This is what you always wanted in a visual novel. You are playing a movie. It is a short self contained story where you make the decisions and it can be finished in a 5 hour play session. Everyone who likes a suspense movie should play this game. Similar titles: Stanley Parabel, The Witness (without the puzzels), Myst.
While the graphics are dated it has some unique features that you didn't find in Diablo 2. Each play through as a randomly selected grouping of quest so you can play through with multiple characters and get different quests each time. Hellfire adds a few cosmic horror levels as well, While the creator of Diablo hated the divergence from the standard gothic horror, the inclusion of new monster types adds a new flavor to the game. 4 types of heros to play: Archer, Mage, Monk, & Warrior. Make sure you complete the Cow Level.
This game would have been great for the NES generation when games were expensive and you had to make one game last a long time. However in the modern era when Humble Bundle can get you 5 OK games for $5 it doesn't hold up. This is a well designed indie game that allows the player to explore the map and managage resources to build a town. But it quickly becomes apparent there is very little beyond that. I would recomend this game for a 6-14 year old that has a lot of time and enjoys the grinding of an SNES hard game. But, for older players it will lose the wonder after 2-4 hours when you still have 2/3rd the map and realize that it will be exactly the same as the last 1/3rd.
If you ever needed a SciFi Civilization game, this is it. It holds all of the classic features of a 4x game plus tacticle combat. Finally we get a 4x game where combat isn't just the roll of the dice. Take up arms as commander of your fleet and win battles with inferrior arms through genius battle plans. Design your own ships that focus on the tech you researched for glactic conquest. On par with Civ 3, Masters of Magic, or Colonization.
I'm going to skip all the text about how great these games are, and instead talk about how well GOG converted it to the modern OS. I've had three versions of this from A) the original discs for the Amiga/ NES cartridge, B) The CD-Roms from the last gold box release, C) this new release from GoG. Some of the Key points to this release. -- They Fixed the super Speed issue. Combat no longer runs at 10X speed like it did in version B. -- They included the super rare clue books which if you get stuck will get you out of a bind (for best results use sparingly.) -- They included the journals which saves the trouble of having to find them online. (key point to the plot) -- The games are set up for two separate plot lines. So you can move your characters from one game to the next. The first is a set of 4 games and the other a well written pair, This is more than just a simple hack & slash, you need to understand the AD&D 2.0 rules & follow the plot to complete the game. It is easily worth $35 as each game will take 20-40 hours and is easily worth $5 a piece. So getting this for $10 is a steal! Buy this if you like Nintendo Hard or True RPG.
The game: is addictive, long, funny & looks great. HOWEVER, it is tedious. The game requires that you work up skills, cultivate relationships and manage resources which are all good, but like a large Civilization game you spend the last third of the game just trying to get to the end turn button as only 1 or 2 actions actually matter during the turn. And just like Civilization, you will be up and hour later than you want with the "one more turn" attitude. In addition the game has several bugs. You can on occasion open too many window in which you can't click an OK button because it is covered by another window & you can't close the window because the game is focused only on the OK button. Any time you have to crash the game to move on ward is a tragic sin. Other more common bugs: Status bars which show a high % when your actual # is low. Stats taking a huge dive for no apparent reason. On game loading your stats will be all over the place. It takes a turn to reorder. Bad game design elements: Away missions, they only take your health stat into consideration when determining success. You have 2 dozen other skills and none of them matter. Skills in general, in the end it only 5 of the skills matter and even fewer if you just romance your way up the ladder. Space Book annoyances, the longer you play the more annoying it gets. People send you messages, if you don't respond they get mad and it hurts your reputation with them (which is fair). But sometimes it also damages your happiness with no rhyme or reason to be understood. It doesn't matter if you end your friendship with them, they will hurt you again, and again with the same message. It needs to be refined. I'm a good strategist, but i was able to beat the game on the first try with more than 50 turns left. THE MOST DAMMING EVIDENCE of this games flaws, it has been over a year and no one has bothered to make a wiki or walk through for the game. No one cares enough.
