This game is superb entertainment as you try to work out the formula for keeping the little folk happy and maximising profit. This is a genuine classic and legitimate contender for the best Bullfrog game ever (which is about as high praise as a game could possibly get from me). I was hopeless at this game as a kid, so sought out some tips before replaying it recently. Be careful if doing that as there is a very straightforward way to make your visitors happy and once you've learnt it, it is kind of stupid try any other technique. It really detracts from the variety of the game and it loses a star for some rides being unbalanced compared to others. There is also a lack of motivation to try building a theme park in every location, as the formula for victory is kind of 'one size fits all'. I still got a good 15-20hrs enjoyment out of the game despite discovering this spoiler, which is testament to the game's qualities. - To reduce crashes, reduce the speed of DOSBOX with a few presses of Ctrl+F11 - To make the game a little less stressful/repetitive I recommend investing early on on staff training (which improves warehouse deliveries and litter picking, two of the most repetitive elements of the game).
I loved Spiderwebs original Exile trilogy when they came out, but held off on Avernum as: i) I don't really play remakes (life is too short) ii) I was put off by the streamlined magic, the reduced party size, the lack of typed conversations with NPCs and the isometric graphics iii) it came out at a time when my free time was limited, so shorter games were the order of the day. However, within 15mins of loading up Avernum 4 I was a convert. The quality of writing from the earlier games remains but there is more thoughtful/challenging combat than with Exile and despite the large game world, it is arguably more tightly focussed than Exile 3, with the questing system and enjoyable combat challenge propelling me through the game. There is still arguably a requirement to write some degree of notes to get the most out of the game (which I personally like), but you can play it purely using the user interface if need be. The audiovisual presentation is arguably not even as good as with the far older Exile, but for anyone who enjoys reading hard copy books this should not be overly off-putting as humans come built in with an imagination! I recommend dxwnd for windowed play and can't recommend this (and Exile) highly enough for those who enjoy RPGs, stories and turn based strategy/combat.
I never played this at the time of release despite loving the first two Civs. Coming to it almost 20 years following release I found an excellent base game, but with some balance issues. The default settings mean the first half of the game is far harder than the second half. All the AI's advantages are frontloaded to the start of the game. It is still entertaining, however.... The editor that comes with the game is simple to use and incredibly versitile. You can tweak settings to effectively make the strategy game that you want to play in terms of difficulty, game balance, game speed. Pretty much everything is customisable. That is without going into the full blown mod options with customised units, graphics, settings etc. Multiplayer is superb, but with a couple of minor bugs. GoG version with the basic download (not using Galaxy) works perfectly on XP despite being listed as needing Windows 7. Civ2 is possibly the best game I played growing up, but I will never play it again because Civ3 is that good.
