For it's time, it was a bit ground-breaking along with Gabriel Knight, the Beast Within which was a much better game. This one is a good time waster and the acting is enough to keep you involved. The story isn't bad and the puzzles are sensible but it does involve a lot of walking aorund to the same destinations. One thing I will say is do not ever buy the follow up to this game Phantasmagoria II because it is wretched.
Friends don't let friend play this game. It's a sad game filled with sad people and by the time you are half way through you want them all to die. The predecessor was bad but not bad more in a technical way rather than this which is bad in its story telling. Contrived, forced and ridiculous. Do not spend money on this drivel. You've been warned.
Back in 1996, I saw this game pop up on a tech show and thought it looked amazing. How could anyone create something like that? So I went and purchased it and I've been completely and utterly hooked on games ever since. It's one of the first co-ops that garnered thousands of guilds and player loyalists. It shook the game world to its core. The only rival it had at the time was Ultima Online. What drove it? Arguably, it had to be the random loot generator, the ease of use and believe it or not, the sound and music. Few games have ever combined music and character vocals so hypnotically than Diablo. The strumming guitar and the village character voices never grow tiring. Still to this day I catch myself saying to someone "What kin I do fer ya!" It really was that influential to millions.
Listen to no detractors of this game. It's a masterpiece; an absolute masterpiece. I've been playing video games since Pong came on the market and this one ranks up as #1 in my book. The reason is that for a game to be great or destined to be an essential game in game history it has to cover all the bases. Namely, the story has to be engaging and this one is as engaging a story as I've ever played. Filled with fantasy, mystery and intrigue, it's richness is revealed slowly to a fantastic, inevitable conclusion. Secondly. the game should have action and Bio Infinity has plenty of it and the boss encounters, although they could be a little more difficult, are still challenging without being overbearing. Dialog is important and the dialog in this gem leads you through the story just enough for you to continue wanting more. Lastly, the mechanics. How anyone could complain about game mechanics for this one is beyond me. The ground breaking mascot system is quite stunning having not quite been achieved like this prior. The "mascot" is not only a tag along character but is integral to the story itself. Not only that but there is an intimate involvement not only in the character but in the game mechanics. The environments are first class as you move through a perfect society to watching that society utterly break down because of a far more deeper reason then you are led to believe. Trust me, if you play this and can't find any of this true, go see your psychiatrist because you may be insane.
You will think so too if you played Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within. That game created an emotional attachment with the player that it could bring tears to your eyes while having reasonable puzzles that although challenging made sense. For this installment, I just had to stop playing once I simply could not figure out a puzzle and after reading a spoiler I found out that the reason I couldn't figure it out is I was supposed to take scotch tape, tape it to a hole in a fence, chase a cat through the hole in hopes of capturing some of the cat's hair then take the hair, make a moustache out of it and that would settle as a disguise. Seriously. Have fun because I found nothing fun about it.
Of all the Elder Scrolls games, this is easily my favorite. Skyrim bored me to tears. Morrowind I felt was quite good but this one beats them all. I think what makes this game so compelling is the storyline. You just never know where it might be going and that's the fun of it. I also think the game mechanics are done quite well especially the horseback riding which is breathtakingly wonderful. It's a great game standing on its own but for me, it's the best in the Elder Scrolls compilation.
This was Roberta Williams last stand. She never produced another game better than this one. Full Motion Video can be difficult as one tends to have to deal with repetitive scenes as you explore and try to solve the puzzles and mystery provided here. I also found that the acting was so good that one can actually build an emotional connection to these characters, sometimes a very deep one as game's go. It's a bitter sweet ending to what could have been an unforgettable trilogy. Instead, after the success of The Beast Within, it was torn asunder by the last and final installment.
I was deeply involved in this game before it came out. In fact, it has a history with the Webby's. Back when I wrote reviews for a now defunct game site called gamerscentral.net, this was one of the games that I reviewed along with many other strategy games of equal stature. I played this game before it went retail when the developers sent me a burned copy written with a sharpie on a CD! I still have that CD and I still love this game. It was back when SSI was putting out some decent strategy games. Well, what do you know. Gamerscentral.net won the Webby Award that year beating out every other game review site on the internet. That's saying something and I have a feeling that we owe a little of that to Imperialism. I'm sure there are some knocks one could give it for the combat structure which is not really interactive but the economic structure of this game is absolutely solid and the AI provides a pretty good challenge but it's not in the realm of impossibility as games like Dawn of Discovery are apt to be. Of course, the graphics are outdated but it's really a thinking man or woman's game so the graphics only help to drive the thinking that has to go behind the game. If you like challenges, pick it and Imp II which I also think is more polished but not necessarily that much better.
