Posted on: February 3, 2010
Acorino
Verified ownerGames: 160 Reviews: 2
No good.
If I compare my opinion to the other reviews here then it seems to me that I miss the nostalgia for these game, so I don't find much to appreciate about them. Let's start with "Crystals of Arberea": Your task is to search for the four crystals mentioned in the title, and you may find them in dungeons under ground. The game starts with a character creation screen: while your main character is already defined, with the exception of the stats points in the measly four categories life points, strength, constitution and agility, you can also choose the profession for the rest of the six characters, but again, the choice is very limited, between warrior, sorcerer and ranger. Then you go on your way, kill lots of enemies that run around on the overworld, enter houses, answer quiz questions and receive items for a right answer. The map screen shows your position and the position of the party members, which isn't necessarily the same, and the ones of your enemies, so you can hunt after them. So far everything is very basic, yet playable, and a bit enjoyable, but not hugely. Ocassionally you'll find entries to dungeons, and here begins the trouble, since they are incredibly confusing and boring. You may need to map them, but I don't understand why the designers didn't simply implement a map for the dungeons! It just makes them a boring chore. You aimlessly click your way around in the hope to find one of the crystals. In the meantime you cross the way of some monsters and find some items. But all the time you will see the same drab grey walls. The annoying controls don't help either. Additionally, it's sometimes not clear where the paths exactly cross, so you'll turn your sight a lot towards cold stone walls. And then there are the bugs: every dungeon seems to have a weird glitch at some point: walls are amiss and you can walk into a huge space. It doesn't seem to be intended this way, since the graphics glitch at this point. If you save your game at such a location the game will freeze upon reloading it. And sometimes the game corrupts your fresh save game, making it impossible to reload. Nice to be always anxious about such an issue! Ishar 1: It's basically Crystals of Arborea with more depth, but also some regressions. For one, the map is useless: it neither shows the position of your enemies nor of yourself. You can't create a party at the beginning, but you'll find companions along the way. Not that I played it this far. After aimlessly walking around for awhile, hoping to find my way into a town or to at least spot an enemy, the game had the nerve to pester me with a copyprotection quiz. This was the point where I had enough. Next one, please! Ishar 2: Wow, this one has a really nice looking intro. Weirdly, it freezed when I pressed Esc while it lasted. You can skip it with the Space bar, though. The graphics are pleasing to look at, and the music is probably the best of the series. Once I wanted to turn the music off though, but instead I got a lot of weird noisy sounds. The map is a bit better this time around, since you can see your position again. Annoyingly though, you have to click three times before you can look at the appropriate map: one click for a menu, one for the map option and the last for the selection of a specific map. I'm not sure why I have to choose between multiple maps, like I would ever want to look at a map of a location where I'm not! Also, it took me a bit of time to realize that the attack option was moved to the right side of the interface and isn't where it used to be in Ishar 1. So I hopelessly clicked buttons which looked like you could attack with them, but which didn't do anything at all. I met a boatsman and he asked me for money. I gave him some, but he didn't react to it, he just repeated the same plead over and over. Then I walked around in the swamp, aimlessly again, and realized that it didn't amount to anything, so I stopped playing. Ishar 3: This one started promising, actually! You can create your own party at the start or import one from the previous games. The game starts in a town and you receive a quest from the get-go. The interface is a bit refined once more, one click is enough this time to look at the map. Sadly, the game crashed on me, so it's not quite stable. A shame. So, while you get four games at once with this collection, none of them is worth playing. Ishar 3 seems to be the best of the bunch, but it's technically not quite stable.
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