I will review the game, not the nostalgia. I am a big fan of Cryo games, especially the famous Dune, from which this game stems. Unfortunately Lost Eden does not stand up for the quality of its predecesor, aside from the great music by Stephane Picq who made the Spice Opera album, the soundtrack of Dune.
Lost Eden has some great graphics for its time, with pre-rendered graphics and animations. The artists were quite talented, creating some unique characters. The plot is about humans and dinosaurs working together, which might seem silly for some. But hey, it's a game, and this didn't make me enjoy the story less. There are many similarities in characters and story key points with Dune. You play Adam, a human who is destined to unite man and dinosaurs to face a greater evil. Yes, you need to rally tribes the same Paul Atreides rallies fremen troops in Dune. And with some twists, you get them working for you. Unfortunately the strategy and economy elements from Dune are gone, the progress of your rallied tribes is very linear and involves repetitve traveling and item finding.
The story has alot of potential that could have been used better. The artists created some very interesting "races", tribes of people, which are not used enough, while interacting with dinosaurs is rather underwhelming. Traveling is not very intuitive; each zone has a grid like layout made of pre-rendered 3d locations which has to be explored throroughly, sometimes more than once in order to find items, creatures or points of interests. This part of the game is the most annoying and repetitive. There are a few differences in the way you interact with the new tribes, such as miniquests, but that's all. Gone is the amazing globe/planet view from Dune, replaced with a simple 2D map which does not show you the progress of your zones/tribes. I am only saying this because the game could have been so much more. The story ends somewhat abruptly, but the ending is OK.
Get this game when is discounted.
