around the world with your party represented as an icon in the middle of the screen. You would see foes approach you from across the map and you could choose to either move towards them and engage in combat or run away in a different direction. Running away was not always the best idea because foes would spawn randomly as you travelled across the map and the more you tried to run, the more would spawn, eventually leading to a large chain of enemies chasing you across the map. So one way or another you had to face combat.
Combat was the most innovative part of this game. Here is where you would be presented with the four members of your party and the members of the opposing party on a playing field. Each of your party members would have a turn to perform an action such as walking, attacking, casting a spell, then the computer would take turns for each member of the opposition. Here strategy came into play between using melee attacks, ranged attacks and spells from each of your party members. There was enough variety in the terrain and opposition to make each encounter different and interesting.
I did not like, even then as a kid, the 3D dungeons in the game because I thought the two styles of play were incompatible with each other and a knock against the overall quality and impressiveness of the game.
I didn't notice it much at the time because it was the first game of its kind I had completed, but looking back now, the adventure was rather short and, for an experienced RPG player, would be very easy to complete. I will give Origin a pass on this however, because the genre was in its infancy and they were charting new territory with other aspects of the game.
Overall: 7/10
A solid RGP with an innovative party system, but somewhat too short its genre.
