This game is effectively the same game as its sequel, just with less content and older graphics, but the content that it has for the campaign is of course unique. Meaning there is still good reason to play this, and very little reason not to. Don't ignore it up because of its simpler looks. It's just as entertaining. The most significant issue is specific to this GOG version. Alt + R changes the game from the pixelated DOS version to a much better looking Windows version, but the game still runs in DOSBox, which has a set speed it runs at for each game that you have to manually adjust by tapping Ctrl + F12 to speed up and Ctrl + F11 to slow down. Since the Windows version is more intensive than the DOS version, it runs slower in DOSBox, so you'll have to manually adjust the speed yourself each time so it doesn't lag. Annoying, but not quite annoying enough to ruin it.
You probably heard this game was good. You probably heard it was REAL good. But you don't really know ANYTHING until you played it. You might have read all the praise for games like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale and think is like that, just another good CRPG, and you gotta know, this is beyond any of that. I have just finished my first playthrough and I am as happy to have played it as I am baffled that I have not heard more about this game sooner. So, if you're reading positive reviews, you're luckier than I was, because I gotta urge you - PLAY IT! There is a lot of reading in it, the game is really more a piece of literature than anything, one that uses video games as a medium to tell a masterful mystery, one of the best stories I've ever read. Stringing you along for 60 hours on an adventure to find out who you are, what you are and where you are. The content in this game is the mystery, your main victories aren't loot, or stats, they're information, and so you should avoid spoilers like the plague. The less you know - the better, and so maybe the game's unknown status these days is for the best, the more mystery for the rest of us.
This a port of a game that would otherwise be incredibly difficult to play legally. Not sure what's wrong with the reviewers heads here, the game released on Steam as well and people understand it's a perfectly fine game with a reasonable price for what it is. Giving a game 1 star because it costs 5 dollars too much or something is childish and crazy, let alone thinking GOG is at fault when its not even an exclusive release.
A very important game for Elder Scrolls lore. This is still the only game where we've ever seen a normal (non-Sea) Sload, the only ES game until Skyrim that showed a Dragon, the first one that mentioned Dwemer, and the list goes on, and it's all wrapped up in charming early 3D graphics. The problem? The game is complete dogshit. Almost everything is a burning dumpster fire here. The voice acting is some of the worst I have ever heard in my life. The controls could be considered a cruel and unusual punishment, and the combat system can barely be described as combat. The game is written by Michael Kirkbride, who is a creative genius and the father of the Elder Scrolls world, so the dialogue is absolutely worth hearing, or less painfully, reading, and the main story is actually fantastic. However the gameplay is genuinely so atrocious that unfortunately not even that makes it worth actually playing, and that's saying something.
If you are an Elder Scrolls fan on the verge of letting your curiosity get the better of you, let me give you all the points of interest and connections to future games this game has and spare you the ball twisting pain of actually playing the game. 1. All the provinces and many towns in them have the same names as in future games. 2. Many legendary weapons and artifacts in future games appear here first. Such as the Oghma Infinitum and Staff of Magnus. Their descriptions mention the same names but are only sometimes related to the modern lore. Magnus is simply a mortal mage, not a god, for example. 3. Most of the main quest levels are mentioned again in later games. Mostly ESO, such as Selene's Web. The Labyrinthian also appears again in Skyrim, but again, the lore is completely different. 4. Guilds like the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are enemies you might encounter as targets in side quests, all of which are procedurally generated. You sometimes get ambushed by enemies with text along the lines of "You are attacked by the Thieves Guild!" and such, but can interact with them in no way besides that. The only exception is the Mage's Guild, which has a building in every city and offers important services and sells items, but is not joinable. 5. Dwarves are mentioned, and you visit one of their keeps called "Fang Lair", it's also mentioned they mysteriously disappeared from Tamriel, and dwarven weapons are yellow. The similarities end there, Fang Lair is simply a normal mine. 6. The story is about freeing the Emperor Uriel Septim VII from Jagar Tharn. The emperor is the same one as from the start of Oblivion. And that's it! None of the enemies would really be recognized by the modern fan as being from ES. You have giant lizard people, homunculus, demons, just random stuff. The provinces all look alike mostly. The game also runs like absolute ass and is incredibly simple, yet quite long. Save yourself the time and skip to Daggerfall.
This game is timeless but simple. It's also timeless *because* it's simple. There really isn't much to it. You own your fort, you build a building, it generates units, recruit those units and go conquer until there is nothing left to conquer. Unlike the RPGs, this one doesn't have any complex mechanics that require reading the manual, or studying it online like some ancient relic. It's a perfectly playable, simple version of the HOMM franchise/genre.
Some games do lose their luster with age. Being praiseworthy not due to potentially ageless gameplay design or art direction, but simply by being graphically or technologically impressive at the time. Realm of Terror is one of those games, pretty well received in 1993 because of how impressive its monster models and visuals were, but the quality was unfortunately purely technical. This means you won't get much interesting world-design or scenery, and could only be impressed by immersing yourself in the actual year 1993, instead of the game. The majority of the game consists of repetitive hallways with, again contemporarily impressive, but very basic textures. The number of really notable or creepy locations can be counted on one hand. The gameplay is simply a standard dungeon crawler, but of sub-par quality. The models move around awkwardly and very slowly, to shoot them with a gun you need to first click the "aim" button next to your character and then their model, and whenever you do you will be greeted with an ear-piercing sound effect until they dematerialize. Another pervasive annoyance is that when pressing RMB to open a menu, simply letting it go counts as a click, meaning misclicks are very common. Some people might praise the apparent complexity of the character designer, but in reality it's simply the usual level of customization you might see in a party-based dungeon crawler, but squished into a single character. The story is again something you can imagine would be impressive for its time, or as somebody's first horror game. You have the traditional horror into lovecraftian horror progression, which is always fun. But in this case the foreshadowing for this is poorly done as the very few notes in the game pretty much spell it out for you. Lastly, and most distractingly, the game constantly flickers as you move around. I'm not sure if this is due to the GOG version or if it was a problem at launch, but it earns the game its 2 stars.
Suprisingly fun, if sometimes very aggrovating RPG. This game nails immersion, and has some of the best dialogue I have ever heard/read, the kind of quality that carried over to the other games in the franchise. The dialogue got plenty of reactions out of me. It was intriguing, funny, "deep", tense and so many other things. Something that was none of those things except maybe "tense", like your muscles would be if you had some kind of seizure, is the combat and the animations. They're really bad. The animations often look terrible, everyone sort of just stands there like a dork and the camera can go all over the place during dialogue. The combat is... something. I don't even know. It's just a big mess. Imagine a 3rd person diablo game, except really really bad, that's kinda it. You WILL die because of the system's flaws, many many times. You will get stuck, you will randomly freeze, Geralt will just refuse to draw his weapon. And you will, most likely, get very angry. There is basically a delay between everything Geralt does. Click on an enemy, and he will stare at them for a second, THEN attack. Drink a potion, he will contemplate life a second, and THEN drink it. It is so rough, the fact that it is also easily exploited and that bosses can be endlessly kited around pillars for example, is often welcome. But, if you can get past that crap (it's kinda hard to). You will find an overall enjoyable RPG, with some really amazing dialogue, characters, monsters, world and story. Like really amazing, pure 10/10 stuff. It also sets a lot of the ground rules for the rest of the franchise. Playing this will give you a completely different perspective on the other two games. You sort of learn what to focus on, what to try and get enjoyment out of. Playing this has made me enjoy Witcher 3 much, much more for example. It's also rather long, I have 35,9 hours just from one single playthrough. Where I skipped most of the sidequests, it will take you around 60 hours to actually finish everything, maybe more. And then there is a decent amount of replayability, because you make much more extreme choices with Geralt than in the other two games. If you can bare the combat enough to actually replay it, that is.
The game has been completely bugged and crashing for a lot of people for years. There is a high likelihood you will experience the same BitError crash every time you launch a scenario, making the game very literally unplayable. The only solution presented by GOG is to go download a third party, unaffiliated patch and install it every time you download the game. If you're fine with that, you might not have problems, but on its own the game is simply not functional.
