The tags for this game are 'Action, Role-playing, Fantasy' and as a RPG fan I decided to give it a try but there is no role-playing experience at all, only some cinematic dialogues between stages. The tags were deceiving as there is the perception that everyting fantasy is necessarily RPG and this is not the case. The game is a short hack and slash experience that left my forehand sore after pushing the same button for about 45 minutes. Too short for the price but better like that because playing this game is a torture (just got to the final because I wanted to finish it). There is zero room for strategy, just press the same button until getting 99 credits and start pressing another button in a chaotic combat where you do not know exactly what is attacking you and how to avoid it. Just push the button and advance throughout the stages with the power of a load of quarters you deposito to the arcade only by hitting a button. The screen is surrounded with an annoying arcade frame which makes it smaller than it should be so adding to the annoying experience even more damage. I cannot remember how many times my avatar died in the final boss stage but for sure they were too many to consider this a satisfactory combat. It was a repetitive experience, aim, push the attack button, die, press start, pick the character, press start and repeat the cycle until the torture ends. The only reason I gave a score of 2 and not a plain 1 is because the graphics are not lame at all. Other than that, I will say that even if you look for some action game with fantasy elements, you should look somewhere else, this game is not worth its price.
If I am doing a review here is because I either finished the game or I just disinstalled it from my computer after some playing and in this occassion it was the second one. Evil Islands is an ok game for those who like over complicated game mechanics. The game is weird as there are enemies that can kill you in a blow and some others cannot be hurt by you whatever you do. It seems the game is so linear that if the quest does not say you can attack X enemy you can't then. The questing system is interesting but very basic and reminiscent of the MMO quests. There is an interesting crafting system to create some nice items but you cannot use anything the fallen enemies drop unless it is money, you must sell your loot and the prices for armors and weapons are really high. This could be a nice game for some people but not for me, I did not like the stancing questing system, the game is very frustrating, demands a lot of trial and error in the wait for "a better roll" and so on.
I played a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic back in the day. It was an ok game that was fun to some extent as I was discovering the world of fantasy PC games but after some time playing it, you will probably want to move on. These eight "games" are clones of the gameplay of HoMaM 3, nothing new to the table, they should be billed as "expansions" not games. If you really really love HoMaM 3 then this one is for you, otherwise you will get bored in a few minutes.
I must recognize these two games Dungeon Hack and Menzoberranzan are a step ahead from previous AD&D/SSI games; the fact they included navigation maps makes things much more easier for players. However there are some points I want to express about why these games are no more than nostalgy: Dungeon Hack: * This game is LINEAR in capital as you progress in the dungeon everything you find on your way will make you going opening doors. * Monsters are really tough and you must keeping saving the game every enemy you kill for you do not know whether the next enemy will kill you in two blows. * There is no strategy to follow, just keeping hitting monsters waiting the dice rolls in your advantege, if you die you just must keeping loading you saved game and repeat the attack until the dice makes you win. * The food system is broken, you enter a dungeon with no food and you cannot either go out to buy food or find food as you kill monsters. Food is scarce in the game but required to avoid disadvantages that will make you even weaker than you already are. Menzoberranzan: * The fact DreamForge is involved in this game makes thing a lot better than previous SSi games. It has an impressive character creation interface if we consider the standards for the time however they tried to make a 3D game using gridded controls which makes the controls unplayable, it is hard to make your character moving without making mistakes, it is like aiming just to walk. * The map interface is one of the most horribles I have ever seen, the different elements of the maps are represented by symbols that looks almost identical and when you see the map it looks so convoluted that you feel totally lost so having a map makes no difference. As I played these games I noticed they were work and I was not having fun but just I was working to beat the game. People that played these games back in the day will say the games are awesome but they are not, they did not age well and are only museum pieces.
I never played these games back at the time but I am in love with all things old school fantasy however this pack of games is not something I would play for more than a couple minutes. The gameplay is non intuitive and it is broken. The controls are a guessing and you just will be so lost you won't be able to even create a character. I know these are old games but it is not graphics my complaint but the way they executed them. Hillsfar is totally borken as it requests me: "Put disk 1 in the drive and press any key" and won't work. There is a good reason why these games cost cents, they are worth them. Save your cents and invest them in something else, unless you are a collector of this stuff there is nothing good about this games.
If I had played this game for the time it was released (I was about 16 for the time) I probably would have had a lot of time and the patience to endure the frustration but not today. Playing this game is a major headache, you have no map, you have to feed a whole party and only find food for one from time to time and you find impossible obstacles that just keep you stuck with no solution unless you look for some guide. I looked for a graphic walkthrough and even following it thoroughly I ended lost most of the times. There are some parts in the dungeons where you are transported from one spot to other leaving you totally lost since all walls are so similar. A small feature such as the ability to use a chalk to mart walls would have made a huge difference. The combat system is a disaster and really deadly. I do not want to imagine a boy back in the day asking this as a Christmas gift, this game is unplayable, extremely hard and very deadly. The game includes a guide that was released as a separate product by the company back in the day with clues about how to navigate the game. They probably received a lot of requests from people about how to play this thing an that guide was their response. All in all, only people fond to the game for nostalgy reasons could say this thing is awesome, no it is not, it is a bad game that could make a lot better with the technology of the time. Lazy designers that's it. Perhaps people in house arrest with no life to live could make this game their own personal challenge by mapping it square by square and figuring out how to beat it repeating from scratch all the times it is neccessary.
Although the game is a solid story and has a decent gameplay/graphics/animation, I would have gave the game no less than four stars if not for its linear nature in a map where you can choose your path. The outdoors/world map is confusing, you see the map but you do not see where you are, you can guess your location by looking at the map and then looking at the things your character can see around. Navigating the world map is frustrating as it is not gridded but you must choose certain path and then you are dragged to some location in the outdoos scenary. The reason why I am giving one star is because the game gives you an "open-ended" map/game that is not really open-onded since there is a right way to advance in the adventure and many wrong ways to do it. If you choose the wrong way by picking a location in a different order you are toasted and you will get stuck to the end of the road without some of the items you need to complete your quest and with no chance to return and get the missing items. That happened to me, I got almost to the end of the quest (therefore the end of the game) but missed one location in which there was one of the items I needed to complete the quest (due to confusing world map movement) and right now I am stuck and I cannot figure out a way to return since one of the dungeons I left behind took me to the exit via a one-way teleporter. I am stuck, I am toasted and I HAVE TO REPEAT ALL THE GAME AGAIN. The game is very complex (has lots of puzzles) and really enjoyable for people with a lot of time trying to figure out things (specially by reading journals) but that is not my case, I have more than 90 unplayed games in my GOG account and time is scarcer as I get older so this game would be a nice fit for teenagers with a life ahead so they can stay by hours only trying to beat this game. UNLESS YOU USE A WALKTHROUGH (there is a good one by James D. Hudnall, first result on Google) YOU WILL HAVE A HARD TIME TRYING TO BEAT THIS GAME.
