I originally owned the actual cartridge of this game when I was a kid-my brother got it for me for Christmas because we both played Dungeons and Dragons and loved RPGs. However, it really wasn't very good and I put it away when I got other, more interesting games.
Now, though, I find myself going back to it. With patience that I lacked as a kid, I am finding this game wasn't quite as bad as I remember. Not much better, but not terrible. Mostly. Kind of.
One of my biggest pet peeves with this game is that it's really difficult to tell what weapon or armor is better than the other. I had to resort to pulling the information off of the internet; the slow, painful process of equipping it and then going to the status screen to see what it was doing is annoying and sometimes confusing. Not to mention that there's no way to find out if a particular piece of armor slows you down until you actually wear it into battle. It wouldn't have been that hard to put that information in the game itself, seriously.
Like most D&D games, you can make your own party, selecting your race (from a whole five choices) and your class (from the basic four). You can choose to roll your own characters or select from half-decent pre-made characters. Just as a tip, you can pick up a cleric and a mage fairly quickly in the game (bringing your original party of four to six), so your best best to start is a party of two warriors, a cleric and a thief to start. You'll use those two clerics, believe me.
Graphics: 2
The graphics are terrible. Really terrible. You have basic boring dungeon walls in various shades of green and grey, blobby bad guys that all kind of look the same, and terrible character animations that all look remarkably alike. You get your choice of like ten or so portraits for your characters, all of them fairly boring and similar, and ten or so boring sprites. The dungeons look so much alike that it's very easy to get lost.
This game is a 3D...ish...first-person adventure game when you're exploring the dungeon, but it switches to a sort of top-down strategy map thing during battles.The battles are turn-by-turn, with no time limit on making your decisions. And if it's possible, the battle graphics are worse than the dungeon explorer graphics.
Sound: 2
Terrible, electronic, repetitive horribleness. I used to turn the sound all the way down, and here I muted it almost right away. The battle sounds are ridiculous; it sounds like you're sharpening a knife when you hit with your sword and there's a dull thud when you hit with a blunt weapon, and the death noise is startling-it sounds like someone yelling out something unintelligible from just right behind you.
Addictiveness: 5
If you're the type of person who can patiently slog through battle after battle to get your stats up, who enjoys farming for experience and gets a thrill from collecting new pieces of equipment, this is the game for you. If you findt that really annoying, then avoid this game at all cost. I'm someone who gets a quiet thrill from climbing levels and filling out the corners of the map, so I do enjoy this game. That being said, I do have to admit that I can't play it for long stretches of time without dying of boredom. It's the kind of game I play between other games, when I need something slow and that I can look away from.
Story: 2
Typical Dungeon and Dragon story-the city's in trouble, please go beat up the bad guy. There's not a lot of side story or depth there, just pretty much a shallow excuse to get a bunch of idiots...er, i mean 'heros', to go down and tramp through a series of dreary dungeons and kill stuff.
Depth: 5
You're not going to blow through this game; it becomes necessary to slog through the entire dungeon in search of the elusive key that will open the right door. Plus you do need to do some fighting to build levels, or you will get killed. Other than that, there are a fairly good series of dungeon floors for you to move through. Not a very in-depth game at all, but at least you won't finish it in a day.
Difficulty: 5
The only reason I give it a five for difficulty is that the monsters have a tendency to box you into a corner so that the only people who can attack are the two in the front and anyone with a ranged weapon (although ranged weapons tend to miss a good 85% of the time, making this a sucky option anyway). Other than that, it's not that hard, as long as you fight along the way. If you don't end up fighting a bit, you'll find the later dungeon monsters quite difficult indeed.
Overall: 5.5
I am giving it a fairly middle score overall because it's just not a very good game. It passes the time, it gives you a bit of enjoyment, but there are just better RPGs to play that give you the same feeling as this game but with better options. This really hasn't aged well at all, which is too bad as I tend to enjoy vintage games pretty well. Unless you're really dedicated to D&D and/or really really enjoy this type of game, I just don't recommend it. |