Simply Awesome
I immediately grew giddy with anticipation of playing this forgotten relic and my cleaning plans flew straight out the window. Even the box excited me. It has one of those chrome/flip flop box art schemes that was extremely rare at the time. I surprisingly found it easy to install. Thanks to the DOS backwards compatibility of Windows XP. Gates does do something right occasionally.
As with most RPG’s the first thing you have to do is create your character. At the time this came out, this was the most groundbreaking character creation scheme ever. You get to choose through a plethora of models and choose one of eighteen professions. You could customize everything from the socks to the gauntlets. Forget ten years ago, this creation scheme is still great today. Hardly do I play an RPG where you have as many professions and wardrobe options.
Then it is onto the game of course. The map in the game has about the same surface size as two Great Britain’s. I would compare it in size to the original Asheron’s Call. It’s not small by any means, even by today’s standards. Now this game has a very linear adventure story path. However, what made this game great is this was the very first open-ended game. If you don’t know what I mean by “open-ended”, please see the Grand Theft Auto series. You can choose not to follow the story at all, and just run around doing your own thing. There are some amazing dungeons in this game. There is amazing array of baddies in your rouges gallery as well. Some of the physics of the bat-monster thingies is quite impressive. This title has all of the RPG elements you’d come to expect, only this title did them first. It has plenty of leveling up and attribute management options to keep even the most anal retentive occupied.
This game was defiantly a game of firsts. I think this game is more important historically then most people realize. It was the first game to have in-game time the rotated from day to night flawlessly. This would later be perfected in the Zelda series. It’s character creation scheme is still being duplicated by about every RPG on the market. It’s leveling and attributes rivals those currently found in the Everquest and Ultima series. Also to top it off, the story was actually good! It wasn’t your typical save a princess kind of thing. Bethesda really put a lot of time and effort into the story and made it extremely cinematic.
I don’t really have anything bad to say about this title. I feel it is one of the top ten greatest titles of all time. If there was anything bad it was that it was ahead of it’s time and really pushed hardware limits. There have been a number of patches released over the years to take care of any crashing issues. Of course this in no longer an issue today. I know that no current gamer is going to go out and search from a game that is ten years old. But you really should. This title has lost almost nothing as a result of aging. It may not get the shock and awe expressions it once did, but it is still a joy to play. If it was a 5 canner in 1996, it hasn’t fallen further then half a can today.