I have an original cd copy but it didn't seem to install properly - this version worked perfectly on wine 6.0.3 inside PlayOnLinux 4.3.4. LAN multiplayer requires directplay to be installed via winetricks. People often compare this to Diablo - iirc it came out a couple of years later. It's a very false comparison. Although ToD has the same control system, inventory management, and loot - it's about setting up a group of 7 characters: you can use up to 4 at once, of whom you only control 1. Where Diablo was one long DPS-check, ToD is about choosing effective combinations of characters, builds, equipment, elemental damage types, formation, and the tactics and orders individually given to the 3 AI team members. Characters rotate out of the team when they are knocked out, so the tactics have to change on the fly. It's a flawed game: a true playthrough has a finite amount of loot and monsters that are (on average) only just sufficient to beat the last boss. But they softened this by (i) letting you farm in the multiplayer mode, and (ii) enemies don't heal (or don't heal much) between multiple attempts (iii) hardly any penalty for dying. So a bit like Path of Exile if you get stuck you can overcome any obstacle with repeated suicide runs. The pleasure of the game is when the team encounters a difficult situation (e.g. an early one is simply some skeleton archers on a roof) and you beat it by switching to the right formation and squad composition (e.g. Mantis formation with Leader switching to bow + Mage + Ninja + Archer). Another flaw is the maps and enemy placement aren't random - or at least are less random than Diablo. It's still worth a play. And it deserves a remake. I can imagine it as a squad-based Souls-like.
GOG says this is a single-player game, but hidden amongst the menu options is an "Arena" where 2 players can choose a set gold value and buy whatever armies. I'm so old that I can't remember if I ever finished the single-player campaign, but it's challenging and the battles can be extremely tight. There is a lot of emphasis on levelling up some cheap units from mission to mission. IIRC it was on the side of being too difficult but it's certainly still worth a few dollars. Modern games often forget that what makes a game fun is its core mechanics, and Fantasy General is the quintessential hex-based fantasy.
This game has a win32 installer but runs in dosbox, which creates numerous issues for Wine. To get a 2-player game working over LAN, dosbox must be opened from a shortcut so that the correct config settings are loaded. This is probably just putting some flags after the .exe, but in Wine this becomes obscure. What I need from GOG is a dos installer (or just to unzip the game directory) and instructions for the config files. From the in-game UI for multiplayer it seems that the client and host must save each others' IP addresses into config files. It doesn't work out of the box, and it doesn't have any provided instructions - so I don't think it should be listed as Multiplayer.
I loved MDK and have tried unsuccessfully a few times over the years to get it working on newer machines. It's one of these games where it was stretching the 3d capabilities of late 90s home computers that were (probably) receiving their first 3d graphics cards as upgrades. There were several versions of the game made for the different 3d hardware families. My understanding is that nowadays we don't want MDK3dfx or MDK95, but must use the D3D version after running the Glide setup program included. The other versions have bizarre graphical bugs or move at literally 1fps. If we are using things like Heroic or PlayOnLinux, It can be a little tricky on Wine prefixes to run some other programs on them first to install dependencies - but this GOG release has everything needed. So far I have just played the tutorial stages and they are still amusing now.
But it doesn't run easily on WINE, including Steam Proton, Lutris, and PlayOnLinux. The dependencies are well-known and it should work (dotnet40, dsound, directmusic, xna40, and a few others listed on winehq) but it's poorly compiled in Visual Studio (e.g. with the programmer Paul Dryere's own user directory having been hard-coded into filepaths) and in vanilla Windows as well the sound and graphics hardware support is pernicketty and out of proportion to the actual artistic quality of the game. It's an old style of game, updated for the audiences of 2013 (or whenever it was), but a lot of the enjoyment is watching each ship's weapon's special effects. Not to disparage it, it's well-balanced with loads of ship types, but the game engine ought to boil down to hitboxes flying around and colliding in a 2D space, it ought to run on anything - and it would except for the special effects. Multiplayer was fun if it's still live - the roles of each ship have to co-operate a bit but it's concealed PvE, the teams are competing to do damage to each other's turrets and bases more than each other. It's probably still one of the best games of its type if you absolutely must have a fast, attractive side-scrolling (4 directions) shoot-em-up. I just wish they would recompile it more considerately, it's probably a very quick job for them to rebuild it for Unity or more recent versions of directx.
This used to be a nightmare to install - one of the worst ever. You needed patches, and there were different versions of them. The GOG installer worked out of the box with Xubuntu 20.04, PlayOnLinux 4.3.4, Wine 6.0.1 - no 'Installed Components'. Nvidia 970GTX with the proprietary 390 legacy driver. So I would say it deserves the Linux-Compatible tag. As to the game, I found it online in around 2005 and haven't played it as much as others but would second all the people saying it should be professionally tidied-up and reissued. This GOG release could have done with a note to say exactly what version it is - iirc there were official patches that needed to be applied, and these addressed (serious) technical issues and then you would choose a fan-patch for game balance.
I can't get it working on Wine. I've bought several other versions of this over the years and none of them run on Linux - hopefully someone will make an installer. I've given this a neutral 3/5 since it probably works fine on windows and I got it in a sale on the off-chance.
This version of the game avoids all the messing about with the original cds, or ISOs, and patches, and no-cds, and patches of IPX, and patches of patches. I'm using (2 PCs the same) Ubuntu Studio 20.04, PlayOnLinux 4.3.4 with the installer provided through the service. Wine 3.03 emulating Win98. The only additional 'Install Component' I needed was Directplay. Nvidia proprietary driver - legacy driver 390. Plus also playing on the same network a newer Win7 PC that had to be told to run it in Win98 compatibility mode. This version worked out of the box (apart from PlayOnLinux not automatically installing Directplay for multiplayer). It used to take longer to set up in 1997. I don't think we even managed to get the TCP/IP working back then, we used to do it with fricking printer cables. GOG should say "Linux compatible", because it very much is. I reckon it doesn't even need POL - in its Wine there are only about 4 library overrides showing. The publishers really should have taken the opportunity to introduce some more modern netcode than Directplay which I believe has been deprecated for a lot of years. This is amazingly good value for Linux gamers. This GOG repackage levels another bit of the playing field with Windows, because in nearly 25 years none of the AAA titles on any platform has managed to exceed Total Annihilation.
I didn't pay much attention to the Wizardry series at the time and having played this through to the end, I feel people are over-rating it due to nostalgia. Remember: this came out in the same year as Throne of Bhaal. Wizardry 8's writing is excellent, plot so-so. I liked the jokey 70s sci-fi opera feel. The voice-acting is a labour of love and I almost gave the game a 4 rather than a 3 because of it. My party was: Dragon Psionic, Canine Lord, Lizardman Fighter, Cat Ninja, Human Alchemist, Human Priest. This isn't an optimal build but was luckily OK. The character-customisation and stats and the actual RPG engine are pretty good but some of the stats work in such odd ways that I ended up cheating and looking it up in faqs. The puzzles are a bit poorly implemented (it seemed there are 2 different ways of "using" an item" which makes some of the point-and-click type puzzles a nightmare). Nearly every fight is a narrowly-winnable hitpoint-grind of attrition against 8 of the same enemy - the combat is balanced and challenging but not fun or tactical by comparison with other games of the time. The combat and puzzle drawbacks combined mean that if you need to get from one side of the map to the other to try "using the metal sphere on the computer console" it takes half an hour to fight through the mobs, only for it not to work. I ended up using walkthroughs. Lots of people hate level-scaling but this game does it better than any other game I have played that had level-scaling in it. The fights are impossible at the start and easy at the end but for about 40-50 hours in the middle they are consistently challenging. The way the items and loot and the in-game economy all work feels very unpolished - to the extent that you have to build your party round the items that are available. The gameworld is small - and the monsters in some areas are so annoying that you avoid revisting them. It is well worth the $6, but remember to quit if you start to find it boring.
I had this on CD at the time - it's extremely good up till the end, where the battles become a bit of a slog and can only be won by mass-blinding everything on the grid. It has its own, well-realised story world (which was rare then and still is), good combat mechanics and balance, and a good UI. The overall plot is basically Pocahontas (also from 1995) or Avatar. Good map and dungeon design. Good puzzles. Good writing. I can't decide if it will have aged well (I'm about to find out!) but if you like the Wizardry games, Entomorph or Death Gate this will be up your street.
