After playing through many Sierra and Lucasfilm adventure games; since text parsers to point-n-click, I can safely say that this seriously rivals them all. It's definitely not on par with Grim Fandango but... well... how many light-hearted cosmic-horror adventure games have you seen? Suffice to say, your characters won't die, the puzzles aren't tough and the voice-acting isn't terrible. I ran through the game twice, first to beat it and the second time to find out what I missed. Turns out I'm all clear. I give it passing grade and will look forward to this studio's next project.
I never believed in giving 5-stars on anything. It would mean that it is perfect with nothing it could be improved on. Yet, here I am, giving this game 5 stars. Why? Because it is perfect. Had this game been released in this current form back then, Troika would have been one of the largest CRPG developers on the scene now. Not Bioware, not CD Projeckt Red and definitely not Bethesda. This game should be what all RPGs now use as a benchmark. Choices that matter. Storylines that branches. Characters that are memorable and that you care for. Plots that are believable and logical. Player customization that is deep and varied with actual bearing on how you can approach the game. So, yes. I'm sorry to say that there is nothing good about this game. It is only great.
There are way too many quirky things about this game to be touched upon in a single paragraph. So, I'd have to settle with 3. Firstly; it is, in essence, a city-building game. You, the player, would need to assemble a group of 5 retired adventurers. It would be optimal to have different classes for each, which I will delve deeper into later. With their combined riches, you will be tasked with building a city and attracting adventurers with the same classes as your chosen characters. Not only is this important, there are unique buildings that each class could build and those would affect how you will beat the game or lose it. Secondly; it is a resource-management game. You will need to learn the strengths of each class and exploit them as much as possible. Dwarves have a higher chance of building gold mines to strengthen your economy, halflings excel in feeding your populace, fighters give you cheap and plentiful housing, elves can make your city become a tourist resort while wizards and clerics will bolster your offensive and defensive capabilities against various enemies. Thirdly; it is a real-time-strategy game. Imagine battles fought in Warcraft viewed from the side instead of a top-down perspective. Warriors slash, Thieves stab, Dwarves hack, Elves shoot, Wizards blast & etc. Each skirmish is a joy to behold and a raid on a monster den is extremely epic, especially with a high level army toppling a dragon nest. This game is a totally different beast of its own. If I had to classify it under a genre, I would have to grudgingly say that it is a 4X game. Even then, I am using that term extremely liberally. When another game with the same name came out 8 years later, I was ecstatic. I thought it was a sequel or a reboot. And then I was totally let down by it. Don't take my word for it. Buy it, try it, love it.
I'd like to give this game 5 stars but there's always room for improvement. First, let's get the bad things out of the way. 1) When you can fire up the game and know that you will make your opponents eat dirt, you know that the game is terribly unbalanced. 2) The gangs-for-hire are reduced into stats with no personality whatsoever. 3) Combat animation was pretty meh. They missed a chance to make it look even more awesome like Langrisser or even Gemfire. 4) This is a game that is hard to learn but easy to master. That's pretty much it. Now for the good stuff: 1) The music is great. Don't take my word for it? Go listen to it on Youtube. 2) Multiple approaches to dominate the game; go heavy on Research, sabotage your enemies by calling the donut-lovin' cops on them, launder money by causing as much Chaos as possible... list goes on. 3) The theme was extremely fitting and it's downright criminal that it doesn't have a sequel or a reboot. 4) The only bug I ever encountered while playing is this game is a goddamn spider hiding below my PC rack. 5) This is one of the best, if not THE best, board-game released exclusively for PC.
I have nothing but praises on the gameplay, theme and overall plot of this game. Everything that an RPG should have, this series had it by the truckload. So, why the obscurity? Because it's not JUST and RPG. It's a Computer RPG. The game was utterly ambitious and it shows with the epic battles, sprawling maps, interesting NPCs and inclusion of the under-utilized Psionic sub-class of classic AD&D 2nd Edition. That said, the ambitiousness of the game was probably its own downfall. I believe SSI was struggling to keep development time down, trying their utmost best to rush out this monster of a game on to the market. The 1st was a hit, even though it was marred with some gamebreaking bugs. The 2nd had respectable sales until reviews of the game came up that it had even more and worse bugs than the 1st. It was extremely disheartening to see such an original universe die out (Ha! See what I did there? Uh... Inside joke for those who knows about the Dark Sun campaign) because of mismanagement and poor control of this project. Personally, I am sick and tired of Forgotten Realms and would welcome any developers to try their hands on Dark Sun. They have a ready customer right here.
Seriously, I wanted to love this game. I really did. I loved Fallout (what's not to love?!). The Perks derived from the SPECIAL system works great with the turn-based tactical combats. Now, the theme. I absolutely loved it. Famous real-life historical personas who would interact and, in some cases, even join you on your quest. A time of religious strife colored by paganistic and exotic magics. Now, what went wrong? Everything. Whatever Perks you got from leveling up your character is made useless if your aim with the mouse and speed of your clicks aren't up to par. Sure, you may have mastered a Perk that allows you to kill an enemy with a single blow but if you are facing multiple enemies who could do the same, you'd better hope and pray that you have a sturdy follower who could help you soak off some damage for a few seconds before ripping him apart and then doing the same to you. As for the theme, I'm not going to spoil it but they missed a chance to tell a great story. They squandered their shot for a sequel by making the game's ending so damn terribly predictable, cliched and myopic in scope. And those aforementioned historical fellows you met? Wow. It's like branding Einstein as a genius who likes to stick out his tongue and that's it. No character depth whatsoever. Those that do join you are controlled by an AI so stupid that they might as well have strapped themselves with C4 and blow up along with the enemies to do, at least, some damage before running to their own deaths. What's worse is that these stupid followers sometimes come tagged with a quest and getting them killed fails those quests immediately. Had this been a turn-based game, the player could have, at least done something during their turn to mitigate their idiocy instead of everything happening simultaneously. I don't mind games being tough but I hate it when the challenge comes with making you shoulder baggage that is artificially created to lengthen the game's play time from reloading.
