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Classic dungeon crawling awesomeness!

Anvil of Dawn, a classic DOS-era dungeon crawler with first-person perspective, sprite graphics, a vast and rich world to explore, and dozens of hours of great and motivating gameplay, is available on GOG.com for only $5.99

Every fantasy land needs a hero, it seems. There's always an evil entity of some sort that menaces the realm and its people. Surprisingly, the people never stand up to it. They prefer to wait for a group of adventurers, or even just one champion who knows the importance of wearing leg armor around archers. Inevitably someone comes to the rescue and saves the realm one spider-infested cellar at a time. Schematic as it may sound, we love to relive those adventures over and over again. Even if one dungeon looks pretty much the same as any other, you still get this rush of excitement when making your first steps on its dusty floor. It's not about originality of the concept. It's about the involving gameplay, that lets you forget about the world around you. Here's a perfect game to do just that!

Anvil of Dawn has everything you ever loved about 1990s role-playing games. It presents you with a large and diverse gameworld, full of monsters and enemies to slay, riches and powerful items to loot, quests to carry out, weapons to wield, spells to cast, and an evil overlord to challenge. It was praised for its great pacing allowing to keep the gamer entertained and intrigued, always presenting him with something new to do and achieve. The imaginative sprite-based graphics, solid gameplay mechanics, and many classic gameplay ideas make this title a shining example of well executed cRPG design that makes us call its period "the good old times". Highly recommended!

If a true old-school cRPG experience is what you're looking for, you simply can't afford to miss Anvil of Dawn, for only $5.99 on GOG.com!
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MasodikTiasma: God, you must really hate me, then... ;-)
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Starmaker: If it makes you feel better, I hate those who are now looking at letsplays even more.
For a being born of Hate and Darkness, this man is incredibly generous. He justed gifted me Anvil of Dawn by PM.
My eternal thanks, Starmaker, you're awesome! Installing the game now.
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RaggieRags: I think you can play it entirely by mouse, except when you are writing your save file.
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HiPhish: That's not what I meant, I was wondering if I *have* to play entirely by mouse, not if I can.
You don't.
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tinyE: Is there any difference between this and Ultima Underworld 1 & 2? :P
Anvil has grid-based movement, UU is free movement. Anvil plays a bit more like Eye of the Beholder in that respect

Edit: Misread your question
Post edited May 14, 2013 by Crosmando
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HiPhish: Ultima Underworld had WASD controls
It did? Why don't I recall that...
Or do you mean you could reassign the keys to WASD?
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tinyE: Is there any difference between this and Ultima Underworld 1 & 2? :P
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Crosmando: Beyond being single-character first-person dungeon crawlers on DOS? Nothing. They play somewhat different tho, Anvil is grid-based movement
I was joking but really? Grid based movement? I'm not really fond of folks who use release threads to bemoan the release, so I'll keep my thoughts to myself. GOG has so many great games that I don't yet have and now I can use this money on one of them so it's all good. :D
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Starmaker: If it makes you feel better, I hate those who are now looking at letsplays even more.
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Stooner: Sorry... I have no other way to see if this game is good... but I looked to it just a little bit... ;p
It's a hack and slash faux-3d exploration game (it's not an RPG by either oldschool or modern standards, I can't stress this enough) with a levelling system so spectacularly bad on first principles that I can't help but want to hit whoever thought it up with something heavy. Its real strength is everything else that isn't Game Design 101: visuals, music, writing, and handcrafted dungeons. Those maps are seriously delicious.
Yeah as I remember it was grid-based, can anyone confirm this for me?

I know Ravenloft and Menzo had free-movement but you could change the movement to grid-like in the options, this game used the same engine...
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Starmaker: It's a hack and slash faux-3d exploration game (it's not an RPG by either oldschool or modern standards, I can't stress this enough) with a levelling system so spectacularly bad on first principles that I can't help but want to hit whoever thought it up with something heavy. Its real strength is everything else that isn't Game Design 101: visuals, music, writing, and handcrafted dungeons. Those maps are seriously delicious.
What's wrong with skills that increase with use? Wasteland used this system too
Post edited May 14, 2013 by Crosmando
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Crosmando: Yeah as I remember it was grid-based, can anyone confirm this for me?

I know Ravenloft and Menzo had free-movement but you could change the movement to grid-like in the options, this game used the same engine...
I doubt it's the same engine. Ravenloft and Menzo used some sort of Raycasting 3D-engine, no? Anvil of Dawn renders its tile-based dungeos via prerendered movies similar to Stonekeep.
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RaggieRags: You don't.
Thank you.

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JMich: It did? Why don't I recall that...
Or do you mean you could reassign the keys to WASD?
It's not exactly WASD, rather QWEASDX, but the idea is the same. You use the keys on the left hand side of the keyboard to walk, strafe and turn. You can do it using the mouse, but I find WASD-style controls always more comfortable. You don't even need those icons on the left hand side of the screen (talk, open, use...) if you use the game's "default mode", it's explained in the reference manual and makes the game *a ton* more comfortable to play.
This is both awesome and poopy.

Poopy because I had my credit card number stolen (and used) this past Friday so I won't be able to get this for a while, and awesome because it's on here now.

:-)
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HiPhish: snip
True, faulty memory. Thank you.
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Lafazar: I doubt it's the same engine. Ravenloft and Menzo used some sort of Raycasting 3D-engine, no? Anvil of Dawn renders its tile-based dungeos via prerendered movies similar to Stonekeep.
It was an assumption, DreamForge made three first-person RPG's in the space of two years, so using the same engine rather than making another would of made sense.
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Crosmando: Hah, there was a thread just the other day speculating about Dreamforge games coming to GOG, I hope this means the others are coming
Hmmm, well for something like Ravenloft, though, they'll still have to work out the Hasbro/Ubi SSI mishmash of rights, unfortunately. Maybe they already have, though! :D
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Crosmando: Yeah as I remember it was grid-based, can anyone confirm this for me?

I know Ravenloft and Menzo had free-movement but you could change the movement to grid-like in the options, this game used the same engine...
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Starmaker: It's a hack and slash faux-3d exploration game (it's not an RPG by either oldschool or modern standards, I can't stress this enough) with a levelling system so spectacularly bad on first principles that I can't help but want to hit whoever thought it up with something heavy. Its real strength is everything else that isn't Game Design 101: visuals, music, writing, and handcrafted dungeons. Those maps are seriously delicious.
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Crosmando: What's wrong with skills that increase with use? Wasteland used this system too
AoD is not a sandbox survival game. It doesn't even have spawns. Which means you're better off swording everyone and casting healing on yourself, while being super careful with RotL if you ever use it (making sure it doesn't hit enemies and subtract from their precious HP tracks). That's the big one. Separate magic and weapon skills in the absence of randomness mean you're rewarded for guessing (or knowing) the loot beforehand. Finally, separate weapon skills would punish experimentation, except there's none to speak of, because everything is 100% swordable.
I bow to your knowledge then, I don't feel capable of discussing a game I don't remember very well, perhaps it's nostalgia. I remember liking the fact that it used mana for spells, D&D games of that era were very exploitable because you could just rest your spells back after every fight