Impressions

[jan0sch]

#11076

First thanks for nudging me into finally picking up this game. 🙂

I remember it being one of the first DOS games I saw (after coming over from the C64). A friend played it and looked cool but I never got around to give it a shot. Shortly I was trying it on his machine but then decades went past.

And now here I am. =)

The first thing that hit me was that it triggered a memory of the game interface feeling a bit clunky. I still think it is but nonetheless I kept playing and have to say: Wow, this really is great stuff!

Text/Dialog is plenty and good, all this little animations add to the feeling and even the crude 3D helps with imagination. Although I quickly switched to travel via map view often because it feels faster/smoother.

It feels like playing/writing a book. I can imagine myself playing this quite a couple of times. Ok, now I need to find someone who pays me for that… 😉

[Pix]

#11077

I’ve had a couple of lengthy sessions on this. I’m making progress in one sense, but I’m literally back where I started in the world again having walked round in a giant circle exploring everything I could find. The scale of this is epic, the text is quite detailed and well written though so it doesn’t feel overly sparse like so many larger games. Seeing this much game on a few floppies is always impressive.

It’s an odd game engine really, it feels like a halfway house between blobbers and realtime 3d with the stepping around. I didn’t even realize there were dungeons going into this so I wasn’t expecting the complete scenery change when I stumbled across one. For 93, it doesn’t look bad I don’t think. It’s basic but there is enough there to spark the imagination for sure.

I do prefer games where there isn’t random combat which does appear to be the case here with everything preplaced and the bodies of fallen enemies staying in place. It makes exploring so much more rewarding when you aren’t constantly punished by random encounters.

The combat hasn’t been much more than clicking on the enemies if I’m honest. That isn’t my favourite aspect but at least it’s relatively quick. I would like a give in button so I could reload without having to finish the combat if it’s gone badly.

The manual talks about thinking of each chapter as a separate RPG with all the enemies being moved around each time, etc… I’m not sure how to play this now. Is it expecting me to explore the whole world in every chapter? I might need a year to play through this if so.

I’m definitely enjoying it so far. This seems like a game I should have played many years ago and is shaping up to be one of my favourite discoveries from DGC.

[vga256]

#11079

One of the most rewarding things about Krondor is finding out just how much you’ve missed in a chapter, years later. I’ve been playing the game yearly since the mid-90s, and I’m *still* finding new quests and conversations that I somehow missed.

For the most part, and there are many exceptions, you can run around the world map in an early chapter and characters will have different things to say in later chapters if you go back to that same place. It rewards thoroughness.

The clunky interface is very likely a product of Dynamix literally gluing damon slye’s flight simulator engine code to a point and click interface 🙂

[jan0sch]

#11089

Great to hear! 🙂

For the time I played I’ve made one kind of speed run trying to reach Krondor and one more or less wandering around play. I’m pretty sure I won’t complete it this month but I look forward to play it in a slow fashion.