Sorcerian is and action and role playing game hybrid that was developed by the Nihon Falcom Corporation and published by Sierra Entertainment. It was originally released in the late eighties, but was redone for the personal computer running the MS-DOS operating system in April of 1990 and is an imported console game. MS-DOS was by far its most popular platform, with the other issues (except the Sega Mega Drive) being much less common machines. It was also redone in 1997 as Sorcerian Forever to run on Windows based computers and was redone again in 2000.
Sorcerian is a single player game. It is the fifth in the Dragon Slayer franchise of games and part of a deal that Sierra struck with a Japanese publisher.
Sorcerian is an action role playing game that plays from the side view and scrolls to the side. The user will control a group of heroes numbering up to four. He will be able to select from a number of scenarios to play. With each one, the party will have to fight different enemies and perform different quests and tasks to clear the level. There are four different character classes within the game: Wizard, Dwarf, Elf and Fighter, and each one has strengths weaknesses and special abilities.
Each character will also receive an occupation, and some levels require a particular occupation in order to complete. There are also several cool spells that the gamer will be able to use, giving Sorcerian even more of an RPG feel. The other nice RPG element is the amount of secrets, both places and items, that the user will be able to uncover as he explores the environments of each scenario.
Sorcerian feels and plays a lot like a console game. The plot is detailed and interesting as the story continues to unfold. The graphics for the original are not the greatest, given the age of the game, but they did improve as subsequent editions were released. The sound is pretty good, and the sound tracks are actually critically acclaimed. The characters do gain levels in a standard fashion, but the manner of attributing statistical skill points is very light and rudimentary, making Sorcerian seem more like a platformer than the hybrid that it is.
Sorcerian is admittedly old and features some pretty simplistic graphics, but the console feel is nice and the sounds are super for its age. The game play is simple, but good, and many people will enjoy this continuation of the Dragon Slayer series, and will likely be looking for more.
