ANVIL OF DAWN came out late (1996) and it manages to look worse than the games that preceded it. Far worse actually. The dungeon tiles look ugly and I never really liked Dreamforge's art style (the studio who also made RAVENLOFT and MENZOBERRANZAN). Typical for the studio is the horrible voice acting (horrible over-acting, probably done by the studio's employees like the janitor and cleaning lady) and dialogue. The HUD is unnecessarily huge and ugly too. There are cringe-worthy cinematics with ugly characters. There are 5 pre-made characters to choose from for a player character, one uglier than the other. You can re-distribute their stats (Strength, Stamina, Agility and Magic) as you choose turning the warrior looking guy into a spellcaster and the spellcaster into a strong barbarian. There is no party in ANVIL OF DAWN but you do catch up and interact with the other characters from the beginning. Combat is simple: click on the weapon icon - just like in EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. Mash that button and you will often stagger most enemies. Spellcasting is done by clicking on the spell icon, every spell has an icon below the weapons. This could have been done much better and just clutters up the screen. The dungeon design ranges from bad to good, one of the best looking dungeon being later in the game with a cool fog effect. And that is really a pity: some aspects of the game, for instance the gloomy atmosphere are quite good. Then there's the terribly drawn sprites, the abysmal voice acting and some wasted opportunities (at the beginning when you visit the court wizard to teach you the first two spells, the dialogue is always the same, whether you go in as a barbarian with zero magical talent or a professional mage, he will comment on your lack of talent). Too bad, but this game is underwhelming, then and now.
LANDS OF LORE was Westwood's unofficial EYE OF THE BEHOLDER III when they split with SSI after EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II. Graphics style an menus will look familiar to anyone who played EOB I or II. LANDS OF LORE: THE THRONE OF CHAOS is the first in a trilogy - the first sequel GUARDIANS OF DESTINY comes with the first here on GOG, the second sequel (simply called LANDS OF LORE III) has to be bought separately for whatever reason. I suggest ignoring the terrible sequels. LANDS OF LORE 1 starts you out picking one of 4 pre-made player characters. With 3 different attributes: offense, defense and magic. There are no stats. There is no character creation. Each character has 3 classes - fighter, rogue and mage - and levels them up by actions (throwing for rogue, casting spells for mage) much like DUNGEON MASTER. This might be a little too simplistic for real cRPG fans. There are two more slots for NPCs who come and go during the adventure, uping the party to a maximum of 3. This actually works better than the 4 character party - there is no front and back row. Graphics are nice to look at and the GOG version is the fully voiced version with Patrick Steward as King Richard. Laso the character portraits are animated. It has a few nice enhancements to the genre at the time and it is a nice game, just not very challenging. It's a 3 out of 5 for me. LANDS OF LORE II: GUARDIANS OF DESTINY however is another story. Here you play as the son of the original game's villain, there is no choosing a player character this time and no NPCs. Your character is a shapechanger, who shapeshifts RANDOMLY which proves to be a major pain in the butt. Graphically Westwood ditched the 90 degree step by step movement for "softscrolling" 360 degree movement at the price of being very pixelated up close. For me this is a rockbottom 1 out of 5. Don't bother installing it.
STONEKEEP is not a bad game. It's just OK. You play as Drake, a pre-defined character. What made this game so special when it came out were the digitalized characters. Unfortunately by the time STONEKEEP hit the shelves the graphics were already outdated but the Dungeons and enemies still looked pretty good. The voice acting however is another story. Some characters are clearly played for laughs - Wahooky - but seem out of place. What this game does offer is a rather high difficulty, good combat and a good character progression (you improve skills by using them). What I found rather terrible was the inventory system: a scroll serves as your backpack and it only shows 5 items at a time. Have fun scrolling that scroll (no pun intended) up and down while looking for an item. At least the game is paused while you fumble with that inventory. You can have up to three NPCs join your party, however you only control Drake. The other party members fight by themselves while remaining in formation (all four squeeze into one row). However you can steal and equip their equipment. Overall it's a pretty good dungeon crawler, with a few fresh ideas at its time but nothing special.
As a fan of classic dungeon crawlers such as DUNGEON MASTER, LEGEND OF GRIMROCK is a must own. Like DUNGEON MASTER this game is hard. Unlike the paragon you can tweak the difficulty a bit by disabling the optional automap function - the game also comes with printable graph paper if you want to go oldschool. There however is NO optional 360 degree turning and smooth scrolling. The HUD is minimalist and only displays the protraits , the hitpoints and magic points as well as the items in hand of your party of four. The rest of the screen is reserved for the environment, and never have these 90 degrees dungeons looked better. There are 4 races to pick from (human, minotaur, lizardman and insectoid, cause who needs dwarves and elves, right) and three classes (fighter, rogue and wizard, cause healers are for sissies). Finally the party being glued together and moving as one has a logical explanation as well: you are prisoners chained together rather than "heroes", the goal of the game is to escape from the mega gaol Grimrock, working your way down to the exit. If you make it there and manage to kill the head gaoler freedom is granted. Not bad for a background, really. Puzzles are numerous and some are quite hard with a few being optional, usually yielding better loot. The enemies in LEGEND OF GRIMROCK are hard but some could have used a remake at the drawing board. Still LEGEND OF GRIMROCK ranks No. 3 as my favorite dungeon crawlers of all time, right after BLACK CRYPT and DUNGEON MASTER II. LEGEND OF GRIMROCK comes with modding support and a dungeon creator.
No! No!! No!!! id Software, what have you done? What made QUAKE 1 so unique was its setting: elements of dark fantasy and low sci-fi flavored with Lovecraftian style of weird sci-horror made for a unique and distinctive world. What does QUAKE II do? Yeah, they ditched QUAKE I's style in favor for a stereotypical and very boring sci-fi theme with invading aliens (YAAAAWN!). It's been done a trillion times before, even by id Software (DOOM series). I did not care for QUAKE II, it is just another bland sci-fi shooter with boring and repetitive environments.
I always wanted an Amiga when I grew up so I could play my favorite dungeon crawler - BLACK CRYPT. I never got one. My parents bought a PC. And on PC came the EYE OF THE BEHOLDER trilogy. The basic idea is, you create a party of four and can pick up up to two more and trek through a dungeon full of monsters, while solving a few switch/key/pressure plate puzzles to progress until you reach the big bad on the last level. Personally, I never liked the series as much as BLACK CRYPT, but until DUNGEON MASTER II came out years later it was the best you could get in the genre on PC. (That is, if you need a story. If not you got DUNGEON HACK.) If you play them in chronological order you can import your characters from the predecessor with (almost) all of their items and their XP. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER I is rather poor. It only features one save slot - not that you actually need any more since the game is way too easy. You start out in the sewers (yuck!) and work your way down through an underground dwarven city (rather a dungeon just like the others before), and dark elf territory until you find the titular Beholder. Graphics and sound are simplistic but do the trick, with monsters and dungeon tiles looking really good. Ideal for beginners. 2 out of 5. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II gives us a proper intro and occasional cutscenes which were quite good. We're offered a beginning "outside" dungeon in the woods before we enter Darkmoon, which is just a short wooded dungeon, nothing to write home about. It is significantly harder than its predecessor with some hard (and annoying) enemies and slightly better graphics. 4 out of 5. EYE OF THE BEHOLDER III is widely regarded as the poorest in the series. but personally it's my favorite. There is a huge outside world to explore and the enemies are much more difficult but less annoying. Graphics got slightly polished but the sounds were given a major upgrade. Only the finale is lackluster. 4.5 out of 5.
What do you do when you just released the successor to an epic open world RPG and the next installment is still quite far away? Right - you create a cheap and quickly programed spin-off, slap the IP "Elder Scrolls" on it and that's how you get garbage like Boredomspire- uh I mean Battlespire. No open world, just one dungeon. Normally that is good (I love a good dungeon crawler), but this one actually sucks - proven by mediocre to poor reviews and being a commercial failure when it came out. So when this came out in '98, it was already was outdated on a technical level. Of course it came with a buttload of bugs - it wouldn't be a Bethesda if it didn't feature bugs, now would it?! and extremely braindead enemy AI. Enemies clip through walls and ignore you, you'd think Bethesda would have learned after Buggerfall. Well, they didn't. The only positive aspects this game has to offer are some good puzzles and the detailed character creation. But that's not enough to save this from oblivion - where it belongs!
No, I did not care for Diablo II. DIABLO 1 had a unique dungeon crawling experience with a dark fantasy setting. It was simple and that made it perfect. One dungeon. Four attributes to raise every level. No perks. No skill trees. Just like DUNGEON HACK this game is simplistic and that what makes it so appealing. So far the only "Diablo-clone" that can hold the candle to this is GRIM DAWN. I love the graphics style - it's grim dark at its best. The dungeons look realistic and great - even today. GOG's DIABLO comes with an optional HD version (you choose when you start the game). The atmosphere is just great - rarely has a game nailed it like this. And the music - just fantastic. DIABLO is a solid 5 out of 5. GOG's DIABLO comes with its add-on HELLFIRE which was not made by the original designers of DIABLO - and it shows. It moves away from the dark fantasy theme more into an ALIEN theme. It did not care for it - I give it a 2 out of 5.
I loved STARHD'S POSSESSION when it came out and played it through twice. RAVENLOFT basically is AD&D's version of Bram Stoker's Dracula from which it steals quite a lot. While the story is quite predictable, the atmosphere is the best aspect of STRAHD'S POSSESSION - it's DARK fantasy. There are some gripes however: the graphics are terrible and very VERY blocky. Even when the game came out in 1994 the graphics were outdated (it came out after DOOM and looks gar worse). The voice acting and dialogue is cringeworthy and sometimes just terrible. And lastly the controlls are clunky and slow. Forget the optional 90 degrees step by step movement - it does not work. Enemies are quicker than you and move fast, while it takes your party forever to turn around. Movement in general is like driving a tank. A word of warning though. STRAHD'S POSSESSION is kinda hard. You fight mainly undead creatures, some of which can drain experience levels - the only way to get them back is by loading an old save. Also, when this happens, there is a very brief message that is way too quick and small to read, so you're probably gonna miss it. Check your characters' levels after every fight ( I told you the controls are not great). STRAHD'S POSSESSION is saved by it's unique atmosphere and therefore scores a solid 4 out of 5. STONE PROPHET is the second RAVENLOFT game (MENZOBERRANZAN using the same engine but not being part of the series). Here Dreamforge have made improvements with graphics and controls (still clunky though). I wish they had come out the other way around, as I would have liked to see the first game with these graphics. Instead of AD&D Transylvania, STONE PROPHET takes place in AD&D ancient Egypt with pharaoh mummies, cobras and scorpions replacing werewolves and vampires. It also is a good game with a unique setting but I prefer the first game. Still a solid 4 out of 5.
I liked Dungeon Hack a lot when it came out. It's based on the Eye of the Beholder III engine and it's a good game for some inbetween hack & slaying. Think of it as a Diablo with Eye of the Beholder looks, with one great distinction: you get to customize your dungeon. Don't want any puzzles or key searching, just monster slaying? Turn those off and up the monster amount. Don't like undead? Turn em off. Underwater levels? Optional. It's all there. Sure it's simplistic and I still prefer Diablo (1), but this is still a guilty pleasure! Dungeon Hack is a solid 4 out of 5 Menzoberranzan however is a rather dull experience. The graphics are atrocious as it uses the Ravenloft 1 engine and thus looks very pixelated and actually worse than the older "step by step" Eye of the Beholder games. Sure it's got Dark Elves, but looking at those graphics will hurt your eyes, and unlike Ravenloft 1 this one's got no atmosphere. Menzoberranzan is a 2 out of 5
