Heard this was a decent RPG back in the day but never got around to playing it. Now, with Nordic Nobility sale the price is good, but I'm really on the fence here. Checking the forums, I read about black screens, crashes after oracle, access violations. I'm not expecting a bug or crash free game and I know it uses the obsolete directdraw technology but is it possible to beat the game? How much crashing should I expect? Is it worth it (not price wise, but in terms of technical difficulties)? And is there anything else I should know?

I'm going to play the game on a Win 8.1 laptop, which has Intel 4600 APU and nVidia 750 GPU. I heard Intel had a better directdraw compatibility so I'm thinking of running the game with it.

Thanks in advance.

The game is a lot of fun and worked perfectly for me with no crashes whatsoever on my desktop PC. I am running Windows Vista 32 bit and have a Nvidia Geforce GTS 250 video card. I haven't tested the game on Windows 8.1 though, and yes, some people do report crashes and various problems so your mileage may vary.

On Windows 7 x64, all through the game it crashed exactly once (It was exactly before the last checkpoint where the game is pain in the a$$!). It was absolutely bug-free and crash-free for me atleast, but I guess I was kinda lucky. So you can never know how much it will crash until you play it. Although for Windows 8.1 it can be a lot worse, since I heard some complains around from people using win8.1, although it SHOULD be patched.
I'd say go for it, right now it's 1.80$, so hurry up and buy it. Even if it crashes to unplayablilty on your Windows 8, maybe you can try it out on another PC with Win7 or XP.
Good luck and enjoy the game :)

Bought it. Thanks again.