Spellcraft: Aspects of Valour is a great old DOS-based game that involves a variety of skills/gameplay factors.
In a nutshell:
You are a wizard-in-training. Your mentor will give you advice and training so that you can improve your magic and combat skills. The more you train, the better you will get and the easier it will be to complete the tasks he will give you. However, he is not training you for fun. Your end-goal is to stop four powerful and evil wizards from creating a rift between their world and ours.
The rift will temporarily give them great powers, but (and they don't believe this part) eventually it will tear both worlds apart. The wizards are separated into different natural elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. You have to enter each of their planes individually in order to defeat them - but you get to gradually work up to it through trial combats managed by your mentor.
The graphics: (8 out of 10)
Uses standard VGA from the 1990's - BUT I thought they were fantastic for the time the game was produced and still hold their own for playability and nostalgia value.
The sound: (6 out of 10)
Kind of repetitive and annoying at times, but you can always turn down the speakers. There was no voice/speech in this game, just a computer-generated
pseudo-classical score.
Playability: (9 out of 10)
I loved the game for three reasons:
1) You had to take good notes in order to create the spells you have to use to defeat the wizards. Believe me - YOU HAVE TO TAKE GOOD NOTES!
2) The combat worked you up in stages. You got to battle first just some "monsters" that inhabited each of the wizards' domains, then go up against "simalcrums" that your mentor create for you to fight. Finally ending in combating the wizards themselves.
3) You have to use some arcade-like skills in order to do the combats. You switch between casting spells and fighting with a sword. This gets a little sticky at times - you'll understand once you try it. You also can find some magical armor and weapons along the way. The combination of the two styles makes this a deeper game and breaks up the action.
They did something neat in that you get to travel back and forth between their world and ours - talk to people in our world, and piece together the skills and spell components you will need in order to win. You get clues from the non-playing characters about spells and where you can find magic and can buy or sell stuff when you visit them.
By the way - I never did get all the way through it "back in the day" when I was playing loads of DOS strategy games. I'd rank this as one of the most challenging games from the early 90's. Not just for the fact that I didn't finish it, but you have to solve the riddle of what spells you can make as well as follow the obvious steps to defeat the wizards. It also will take quite a while to finish.
