The five main player characters sometimes drift back and forth due to plot needs, so you control everyone in one chapter or just James in another.
The previous Krondor was a massive nonlinear game with a plot that progressed loosely through the game. Within each chapter, though, you were basically free to do as you wished. In contrast, Return to Krondor, because of its more intense focus on storytelling, is now similar to a Final Fantasy game in that you direct the characters through a mostly-linear story with combat popping up to spice up the gameplay.
Those without 3D-acceleration won't suffer a huge loss of quality in software rendering, as 3D acceleration affects mostly lighting and speed.
I played through the first four chapters of the game, which takes place in the city of Krondor. The interface is like an adventure game, where you click on a spot to walk to it (or you can use the arrow keys). When you open doors and examine things, the cursor becomes a hand symbol. When you talk to people, the cursor forms a mouth icon. The eye icon is used to examine your own characters, including their stats, spell lists, or inventory.
Like in other third-person adventure games, the camera sometimes switches viewpoints as you move about the screen.
Whereas the original game used a first-person-perspective engine, Return's game engine is third-person and presents 3D-generated characters on top of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. The characters look pretty sophisticated; even their lips move correctly when you talk with them. Of course, this means the game uses 3D acceleration, via Direct3D. I noticed that in the software engine, the characters still look quite good, but the lighting effects are lost. So it seems that even the pre-rendered backgrounds use the accelerator to model their lighting.
The dialogue will be adventure-game fare, but at certain times during the dialogue, you can make choices that affect your quest. For example, I had the chance to either expose or join a spy ring. Each choice has its immediate consequences; exposing brings about combat, while joining may result in the death of a child. Sometimes, you can either pay bar dwellers a bribe fee, or you can break their faces to get them to reveal information. Character dialogue is pretty strong overall, and thanks to the technology behind the character models, the characters move in time to their speech, creating a more immersive experience.
