Facing labyrinths and lots of obstacles is strangely fun in Rise of the Triad.
Naturally it isn't fair to compare DOOM (1993, id Software) with ROTT, due to the fact that DOOM is simply a better game, even being two years older. But Apogee's title undeniably has a few key features that make it a more technologically advanced game, and we clearly aren't talking about the graphics. ROTT doesn't look any better than DOOM, Heretic or Terminator: Future Shock, but considering what the game does have to improve the gameplay, it's easy to forgive Apogee Software and overlook the dated visuals.
First of all, you can select one of the five special agents from the H.U.N.T. group. These fellas were sent to a deadly mission in an island, to investigate a sinister cult activity taking place inside a monastery. Your boat got destroyed by the enemy troops, and now your only way out is to fight your way through the monastery and stop the macabre cult that haunts the island. As you can see, compared to most contemporary titles, ROTT presents a decent setting that mixes both modern and gothic stuff. I didn't really notice a difference between the five available characters, except to the voice and portrait, of course. But I heard somewhere around that some characters are faster or tougher than others, but I couldn't confirm this, to be honest. No matter what was your choice, you're about to venture in one of the most challenging and lengthy games ever released.
The player can choose between a variety of difficulty levels, however I recommend the highest one for a true survival experience. At the first level you'll feel ROTT quite brutal already, and it only gets tougher after each beaten map. The game features different types of enemies, each one with a particular behavior. For instance, one enemy can fire against you powerful rockets in less than a second, while others can feign death to cheat you when the opportunity comes. Still, I didn't mention yet the mystic monks, machine gunners, auto-turrets and even those bad fellas that ensnare your avatar, letting him/her completely vulnerable.
By now, you may be thinking that there is nothing special about ROTT. In truth, Apogee tried a dangerous mix of First-Person Shooter with Action Arcade, and fortunately the formula worked quite well. While you venture deeper in the labyrinths, your character will come across a variety of power-ups that can either help or trouble you. For instance, picking up the "divine hand" or the "dog's form" will turn your avatar into an invincible and deadly killing machine for a short period of time. The divine hand will grant you a powerful magic attack that disintegrates every enemy on the screen, while the form of dog will shape shift your character into a dangerous animal (which also helps to enter in a few inaccessible areas). But there're negative bonuses as well: the "mushroom effect" makes your hero dizzy, while the elastic form will make your character bounce on walls like a basket ball while you try to move around. And, although I didn't find it very useful throughout the game, you can also pick up a "flying mode" power-up to move around quickly.
Even if there is a decent amount of different weapons, your personal arsenal is limited to only four weapons. The first one is an unlimited and weak pistol, which you'll use only in the very first minutes of gameplay. After moving around a bit, you'll easily find a secondary pistol to use both guns in akimbo mode. Again, after a short period of time, you'll either find the limitless machine gun by killing a specific enemy or by searching the weapon at some particular areas (in secret passages, for example). Naturally, looking for the machine gun is a problem only in the first levels, and, depending on your luck, you may kill your first machine gunner trooper and get the weapon early on. The machine gun will be used in the entire game, although certain situations require the correct use of the explosive stuff. The forth weapon slot allows you to carry one of the various types of powerful weapons present in the game. Most of them are variants of missile-launchers, which range from the most simple heat seeker to the destructive napalm explosives that can burn all the enemies at once.
The common rocket-launcher has more ammo than most explosive weapons, but it works better against single opponents and doesn't follow the targets, so your aim will determine its effectiveness. On the other hand, a similar missile-launcher has less ammo, but its heat seeker peculiarity makes the weapon quite effective in open areas. Between many others, I would like to emphasize the napalm rocket-launcher, which fires a special missile that, after loosing its power and reaching the ground, will release a deadly fire wall that will incinerate even the most powerful enemies in seconds. Of course, I would not forget to talk about the magical stuff, which can be found later on in the game. Competing the forth slot, your character may come across a powerful wand that casts an electric ball, which pass through every object and enemy until it hits a wall; yes, this is one destructive weapon. And you'll also find a few magical baseball bats, that has unlimited use at melee range, but can also release powerful explosive balls around the area. Personally I found this weapon a bit useless, because the ranged fire may hurt your character more than your enemies, especially in closed areas. The melee attack isn't effective either, so I guess there is little use for the baseball bat in the game.
ROTT wouldn't be a genuine mix of FPS and Arcade if there weren't deadly traps around. For instance, your character can get stuck in hole, which is difficult to spot depending on the texture of the floor. You may also have some trouble to avoid getting hit by the spinning razors present in most levels, and some of them aren't fixed to the ground and can move around in a fixed path; this can be a good weapon if you can lead your enemies where these traps are moving. Flaming walls are also quite dangerous if you aren't careful to move around; normally, when a room has this kind of wall, it's a good idea to turn off the ''auto run'' option and try to avoid getting close to it. Walls can also traverse short distances and smash every thing on their path, including you and your enemies. As you can see, ROTT features a number of deadly traps that would be convenient in an Action Arcade game, but Apogee managed to introduce them quite well in a FPS title.
Although the character's ability to jump was seen before in Shadow Caster, ROTT also features this option at some certain circumstances. Your avatar can't freely jump around, but if you find a springboard somewhere in the map, you can literally reach the highest heights and get access to important places or acquire items that wouldn't be possible to pick up on foot. It's also possible to jump while in the dog's form, although it isn't quite useful as it may sounds. Keep in mind that your opponents can also use the springboards and pass through inaccessible areas to reach your character, so it's important to pay attention if your trapped enemies are really trapped.
Sometimes the slaughtering sessions will be stopped when it's necessary to search for a specific key or switch to open doors, move secret walls or turn off firing cannons. While not every key or lever will bring you to a relevant place in the map, it's very entertaining to find secret passages and picking up all the items around. It's especially rewarding to look for the secrets and find a hidden exit that leads you to an extra map, often more difficult than the regular levels. Since ROTT features more than 30 levels divided in four chapters, you can bet that you'll spend a lot of time to beat the entire game. Perhaps the only total waste of time in ROTT is to find the ankhs and increase your number of lives. From my point of view this is a useless thing because you have a save-and-load feature like any other regular FPS title. Maybe Apogee decided to put the score and lives system to make ROTT looks more like an Arcade game, but it doesn't really make any difference.
After a certain succession of maps, you'll face a boss residing in an arena-like level. While some of the bosses are quite easy, you'll come across really difficult and tricky battles along the way. For instance, the third chapter ends with a unfair fight against a tough mechanical thing, which was my hardest battle in the entire game. The final chapter ends with two boss encounters, which I'll not spoiler them here, but say that they're quite tricky and will probably make you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to proceed.
Since the multiplayer option was available in older games such as DOOM, Apogee couldn't forget to add this feature in ROTT as well. Although the cooperative mode isn't present here, the competitive modes are rewarding and fun. There are levels specific for the multiplayer experience, and you can connect to more eleven players and enjoy a real gibbing session. I can't say if the connectivity is good or bad, because today every broadband connection is able to run MS-DOS games such as ROTT without any problems. Nevertheless I'm happy to say that I didn't experience latency issues with DOSBox, so I think Apogee did a good job with the multiplayer in this game.
By now, you may be surprised that I didn't talk about the music and sound effects in ROTT; perhaps it's because there isn't much to say about them. The music is roughly a short midi file that constantly loops while you're playing, although it doesn't hurt your ears if you keep the volume low enough. The sound effects aren't impressive either by today's standards, but the repetitive machine gun sound suits nicely and the gibbing effects are just as good. There is nothing to complain, considering this is a pretty old title.
To go old-school today, with so many great games around, the player obviously needs a good reason. ROTT is a game that makes old-schooling definitely worth, and even though it may consume weeks of your life, Apogee successfully made this game unquestionably fun to spend the time in a nice way.