Dragonsphere

How do you gauge, what game is good and what is so-so? I suppose, that if it stays in your mind ten years after you played it, then you can seriously consider it above average product. I played "DragonSphere" (DS) ages ago and upon launching it now, everything came back to me in a rush. I remembered the plot and even the majority of the puzzles with no problems. In DS, you are a recently crowned king Callash and you are already facing huge problems with your kingdom. The evil wizard Sanwe is about to return after 20 years of banishment and it is your royal duty to get rid of him for the benefit of the glorious nation of Gran Callahach. The plot of the game follows a supposedly cliche script of you completing some preparations and defeating the evil wizard, but nothing can be further from the truth. After you banish the wizard and restore the piece, you have completed... half of the game. Here comes a major plot twist, that will knock your socks off, if you are playing the game for the first time. The differences between this and other good vs evil scenarios is very refreshing and it really helps that the game is peppered with likable and lifelike characters. Here you actually care about the outcome of your quest and the fate of your hero. The puzzles in the game are not very hard with the exception of a certain sprite riddle that you encounter upon your first visit to the Faery Land which will surely force you to look for a walkthrough. Another puzzle prior of entering a sorceror's tower is a remnant of an ancient DRM scheme and GOG provides the answer for you in an installation directory. On the whole, the game is not very hard and the only annoyance you might encounter is an occasional pixel hunt. There are some items that you can acquire in the game that have no bearing to your quest and that only add to your score. Depending on your score you might get a slightly different ending. The graphics and music are not very memorable and are a staple of the bygone era, but surprisingly voice acting was not dreadful and I think that the actors did a decent job. All in all, "DragonSphere" is a very fun game and in my opinion the best of the free adventure games available on GOG (yes, I liked it even more than "Beneath a Steel Sky". P.S. GOG didn't do a very good job of porting the game to DOSbox and the game has a penchant to freeze. That can be fixed by opening dosboxDragonsphere.config file and changing the contents under a cpu label from "dynamic" to "auto".

Après avoir cartonné avec "Rex Nebular", qui décocha en 1992 le "Tilt d'Or" devant sa majesté "Monkey Island 2", Microprose tente une nouvelle expérience avec "DragonSphere" en 1994. On passe cette fois d'un monde de Sc-Fi à celui de l'Heroic Fantasy. Vous incarnez donc un roi (qui a dit "King Quest" ?) qui devra protéger son territoire face à vilain méchant sorcier. Et pour cela, il faudra commencer par se débarrasser d'une malédiction. L'univers est extrêmement riche et réussi. Vous devrez vous balader dans bon nombre d'endroits et clairement, les développeurs ne sont pas reposés sur leurs lauriers. Le jeu est beau, les décors variés et cela fourmille d'animations diverses, notamment quand il s'agit de tuer votre personnage. Mais pas de panique, à l'instar de Rex Nebular, la mort ne conduit pas au game-over. Vous ré-apparaitrez juste avant le drame, fort de cette expérience. Le système de jeu est quasi identique à celui de Rex. Les verbes en bas à gauche, les objets de l'inventaire au centre, et - c'est l'originalité des jeux de Microprose - les verbes spécifiques aux objets tout à droite. Cela donne une multitude de possibilités, rendant le jeu mine de rien plutôt difficile. Au final, j'ai quand même préféré ce bon Rex ne serait-ce que pour l'humour de ce dernier, et pour le thème amusant du "gender bender". Mais Dragonsphere reste un bon point'n click dans un univers réussi, sans pour autant être un jeu exceptionnel.

For the most part this is what one would except from an early 90s point and click adventure game. The command system is a bit more complex than most, but most will pick up on it quickly. Unlike most games of it’s time, the game has full voice acting. Most of the puzzles make logical sense and are fun. The story, while it is mostly clichéd and has some characters act illogically at times to move the story along, has it good points. The story is entertaining, is very interesting in how it portrays it‘s non-human species (giving reasons as to why fairies taunt humans and the ostracize ion of the shifters), and has a great twist.

I played through the GoG OS X version and it worked wonderfully. This is a Kings-Quest-like adventure game through and through. The interface is more complex than the game really needs, it is trying to build sentence commands like the old Infocom text adventure games. The VGA era artwork is very well done, and worth going through to see. The story is very good, and to me got better. It seems "standard" at first but has a twist I'll not spoil. I ended up consulting a walkthrough I found on the internet from time to time. I recommend this for all but the most hard-core player. There were a few times I would have been guessing or trying every item on everything. Which distracts from the story. Some of the puzzles seemed too tricky to get without a hint for all but the most hard-core of adventure gamers. A good feature of the game is that you come back to life when you die to try something else (saves loading from death). Overall a charming old-school Kings-quest like adventure I'm glad I played, I had played Sierra's adventure games back when they were released but had never heard of this title, it is a good old game.

Dragonsphere is a great adventure game. The puzzles are clever and often based around what you know and hear about the different cultures in the game. There's a couple of really tough puzzles (there is only one which feels like it's been made more difficult for no reason) but mostly it's pretty logical and down to your adventuring/diplomatic skills. Though I enjoyed the setting I feel like many areas could be more fleshed out and by the end of the game I wanted much more - but, as with many things, this is a testament to the final work as it stands. Finally, though it's perhaps one of the game's most prominent features, the music is incredible - though at times a little haywire. Overall I'd say It's one of my favourite adventures I've played- I love it! And it's free...just make sure you get round to playing it!