RtK was a game I had great hopes for when I first played it. I've played and finished it twice through many years ago, the second time hoping to get something out of it that I missed the first time around. Sadly this did not happen. Return to Krondor is the game version of Krondor: Tear of the Gods, which is also not one of Feist's better works. The book reads like someone decided to write a story from a table top RPG and so rerolled their dice until a win came about. The story in the game reads like the game that got made from a book where someone rerolled the dice until a win came about. All of this could have been forgiven if the actual mechanics of the game were any good. RtK was built in the dead time between 2D/2.5D and true 3D, and it suffered. The perspective was from a third person view whch came from a usually fixed camera. This was not always placed in the best location to see anything of interest (including where your enemies are standing!). When you could shift the camera it didn't always lead to an improvement in the view and at times the alternate camera angles lead to not being able to see anything of value at all. Added to this were some combat areas that were so huge you had to play several rounds, wasting a significant amount of time, before you could actually engage the enemy. The combat was clunky and the animations out of sync with the sound. The parts that tried to make the game more than just a linear HacknSlash were either poorly implemented or had too little impact to make it worth worrying about. The one and only aspect of this game that I like was the lockpicking mini game, which combined luck, skill and speed when picking locks that gave a very satisfying feeling when you succeeded in opening the lock. This alone was not enough to save this game though. I was disappointed at the lack of an open world, especially after BaK, which, while still a linear game for the most part did allow for some exploration. The combat was terrible and the graphics were not stunning. There was little about that game that thrilled me at all, and I would not play it through again - in fact I have thrown my discs away, not wanting to even give them to anyone else. My recommendation is to avoid this game at all costs and find a good open world fantasy RPG like Morrowind or Oblivion and play that instead. You'll be so please that you did.
