Although it sounds more like a medieval topical cream than a role-playing game, Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon is actually a successor to games the likes of Black Isle Studios' Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. The first North American release from German designer Silver Style could even be characterized as an homage (the less charitable will want to substitute "rip-off" here) to these and other games using BioWare's Infinity engine. Both the story and gameplay of Gorasul should be familiar to anyone who battled the Bhaalspawn or sought the identity of the Nameless One. What won't be so familiar to veterans of those games are numerous production problems. Bugs and countless rough edges take a lot of the fun out of what seems to be a winning alternative to waiting for Neverwinter Nights to ship. There is still a lot to admire about Gorasul, though that affection is often sorely tested over the course of completing the lengthy campaign.

Gorasul is clearly inspired by Black Isle Studios' successful RPGs.

Truthfully, "often" doesn't even begin to describe the state of affairs here. You'll be constantly amazed at the lack of refinement. The most obvious and consistent errors concern the text. Because Gorasul was originally released earlier this fall in a German-language edition, North American gamers are playing a version that's been translated into English. On second thought, make that "butchered into psychedelic Esperanto." Nearly every sentence of onscreen dialogue in the game features mistakes of varying degrees, including minor offenses like confusing "their" for "there" and major ones that make conversations and instructions incomprehensible. You'll laugh out loud to lines like "It can be a live or death decision!" and "Attack! The enemies are slamming from the rear!" You'll scratch your head over lines like "Or do you think I am just put on off to the side?" and "Up! On to other things. Ade!" Most of all, you'll be bewildered at how the North American publisher, JoWood Productions, could have released this game in its current state. We might just have a successor to "Somebody set us up the bomb."

Poor language skills are not the only technical gaffes on display. Even though the German version of Gorasul has been on European shelves for three months, the programmers have done nothing to clean up the extensive number of bugs. Unexplainable installation issues forced us to reinstall the game twice, sound clipping and static are common, German audio occasionally pops up to narrate English text, and characters will sometimes be unresponsive to movement commands after you load a save. More ominously, crashes are frequent--and they often occur while you're trying to save your progress. Certain parts of your quest are more apt to drop you to the desktop than others. The opening and later stages of the game were bug-free, but the middle section featured a nightmarish stretch where crashes were constantly taking place.

Sadly, the game is filled with technical problems.

All of the above is a real shame since Gorasul seems to be a great game under all the tarnish. Silver Style obviously took Baldur's Gate as a template and ran with the idea of making an inspired imitation. Everything you remember from the Infinity engine games is present here, aside from the multiplayer option. The character classes, isometric perspective, combat system, interface, and magical weapons and items have been adapted, most with only minor changes. Classes, for example, feature the traditional warriors and priests, but magic users are called magicians, and rangers are known as scouts. The other two choices are original, though the banisher seems to be sort of a specialized priest, and the judge of the swords is something like a paladin. Characters are rated in the five usual categories of strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, and charisma. Each can be altered during the creation process and after level advancement by drawing from a pool of points that can be distributed however you see fit. There are also attack and defense ratings, which can be bumped up with points as well during the progress of the game. Magic is drawn from mana, so forget about that cumbersome "sleep on it" restriction from Dungeons & Dragons.

From there, the design team went off on a tangent. Instead of relying on the traditional swords and sorcery fare to write the story, Silver Style hit on the adventure elements presented in Planescape: Torment. You portray Roszondas, who's just awakened from a decade of death with no memory of his past other than hazy recollections about fighting demons and the undead. However, in short order, you recall a lot about who you are, including your mission to defeat the evil forces invading the land of Gorasul and the special powers granted by your dragon stepfather, Crakan. These powers serve as an addition to the basic character stats. You're rated in dragon breath, dragon fear, dragon strength, and dragon eyes, and each can be adjusted with points awarded every time you advance a level. These attributes are of questionable value during the game, as they typically come into use only when Roszondas is in immediate peril. Whenever death approaches, he'll automatically use flame breath, a fear effect, or immense strength to fend off enemies. Dragon eyes is a noncombat specialty that progressively removes more of the fog of war from the map as you develop it as a skill.