Akalabeth: World of Doom

The game hasn't aged well, it gets repetitive and it probably won't be enjoyable to people that didn't play it back in the day.

Décidément, je n’ai pas de chance. J’ai testé rapidement Akalabeth plus pour le fun qu’autre chose et, je dois bien l’avouer, j’ai voulu tenter le rush en Lizard man avec l’amulette. Mais voilà, la version originale a choisi de bugger avec moi car, dès que j’allais voir Lord British sous cette forme, impossible d’avoir un nom de bestiole à tuer. Pas de quêtes possibles. Pas de fin au jeu donc… Ajoutons à cela l’absence de sauvegarde, et j’ai donc opté pour la version 1998 du jeu. Même chose en 4 couleurs, avec sauvegarde et sans bug. Donc, oui, j’ai un poil rushé le jeu. Mais tout de même, tout de même. C’est presque incroyable de parvenir à ressentir le plaisir d’un farm, la montée en niveau, etc. Les bases, grossières certes, sont là et bien là. Rien que pour se dire que l’on a joué à ce premier RPG mythique, source de grand nombre des principes de jeu de ses successeurs, Ultima ou autres, c’est tout de même un petit plaisir.

An extremely primitive and rudimentary RPG from the late 1970s. It has its place in history as one of the earliest computer role playing games, and as the progenitor of the Ultima series, but as a game itself Akalabeth is really not worth more than about twenty minutes of curiously playing around with its systems and mechanics nowadays. You go to the castle, get a quest to kill a specified creature type in one of the dungeons, and then come back for your reward. Which I suppose is the majority of RPGs when you really boil them down to their essence; questing and dungeon raiding and the like. But there is no real interesting narrative, character, or world building here to keep the player interested. Once you complete ten quests for Lord British, the game ends. You can also spend some time grinding and/or exploiting the magic amulet in order to cheese the game and make it ridiculously easy. Watch out and make sure that you keep well stocked on some food too, because you will get a "game over" if you are not careful and run out. It's free on GOG to check out and I suggest doing so, if for only a short period of time before the novelty and curiosity wears off.

Honestly once you get a handle on the controls it's pretty fun to just dungeon crawl and complete the basic kill quests. The biggest thing to get you head around is the vector dugeon visuals, expecially the invisible walls since it can be easy to get lost. I highly recommend picking Mage. The ability to pick you spells with the Magic Amulet and use Ladder Up and Ladder Down is very critical to not getting stuck in a loop of falling into pits and struggling to find a Ladder. Also BUY FOOD, as much as you can, easiest way to die early on is running out of food.

Modern CRPG gaming would not be where it is without Richard Garriott's pioneering work, and this is the place that started it all. Unfortunately, Alkalbeleth: World of Doom is not a particularly fun game unless you are masochistic or just absolutely NEED to play every CRPG ever made. The graphics are so primitive it makes BRogue look like an Unreal Engine Four game, and the interface is highly unintuitive. I am OK with bad graphics and I am OK with difficult games, but this game is so bare-bones that it's not worth playing. Still, I'm impressed by Lord British's achievement, and glad that he kept going and improving. I give this three stars: one star for gameplay, five stars for historical value.