Welcome to an unprecedented blend of radical RPG and serious strategy. It's cunning against savagery and steel against magic. It's 80 mind-bending quests in an ever-changing 3D world. It's 300 vicious manifestations of pure evil. It's the unique power to create deadly spells and awesome weapons from...
Welcome to an unprecedented blend of radical RPG and serious strategy. It's cunning against savagery and steel against magic. It's 80 mind-bending quests in an ever-changing 3D world. It's 300 vicious manifestations of pure evil. It's the unique power to create deadly spells and awesome weapons from the spoils of your adventures. It's flexible, multi-skill character development. It's stealth, treachery and fierce combat set in a dark, rich storyline. It's Hell to pay. We call it Evil Islands. You can call it home for the foreseeable future.
Unique combination of Role Playing and Real-time Strategy
3D Real-time world with free-moving cameara and easily customizable interface
80 quests requiring combination of combat and stealth
100+ hours of gameplay
20 giant game zones on three massive islands each with diverse climate and culture featuring real-time weather day/night changes
Graphically based weapons and spell creator
Non-linear character/skill attribute development system
Characters walk, crawl, sneak, steal and backstab
Over 300 monsters each with individual animation sets
Character morphing technology featuring realistic in-game changes
Multi-player support for up to 6 players
Goodies
manual
manual (German)
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Multiplayer Notice: Multiplayer is available only over LAN.
Recommended system requirements:
Multiplayer Notice: Multiplayer is available only over LAN.
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DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
Well, this might be one of the best games ever made by a Russian company. Literally. RPG without classical leveling system? Check. Decent graphics for 2001? Check. If you are a Russian speaker, then I'll hear a dozen of voices of popular actors. If you want to spend some time there, you are free to do it. If you want to speedrun it, you can do it within 2-3 hours. If you want to go hardcore, then high difficulty mode is your option. Unique ideas for a game made more than 20 years ago, really. You'll 100% need a manual to play it - otherwise there is plenty of space when you can make the process more difficul for you in a long-term - but every year I spend a couple of evenings to play it from the beginning till the very end.
This is one of my favourite games of all time, which I liked even more than the classics like Torment or Arcanum.
The only negative about it is the graphics, which are dated considering the release date, but this can be said about any 3D game really.
Amazing story. Keeps you engaged till the very end. You travel between several islands, which all have their own distinct feel to them. Unique NPCs which are fun to speak with, dialogue is fully voiced.
Great soundtrack, adds to the atmosphere of the game a lot.
Logical item and magic crafting system - if you need an iron weapon, you need a metal weapon blueprint and iron, if you need to extend the duration of the spell, you need to add the extend duration rune to it, etc. Spell crafting system allows for a ton of customisation, allowing you to break down your spells and modify them as you wish using different runes.
Unlike almost all other RPGs, this one has a big emphasis on stealth and silently taking down the enemies, as odds are against you most of the time . Prepare to crawl, hide, observe enemy movement and backstab them when the time is right.
Interesting levelling system, which adds to the game replayability since you don't have enough XP to just max out everything, instead you need to specialise in what you want to use.
If you have any interest in RPGs you should definitely try this game.
Evil Islands has some aspects, that make the game really special:
- the stealth aspect: You have to use stealth a lot in this game and there are some enemies you can't defeat/kill. But there is also a big grey area of monsters and quest. Here you can decide for example, if you steal the quest item from the monster or if you fight it. When you fight enemies the backstabb ability of your main character is extremly useful. So there are also enemies you can kill with backstabbing, but fighting a normal fight is nearly impossible due to their high armor. So you have to adapt your skilling on your gameplay.
- the crafting systems for equipment and spells, which both work like a construction kit. So your not just looking for new weapons or spells, but rather for new building blocks. With them you can improve and adapt your euipment/spells. Since you can integrate those customized spells in your equipment (like creating an helmet that casts a healing spell every time you got hit on the head), you can really adapt your equipment on your personal gameplay style.
- you can aquire party members or play solo. With party members the experience points split in between the group. Since you can't take party members to the next chapter/isle, this experience is lost. But you can change your party all the time and there are missions/fights you can do easier in groups. Also playing in groups gives a nice strategy element to the game, since you have to execute your ambush on some enemy groups with stealth, because a frontal attack wouldn't work. (But, like others already mentioned, the lone wolf/backstabbing pathway is the most efficient).
- Exploring and roaming the islands adds a good atmosphere to the gameplay. Areas on one island are connected through different pathways and when the history goes on you go back to already known places. Since some monsters also have clans and camps (like orcs, goblins ...) you have to talk to some of their representatives and deal with their rivalities. You also can make peace with some enemies or decide to kill them all for the XP. This is quite linear and definetly not isometric, but it makes everything more alive and helps you to dive into the world.
-The skill system is nice, somewhat different, but also unforgiving. So you need to have a plan, which you just get after some gaming experience.
-On the bad side you have to walk around a lot , save and reload a lot (it's a stealth game). Like mentioned in other reviews, the english dubbing is really bad and halfhearted. So if you can't speak german the amosphere will be worse. I sadly can't say anything about the russian version, but I assume it can't be worse than the english. (I normaly like playing games in english but in this game it made a significant difference for me)
To sum it up, you should buy this game if you like to try a different and difficult RPG (since your here on GOG I leave out the abligatory love for old games).
For this review, I've only gotten as far as the second zone.
Like most, I played this game when I was much younger. I didn't understand it then, so I just put on god mode so I could enjoy the story. I was happy to see GOG bring it back to life. It's fun, and I like the crafting system and spell systems, but this is where some of my disappointed comes from.
I was excited to craft weapons with spells in them, but the way the game is balance appears to make it kind of pointless to use damage spells. In this game, damage and armor is handled in a really basic way. Every point of armor is flat reduction. The game is balanced by making it so enemies slowly regenerate HP in combat and you have a pretty high miss chance. Couple with the high damage reduction, you have to focus on staying power. The game kind of encourages you to make the main character a mage because of this. However, you can craft healing wands that any party member can use.
Spells are special because they have a 100% chance hit rate, to counter this, they have low damage. But because of this, they're kind of useless. You can use runes to make them more powerful, but so far it's hard to find a weapon that can handle that.
Now, this wouldn't be too big of an issue, but there's only two difficulty settings. Hard and easy, but in reality, it should be "tedious" and "plays itself". In hard mode, you're gated from areas by not having access to weapons that hit hard enough to do damage, so you have to go to the proper areas first. Easy mode is so easy that the fun strategic part of the game isn't as important.
Anyways, aside from that, the story is fun enough, and you get multiple party members to control.
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