A Review: Abandoned Places: A Time For Heroes, DOS 1993
Today I'll be adding several reviews that I have sitting in a folder. As always, I hope that you enjoy my content and possibly find it interesting enough to read. Thank You.
The first is a review for the old game Abandoned Places: A Time For Heroes for the old DOS systems.
A Dungeon Master clone from a small Hungarian development house and a title that I downloaded as part of a .zip pack featuring a collection of RPG's. It is one of the more obscure games that I have played, but it comes from a time when these types of games were very popular. As a Dungeon Master clone, this game plays in much the same manner. The player chooses four warriors from a broad selection to revive and then leads them on a quest to stop a powerful magician from destroying the world by crawling through various dungeons and locations to unearth and reunite long-hidden treasures.
This game had a troubled development and was, at one point, close to never being released. The main problem was that the game Dungeon Master had spawned a series of clones, and this game was regarded as one of them. Publishers of the time thought that the market was oversaturated, and many turned the developers away. The game was fully tested and ready to go months before they finally managed to find a publisher in International Computer Entertainment. Things were so bad that the development team was hardly compensated, and they were even banned from the game's Hungarian launch event.
Personally, I found that this game had so much potential, but that it was all but lost at the end of the game. I really enjoyed my playthrough, despite the bugs, errors, and other balancing issues. However, I also feel that ArtGame squandered a lot of potential. The enemies were either dull-witted and easily defeated or were unyielding and harsh. I felt that this led the player to get overly confident before eventually being one-shotted by something unexpected. As can be understood, this made playing very frustrating at times and spoiled the game's feel and flow. It was not helped that, without a walkthrough, there were no obvious directions or hints as to what the player had to do. Dungeon layouts were horrid mazes that made little to no sense, in my opinion. They were very easy to get lost inside of, especially with the tiled, repetitive design of the graphics. If you were unfortunate enough to make a wrong turn and use a key or lever in the wrong place, the game softlocked, and the player was forced to reload a save. If you hadn't saved recently, that was it; tough luck. You could potentially lose hours of play due to having to restart from an old save. Due to this, I quickly learned that I would need to keep many different save files for this game at a variety of different points to avoid this issue. This again added to the frustration of this game and made it more of a chore to get through the dungeons than an enjoyable experience. Making the practice of saving scumming a must in any game hurts its value, in my opinion. I found the end boss battle with Bronakh to be very anticlimactic; he was almost insultingly easy to beat at that point. Then the ending made it even worse, with the game making it seem that the players efforts were all worthless either way. It is such a shame, as I could honestly see that this game could have been a 'Dungeon Master Killer' with some tweaks and extra thought. That's not to say that I hated my playthrough at all; it is just that I feel that this game was far too frustrating and could have been so much more.
Visually, while not something to write home about, this wasn't a bad-looking game. The settings and world were richly detailed, vibrant, and filled out. The monsters and enemies looked pretty good and were fairly individual from one to the other. I liked how the player characters and monsters moved during the battles, and I also liked the detailing for the various dungeons. I thought that the color palette was perhaps a little too heavy on the eyes if playing for extended periods of time, but it wasn't terrible. It just required that you stop playing every now and then to let your eyes recover, which helped anyway with keeping my temper under control, so win-win. I really liked the little animations given to the map as the player moved and passed time. I thought that those were nice little touches. The ships and other player transportation was pretty good, and I liked that there was some variation and individuality to the various cities, villages, and towns.
I can honestly see what ArtGame was trying to do, and I feel that this game had a lot of potential; it's just that I do not believe that it ever met that potential and was doomed to be just 'another clone'. My score reflects this, as I honestly felt that it could have been an 8/10 if things had worked a little differently.
5/10 – Okay!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
The first is a review for the old game Abandoned Places: A Time For Heroes for the old DOS systems.
A Dungeon Master clone from a small Hungarian development house and a title that I downloaded as part of a .zip pack featuring a collection of RPG's. It is one of the more obscure games that I have played, but it comes from a time when these types of games were very popular. As a Dungeon Master clone, this game plays in much the same manner. The player chooses four warriors from a broad selection to revive and then leads them on a quest to stop a powerful magician from destroying the world by crawling through various dungeons and locations to unearth and reunite long-hidden treasures.
This game had a troubled development and was, at one point, close to never being released. The main problem was that the game Dungeon Master had spawned a series of clones, and this game was regarded as one of them. Publishers of the time thought that the market was oversaturated, and many turned the developers away. The game was fully tested and ready to go months before they finally managed to find a publisher in International Computer Entertainment. Things were so bad that the development team was hardly compensated, and they were even banned from the game's Hungarian launch event.
Personally, I found that this game had so much potential, but that it was all but lost at the end of the game. I really enjoyed my playthrough, despite the bugs, errors, and other balancing issues. However, I also feel that ArtGame squandered a lot of potential. The enemies were either dull-witted and easily defeated or were unyielding and harsh. I felt that this led the player to get overly confident before eventually being one-shotted by something unexpected. As can be understood, this made playing very frustrating at times and spoiled the game's feel and flow. It was not helped that, without a walkthrough, there were no obvious directions or hints as to what the player had to do. Dungeon layouts were horrid mazes that made little to no sense, in my opinion. They were very easy to get lost inside of, especially with the tiled, repetitive design of the graphics. If you were unfortunate enough to make a wrong turn and use a key or lever in the wrong place, the game softlocked, and the player was forced to reload a save. If you hadn't saved recently, that was it; tough luck. You could potentially lose hours of play due to having to restart from an old save. Due to this, I quickly learned that I would need to keep many different save files for this game at a variety of different points to avoid this issue. This again added to the frustration of this game and made it more of a chore to get through the dungeons than an enjoyable experience. Making the practice of saving scumming a must in any game hurts its value, in my opinion. I found the end boss battle with Bronakh to be very anticlimactic; he was almost insultingly easy to beat at that point. Then the ending made it even worse, with the game making it seem that the players efforts were all worthless either way. It is such a shame, as I could honestly see that this game could have been a 'Dungeon Master Killer' with some tweaks and extra thought. That's not to say that I hated my playthrough at all; it is just that I feel that this game was far too frustrating and could have been so much more.
Visually, while not something to write home about, this wasn't a bad-looking game. The settings and world were richly detailed, vibrant, and filled out. The monsters and enemies looked pretty good and were fairly individual from one to the other. I liked how the player characters and monsters moved during the battles, and I also liked the detailing for the various dungeons. I thought that the color palette was perhaps a little too heavy on the eyes if playing for extended periods of time, but it wasn't terrible. It just required that you stop playing every now and then to let your eyes recover, which helped anyway with keeping my temper under control, so win-win. I really liked the little animations given to the map as the player moved and passed time. I thought that those were nice little touches. The ships and other player transportation was pretty good, and I liked that there was some variation and individuality to the various cities, villages, and towns.
I can honestly see what ArtGame was trying to do, and I feel that this game had a lot of potential; it's just that I do not believe that it ever met that potential and was doomed to be just 'another clone'. My score reflects this, as I honestly felt that it could have been an 8/10 if things had worked a little differently.
5/10 – Okay!
Signed Off – Leonardo – PSJ
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