Don't get me wrong for it's time this was a pretty advanced RPG. I've been playing RPG's for over 26 years, since the early days of the Amiga. This is probably in the top 20 for most annoying of all. I'd love to drone on and on about all the myriad of issues I found in this game, but I'm not going to. Hmmm.. Ok, I'll mention a couple of things which made me want to scream and punch something: 1) Magic often "fizzles" out leaving you with your pants down, costing you a spell + mana when you *really* needed a good cast. Perhaps costing you the battle and the life of your party. 2) Magic can "backfire" which makes something like fireball wipe your own party out in an instant, yay!..what a fun mechanic! 3) There's no way to resurrect dead characters at the start of a game. There's a merchant you meet early-ish on, but his "resurrection" powder is 6x more expensive than anything you can ever afford, even if you sold *all* your equipment. 4) There's no way to a town or healer at the start of the game, you have to make your way through an insanely difficult dungeon, no way around. 5) Did I mention of a character dies your screwed basically? 6) Boring, linear hallway after hallway, with no real interesting loot. 7) If you want a game where you basically farm potions lying around the floor this is your game... There are more issues, including the slowness of combat, enemies are pretty much always in large groups and take ages to complete their moves. I can't be bothered to list any more issues, I'd stay clear of this one.. Shame as I really do respect Sirteck, loved the Jagged Alliance games..
One of the most engaging stealth games I ever played. Really very atmospheric and engrossing! The sounds, sneaking, combat, story, characters, everything is on par.. Sure it's a little dated by today's standards, but at the time, absolutely ground breaking. It can be a difficult game, but it's never unfair, there's always multiple avenues to accomplish your goals.
Firstly, I'm a big fan of the Baldurs Gate series. This game will punish you after ten minutes of playing, impossible difficulty, and absolutely no guidance what so ever. With no starting equipment at all, monsters are able to wipe out a character in about 3 hits.. The game has it's own unique lore, which can be interesting at times, but does not even attempt to allow the player to understand what's going on. Within moment I encountered a game breaking bug where reforming the party led to two members entirely vanishing, halving the strength of an already weak starting party. Then I couldn't leave any areas as the game, clearly bugged, required me to have all party members present before leaving for the next area. (Both members had been present, I suspect the game had issues with party management) Not to mention the game has other issues to hand, spells, magic, incantations, are pretty much not-reachable at the start of the game, leaving you defenseless.. Despite all this, after making it to the first village, I was disappointed to find a pretty much lifeless, soulless world with NPC's which basically just stand there and wait for you to click on them. Bodies disappear after leaving area an area, there's so many things I dislike about this game, I could go on and on.. Oh, also if you enter an area to "instantly" ruin into an enemy, even if it's completely overpowering, which everything at the start is... Then you can't leave that area till it's dead. Basically you can't switch between areas during combat, which is a big problem in my opinion. Very very disappointed with this title, I wanted it to be so much more.. Not happy!
