Posted February 02, 2009
Simon the Sorcerer is one of those games that I imagine people who still remember the games of the early nineties get nostalgic about. It's a fun game, to be sure, and you'll soon get over the low graphics and learn to appreciate the fun that is Simon the Sorcerer.
WARNING: INTENTIONAL SMALL SPOILERS AHEAD
VISUALS; 5/5: Yes, I know, that's a high score for a game in which every character is a 2D sprite, but I think it's worth it. The forests and fields and backgrounds are all beautifully drawn, Simon gets a convincing animation for nearly every action he performs, and the dancing demons you get to see in the end credits look great. Every character and object looks like it is supposed to, and there are absolutely no instances of Featureless Blob Syndrome, an ailment common to other adventure games of the StS era which have vital plot items disguised as meaningless pixels on the screen.
SOUNDS; 4/5: The music, comprised of simple midi tunes, is suprisingly compelling and memorable, although I wouldn't go so far as to call it spectactular; it is a midi tune, after all. No, the place where this game's sound REALLY shines is in the voice acting. You will learn to love to hear Simon talk, and his constant barrage of tongue-in-cheek jokes will leave you smiling even as you make him walk into situations which are guaranteed to make him suffer.
WRITING/STORY 4/5: Adventure games revolve around the writing, more often than not, and the writing in StS is great. Where else are you going to see a troll forming a picket line over a bridge, alcoholic dwarves, or demons with cockney accents? I won't spoil anything this time, but suffice to say that it's funny. The only problem with the writing is that it doesn't always blend well with the actual puzzles you have to work through; for instance, you lose your spellbook to goblins at the beginning of the game, and have to go through a sidequest to get it back from the goblins, but no one ever tells you "Hey, dude, you lost your spellbook. Shouldn't you go find it?" And, for that matter, once you actually HAVE the spellbook, you never use it.
GAMEPLAY; 4/5: As with a lot of adventure games, you may feel rather aimless and misdirected as you play through StS; since your goal is to reach an ultimate objective by gathering up a bunch of random items and using them on random people or objects, you tend to do a lot of wandering around, and at least some of the puzzle solutions seem kind of arbitrary, like the hidden room under the woodcutter's cabin that you can only reach by fiddling around with his fireplace. It is fun, though, and you have the benefits of the F10 key (which highlights all the things on the screen that you can interact with) and the wise old owl (who will give you hints about some of the puzzles).
VALUE FOR PRICE/OVERALL; 4/5: This is a fun game, for all the reasons listed above, but Simon the Sorcerer ultimately falls into the same pit that most adventure games fall into: you can only play it once, and it's fairly short. You can finish the whole thing in about four hours, and once you have done that there's no more suprises in the game for you, unless you want to go back and choose different dialogue choices at the conversations that have scripted endings.
WARNING: INTENTIONAL SMALL SPOILERS AHEAD
VISUALS; 5/5: Yes, I know, that's a high score for a game in which every character is a 2D sprite, but I think it's worth it. The forests and fields and backgrounds are all beautifully drawn, Simon gets a convincing animation for nearly every action he performs, and the dancing demons you get to see in the end credits look great. Every character and object looks like it is supposed to, and there are absolutely no instances of Featureless Blob Syndrome, an ailment common to other adventure games of the StS era which have vital plot items disguised as meaningless pixels on the screen.
SOUNDS; 4/5: The music, comprised of simple midi tunes, is suprisingly compelling and memorable, although I wouldn't go so far as to call it spectactular; it is a midi tune, after all. No, the place where this game's sound REALLY shines is in the voice acting. You will learn to love to hear Simon talk, and his constant barrage of tongue-in-cheek jokes will leave you smiling even as you make him walk into situations which are guaranteed to make him suffer.
WRITING/STORY 4/5: Adventure games revolve around the writing, more often than not, and the writing in StS is great. Where else are you going to see a troll forming a picket line over a bridge, alcoholic dwarves, or demons with cockney accents? I won't spoil anything this time, but suffice to say that it's funny. The only problem with the writing is that it doesn't always blend well with the actual puzzles you have to work through; for instance, you lose your spellbook to goblins at the beginning of the game, and have to go through a sidequest to get it back from the goblins, but no one ever tells you "Hey, dude, you lost your spellbook. Shouldn't you go find it?" And, for that matter, once you actually HAVE the spellbook, you never use it.
GAMEPLAY; 4/5: As with a lot of adventure games, you may feel rather aimless and misdirected as you play through StS; since your goal is to reach an ultimate objective by gathering up a bunch of random items and using them on random people or objects, you tend to do a lot of wandering around, and at least some of the puzzle solutions seem kind of arbitrary, like the hidden room under the woodcutter's cabin that you can only reach by fiddling around with his fireplace. It is fun, though, and you have the benefits of the F10 key (which highlights all the things on the screen that you can interact with) and the wise old owl (who will give you hints about some of the puzzles).
VALUE FOR PRICE/OVERALL; 4/5: This is a fun game, for all the reasons listed above, but Simon the Sorcerer ultimately falls into the same pit that most adventure games fall into: you can only play it once, and it's fairly short. You can finish the whole thing in about four hours, and once you have done that there's no more suprises in the game for you, unless you want to go back and choose different dialogue choices at the conversations that have scripted endings.