The world of Tempest is in need of a champion! You have been summoned to embark on a noble journey to save all of humanity from an evil fate. You must keep your wits about you, your sword must stay sharp and ready, and your spells charged as you forge through Tempest's massive landscape. Descend int...
The world of Tempest is in need of a champion! You have been summoned to embark on a noble journey to save all of humanity from an evil fate. You must keep your wits about you, your sword must stay sharp and ready, and your spells charged as you forge through Tempest's massive landscape. Descend into the maws of many a dark and dangerous dungeon in search of your quest's end.
You'll have at your disposal more than 25 spells and items of great power, each drawing upon one of the elemental forces such as earth, wind, fire, and lightning. Whether you prefer a more tactical approach or attack all-swords-swinging, Anvil of Dawn features a hybrid of real-time and turn-based combat to satisfy your needs. Remember, your choices and actions affect the ebb and flow of combat so think, and act, wisely. Are you prepared to pay the ultimate price, to steal away the gift of a dark god, and journey to the Anvil of Dawn.
A tough, but accessible to newer players, classic RPG with a vast world to explore!
Features a "learn by doing" skill system without the need to collect and grind for experience points.
Customize your character as you see fit as there are plenty of character stats to fine-tune to your liking.
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Recommended system requirements:
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Anvil of Dawn is a grid based RPG in the vein of Lands of Lore or Eye of Beholder. You rummage dungeons, kill monsters and solve puzzles, but unlike many other in the genre you can also move realtively free from place to place in an open world environment.
Anvil of Dawn is not the most difficult or the longest game on the genre, but for what it is, it's pretty enjoyable distraction.
Fun game, but the game is made for people who like fighters who use swords.
There are four categories of weapons, Hacking, Slashing, Thrusting and Ranged. The only worthwhile ones are Slashing and Ranged. The other two categories have poorer options and damage resistances do not matter enough to encourage you to diversify. There is also a specific enemy in the game which can only be killed with a sword. This enemy is completely immune to magic as well.
Attack magic is very weak at the start. You will run out of MP very easily and as there is no rest mechanic to speed up MP recovery, so you will be forced to either idle to regain MP, or play as a sub-par fighter from time to time.
Furthermore, using ranged attack spells to trade shots in ranged combat is disadvantageous to you. Even if you poke your head out to draw fire, duck into an alcove and step out again immediately after the projectile passes by your tile to return fire, the casting time is generally going to get you hit by the enemy's next shot which will interrupt your spell if you are hit before the spell is finished.
And there are also two areas later in the game which have huge anti-magic zones. One of them is optional, the other is at the final dungeon. I will grant that is not a huge issue as you can skip the optional one and there are ways to deal with the tough encounters in the last area, even with the anti-magic. It is, however, unpleasant to be outright denied something you've invested so much into.
These flaws I have listed did not affect my personal enjoyment much because I personally lean towards playing low-magic fighters in games. However, I do feel that this does take away significantly from the ability to replay the game enjoyably as a combat caster, and I really feel that there should have been more support for people who like other weapon types if you were going to make a game with multiple weapon categories.
So, being an older gamer I love 90s/2000s games. With a few rare exceptions modern games just dont do it as much for me. I was suprised I hadn't heard of this one.
It was on sale for $3 so I picked it up. And I was pretty impressed. Its got good graphics for the time as well as full voice (a rarity back then). The major flaws I see is as far as I can tell, theres no way at all to rest to regain magic/health.
Most games of this type have a rest thats basically a fastforward feature with a chance for enemy spawn so you dont have to just park your char in a corner and walk away for 20 mins. This one basically requires you to park your char in a safe location and go do something else, as although so far healing potions are decently plentiful, I have no idea if this will hold true on the harder levels so I'm trying to save them. I have yet to find any way besides magic, waiting, and one use items to heal. Suppose I could crank up the DOSBOX cycles really fast for a min to speed it up, but thats not how the game was intended. This is a major irritation to me.
The other ones are no keybindings. Like you can hit typical numpad to move (no strafing), C to look at your char, J to look at your journal. So you'd think M would pull up a map, right? Nope. AFAIK theres no map key. Theres also no keybinding menu, so youre stuck with what the game gives you.
That being said the automap is *great*. I just wish I could pull it up with a key and not a mouseclick. Same goes for attacking. The game appears to be 90% mousedriven.
The final issue as I said earlier, there doesnt appear to be any option to strafe-move. This is an issue in grid dungeon crawlers. Kind of annoyin g you are required to turn so you cant dodge easily etc.
Still, although these issues are enough to knock off a star, the game is still highly recommended for any fan of these style of dungeon crawlers. Well worth the full purchase price and a steal if you can get it on sale.
I used to play this title almost 20 years ago. I know it is available for free as abandonware BUT, if you don't have the original disc you wont be able to hear the dialog. I have the original disc and was never able to get the dialog to work. After buying the game thru gog, that problem no longer exists! Thank you GOG!
The big strength of this game is the variety of its environments, enemies, and NPCs. You spend no time faffing about with kobolds and skeletons and ankhegs, most of the enemies are very strange; even the very first regular soldiers you fight have one of the most incredible death animations I've ever seen. Every dungeon feels unique both in terms of visuals and puzzle style/layout. Overall the game is audiovisually very strong with high quality pixel art and atmospheric sounds and music.
Combat is not fantastic, as many enemies can be completely stymied by a simple step back-and-forth maneuver, but some encounters are designed in such a way that you have to think on your feet and actually use your huge pile of magical potions.
A lot of the puzzles involve ambiguous pressure plates--is it on/off? Is it a toggle? Do I need to stack rocks on it? Do I need to push a block on it? Is there a sequence? These get pretty tiresome, but apart from the literal final pressure plate puzzle in the game, they didn't hold me up too much. A couple puzzles use sort of non-standard rules beyond "use item on NPC/object."
Spellcasting seems quite poor as the animations are extremely long and you can be hit multiple times while casting. I played a melee boy but friends who played magic-focused characters reported having to melee 90% of the time anyway.
I'm not the biggest fan of this genre but I found this game very engrossing and enjoyed exploring all it's corners and meeting all it's characters.
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