If you just happen to notice that it's gone on giveaway, for free... ...then it still costing you more than it's worth, just in terms of the time it would take you to click the giveaway button. Never even mind the extra time it would take you to download, install, launch, and play for long enough to realise how terrible it is. In fact, by the time you've even noticed it being here, you've already spent too much. My advice would be to just move on as if you hadn't noticed it. I sort of feel like the developers owe me some recompense for the time I wasted only to be subjected to such a rubbish game. That's where the mixed feelings come in. I was a bit torn about whether I should write this review at all, since it may cause people to waste even further time/thought on this game... ...as much as I loathe the idea of wasting my own time writing this, or potentially someone else's time reading it, I also consider it a sort of public service to warn others about how bad this one is. If I can spare just one person the wasted time and disappointment, then I feel like perhaps I've contributed something positive to the world, which is a tiny step toward helping to help counter-balance the sheer awfulness of this game being wantonly set loose upon an unfortunate public. Just. Don't. Friends don't let friends, and all that.
I bought the GOG version for nostalgia value when it went on sale for $1.97. It installed and ran, but was pretty much unplayable. The problem was with the transition scenes between locations. The game is packaged with DOSBox , and for whatever reason, the transitions played at a crawl with the preconfigured settings. I'd be sitting there watching each frame load line-by-line. For some transitions, it was to the point where you might as well go take a nap, and you'll hopefully be in the next area by the time you get up. Tried following several different recommended modifications to the DOSBox config files with no improvement. Was about to give up on it altogether when I decided to give it a shot under ScummVM. It took some preparation to get it into a state where ScummVM knew what to do with it, but it now works about as flawlessly as you could expect for a DOS game from the 90s. To get it to that point, I followed the instructions in the included link: https://www.gog.com/forum/zork_series/return_to_zork_in_scummvm As for the game itself, well... Like I mentioned, it's a DOS game from the 90s. Nostalgia value is really about the only thing that makes it worthwhile, for me. IMHO, that's worth the 3-star rating even after the hassle of getting it to play. YMMV.
I see a lot of complaints about missing expansions for DS1&2, and the Ultima mods (U5Lazarus & U6P) being uplayable... ...but I got it all to work by following the instructions for the "Killah" fixes posted in some of the other reviews. Yes, ALL of it. Legends of Aranna, Broken Worlds, Multiplayer, U5Lazarus, and U6P. ...and I got it all working on a linux notebook, so I'd guess that getting it to work under native windows would be much easier, You've just got to read all the instructions and follow them. Would've given 5 stars, but docked one because, well, 2 things. [1]: The collection SHOULD'VE come with the expansions/multiplayer in the first place, I shouldn't've had to manually fudge about getting them to work, and [2]: It still does crash every once in awhile (DS1, at least). Save often and it's not a huge problem, but it can be annoying.
