This game is said by many to be one of the best fantasy RPG's ever made. Raymond E. Feist the well known creator of the Riftwar saga worked closely with the production team ensuring a faithful reproduction of the world of Midkemia where this game takes place. I personally, hadn't read any of Feist's books before I played this game but this did not detract from my total enjoyment and immersion into the fantasy world of Midkemia and my total appreciation of this game.
You control three characters (together or alone at certain parts of the game) in their adventures around the land of Krondor: Seigneur Locklear, a citizen of Midkemia, his prisoner Gorath, a Moredhel elf and a young magician named Owyn Beleforte. Gameplay is of the standard RPG-style that will be familiar to fans of the genre, with a turn based system for combat and movement and multiple-choice options for conversational dialogue. The outstanding part of the game is the detail that has been implemented in the combat and stats system without making the system too unfriendly or cumbersome. All weapons and armor have damage stats which you will have to watch in order to prevent them from breaking but you have to avoid repairing too often for each time you do the max sturdiness of your item becomes slightly less. You will also have to carefully monitor your food reserves so that you don’t starve and take care that you don’t accidentally eat spoiled food lest you get poisoned. Combat takes place on a combat grid where you can take control of character movement and position which can often be crucially important to minimize the risk of harming characters on your own team e.g. with missile weapons.
Unlike many Dungeon hacks of this genre, a significant amount of adventuring in the game takes place outdoors and above ground, as your adventure takes you around different parts of the land of Krondor. This inevitably means it will be difficult for you to explore everything in the game and find all the cool bits of treasure. But, on the other hand, this isn't required or advisable as you can complete most of the important goals in the game by safely sticking to the main roads and paths without searching every shrub and digging up every grave on the wayside.
The graphics through most of the game is standard artist-rendered 2-D backgrounds with photo-manipulated foreground graphics overlaid on top. Basically most of the character graphics are compiled from images and video of actual real life actors in costume which at first can seem a little cheesy. But when you get increasing exposure to the impeccable consistency of the whole environment and the look and the culture of the world the quirky graphical style quickly grows on you. NPC's are likeable, believable and look as if they belong in the game world and the colours, sound and decorative graphics all contribute to one cohesive enjoyable pattern. As a result it doesn't take long before you come to regard Krondor as a believable land with great character.
I highly recommend this game for all fans of RPG's such as the Wizardry series or the Ishar trilogy. And to anyone who frequently plays hack and slash dungeon crawls, get this to see how a proper RPG setting ought to be constructed.
Written by:
~shedoggy
