Ah, this brings back memories. My good old reliable 486 was used to fire up this game the first time in 1998 and I immediately fell in love with it. The basic gameplay consists of occupying squares in a grid-like map. Each square in the grid has certain structures that are mainly used to obtain money and control over that square. You pay gangs money to work for you and occupy these grids, as well as defend them from the enemy. The gangs! Whoever came up with these must be bordering on mad genious. You've god the dreaded blood order, you've got smiley-face gangs, scientists, suicidal party goers, professional atheletes with questionable business ethics and so on. Better gangs cost more money to hire, plus they have an upkeep that must be paid each turn. Hire too many gangs too early, and you'll quickly sink into a financial crisis that will be your undoing! You'll research weapons and equipment that will help you complete this goal. Too much chaos and the cops come after you and not enough and you will get run over by rivaling syndicates. You have to carefully balance resources, offense, defense and other variables to be victorious. The only complaint I have is that sometimes you will get a lot of crappy gangs for many turns which will prevent you from advancing, so there is also a factor of luck involved. Usually this only matters at the beginning of a campaign, though.
Heck yeah! I still own this game but unfortunately do't own one of those old floppy disk drives so the game is inaccessible...until now lol! Seriously though, this is one of the few adventure games I actually got interested as a young'n (let's face it, I was a bit restless bag then and anything recquiring more than 5 minutes of concentration owuld get left in our game stores' shelves). You can see from the screenshots that the visual style is kinda like Gabriel Knight, but with a touch more colour and a handdrawn feel to it. The adventure starts as you are sent on a quest to rid the world of a jerk mage that just can't wait to ruin the lives of everyone. The only negative aspect in this game I can think of is the time limit, which puts a lot of pressure on you to think quick and act even quicker. There's a lot of clever puzzles in this game, ones that I've yet to see in any other game (save for the stupid pixie puzzle, but more on that later). One example is actually having to learn a new language by picking up bits and pieces from conversations along the way and figuring out what words means what. After you've completed this task you are presented with a puzzle where you must succesfully ask for directions to a desert camp. Fail, and you'll see one of the games many deaths. There's another one where there's a group of different coloured pixies, and they all either tell a truth, a lie, or something that might or might not be a truth or a lie. Cross examining everything they say is fun at first, but if you fail to come up with a solution in under 15 minutes, you'll start to lose your sanity and feel inadequately equipped in the mental department to complete this game. thank god for game guides! But, it's not that hard. Every puzzle has a solution that usually makes sense, you just have to do a bit more of critical thinking and take a few deep breaths every now and then to make your way forward in this dangerous land. The game will surprise you with its story, but that's all I'm gonna say about it. I don't know about voice acting since I own the crappy version, but I hope it's good! With nothing more to say (at least nothing intelligent anyway) I'm gonna go pour myself a cup of joe and spend a sleepless night solving this game once and for all!
After seeing this game on GOG I managed to change my pants before I sat down to write this review. Where should I start? Rotoscoping! The graphics in this game are practically hand-drawn, with live actors being used and then having a computer draw out the outlines and then the characters being colored by hand. The look is amazing and does add to the effect of experiencing a train ride circa 1914, when this style of 'art noveau' was popular. There's something wonderful of having a good story delivered with great dialogue by great actors, and this game has all this going for it plus more. There's a real-time element that basically means that with only a few exceptions, the characters in the game have an AI that tells them to go places and do things, all the while you're exploring the locomotive. Don't get too comfortable, though! Too much screwing around and you might end up with a bullet in your brain or worse, having important events pass you by, sending you spiralling towards one of the 'bad' endings. My hands have stopped shaking long enough for me to write this final sentence. Don' think about buying this game, just do it. It's 6 dollars for christ sake, not enough to get you a decent burger, and you're wondering whether or not to spend it on one of the best interactive storytelling experiences in the world!? But hey, don't take my word for it! Do yourself a favor and step on board the Last Express! You won't regret it.
Let's get one thing straight before we start exploring the greatness of this title. I like a challenge, and by that I mean a challenge originating from the game actually having gameplay that awards you for mastering different skills, and punishing for you for not thinking things through before acting. Gothic games have always been about that, having a combat system and a quest structure that focuses on giving you rewards for being intuitive, calm and rational. Going after a shadowbeast with the best gear will still get you killed if you don't know what you're doing since wild, wanton swinging of your weapon will only leave you open for attacks. You need to dodge, parry, circle, strike at the right moment and sometimes assess the situation and run away if you're losing. Failing to run away from a losing fight will get you another long wait with the loading screen (let's face it, after the bugs this was the biggest gripe I had with the game). Right, so that's the heart of the game, challenging combat and quests that aren't always run-of-the-mill affairs, but how's the game as a whole? How do these elements come together with the graphics, music, atmosphere, replay value etc. ? Let's find out, shall we! Graphics and engine: Let's start with the visuals. The graphics are ok, they do their job, sometimes the character models especially look great, and you'll run into some amazing scenery when you travel far from the beaten path. However, they might not look like much by today's standards but we have to remember that this was one of those rare games where the whole world was loaded at once into memory. That's right, no annoying 5-second long loading pauses when you cross the magical memory-buffer zone, very familiar for us who tried to enjoy Oblivion! Having this convenience is worth the "only ok" graphics, if you ask me. Consequently, if you die you'll be grabbing a coffee or a sandwich while you wait for the game to load your previous save game. The loading time isn't THAT long though, and in the day of SSDs and 10000RPM harddisks it shouldn't be a problem for those of us who own a good gaming rig. The other thing about the graphics was that the engine was a bit crude, so you might be running bit below the FPS you would be expecting from a game this old, but nothing that should ruion your enjoyment. I played the game with a Radeon 9600 Pro the first time, and had a good FPS with medium-good graphics. The only place I had trouble with was the city harbour, where the frames got a bit too slow for my liking, especially when I ended up fighting a certain jerk character who just would have loved to take my money. I showed him, despite my FPS handicap! Music and Sounds: Ugh. Let's just wrap this up by saying that I didn't enjoy the music. It's repetitive, boring and totally not my favorite genre. The sounds effects are good, they give the fights some oomph and make you duck under your bed when you run into your first super-monster. Don't worry, I'm sure nobody noticed. The voice actors generally do a good job, but there are some who could have at least tried to do a good job. Nothing major, though. Gameplay and controls: Aah, the heart of every game (unless you ask someone who makes FPS-games for a living, am I right!? LOL!). This is what makes or breaks a game and probably THE reason we have GOG. Good gameplay just doesn't exist as a mainstream thing anymore, as designers would rather concentrate on making their games look good than making them PLAY good. Good thing we have classics like the ones on GOG to remind us of a better time. Ahem, anyway, I guess I'd better get back on topic. Gameplay! I already ranted about this one, but let's concentrate on the other aspects of it as well, starting with quests. You'll be asked to kill people, rob people, break into places, run away from fights, run into fights, chase crazy-fast old men through the country side, help crazy witches, help crazy alchemists, discover mysteries, save the world and so on and so on... Basic RPG fare, right? Maybe, but here the characters shine and add their own twist into everything you do, and having so much to do in so many different places will always ensure you have something to do. Some quests have more than one solution, especially the ones involving what faction you will eventually join. Yes that's right, there are mages, knights and rogues, all who want a piece of you. The factions work like this: Like I mentioned there are three, and each have their own set of quests whose purpose is to assess your abilities. Kick ass, and you'll be accepted into the militia/paladins, mages or rogues' order. Each have their own positive and negative aspects. Paladins have the ultimate armor and some lightweight spells, rogues are cunning and can teach you some...questionable skills. The mages are all about killing everything as fast as possible and from as far away as possible. Basically this means that you can choose your character class by joining a certain faction. See what skills strike your fancy, then work out which faction is the best suited to train you. As you level up you get 10 Learning Points, and these can be used towards any skill you want to develop. As a side note, learning alchemy will eventually have you making potions that raise your strength, dexterity, mana and/or health, so if you're a true power gamer you'll take advantage of these. In addition to quests there are hidden places on the map that once discovered will turn into an adventure in themselves. Example: As you fumble into a long lost grave of a warrior you nervously look around you, hoping to find some treasure or that epic set of armor you've always wanted. As the silence grows nerve-wrecking, you discover the crypt is actually full of the undead! As you prepare to fight or flee the only question in your mind will be the most relevant... Did I remember to save my game??? Yup, remember to save your game, and save it often! You will die a lot as you first make you way through the game, fights will be plenty and hard. You will eventually learn to fight like a pro, think like a pro and make money like an evil genius, which will increase your chances of surviving, just as long as you're ready to learn from your mistakes. Now finally something about the controls. Good for fighting and controlling your character, but if you have to take a potion or change your weapon in the middle of a fight you're in for trouble. The inventory system (and item buying/selling) is a bit clunky as well. Not nearly as bad as the first game, but you're probably used to better systems. Just bear with it and you'll get used to it eventually, but expect to go "WTF?" at a few of the designer decisions involving item transactions and the interface in general. The good thing is you can carry as much crap as you want, so you don't have to worry about burden issues (yes, I like convenience over realism, so sue me). You use the mouse to steer your character and aim spells/arrows, and the keyboard for everything else. If I remember correctly, you can use the mouse to navigate your inventory and transaction screens, but having the inventory in a simplistic grid makes buying and selling large amounts of items a burden. Finally, the game had plenty of bugs when it came out, but these have been fixed as far as I could tell from my last playthrough. I just bought this game and am playing it for the 5th time through, so If I run into any problems I apologise in advance, I seriously can't remember any major bugs from my last playthrough, though. Whev. I think that about covers everything, don't you think? If you just skipped to the end of this review just to see some generic review score, BAD LUCK! I don't do those, they never succesfully summarise the review. I can, however, give you a brief summary if you're a "Too Long, Didn't Read" sort of guy/girl. Summary: A solid RPG with freedom of choice involving quests, character development and exploration. You'll still always end up saving the world, you can't really be a bad guy but other than that, feel free to be free. Good but a bit slow graphics, good characters with good voice actors (most of the time), excellent gameplay and subpar music. If you liked Oblivion, try this out. It's more of a challenge, but as a consequence more rewarding. If you've never tried any sandbox RPGs, this could be your first but I warn you, it might be frustrating for a beginner. for the rest of us RPG addicts, a solid addition to your game collection! Right, I'm gonna go grab a beer, this took way longer than I originally intented :D
