Agent_Tau: 1885? Now that's an oldie!
XYCat: Gog wanted to make up for all the new games released lately :)
Anyway
I absolutely love the graphics of this and the lords of midnight but how is it in terms of gameplay? I'm not sure if i'd get into it if i had to cope with some way too clunky interface and slow game mechanics, so can anyone elaborate on this?
I only played Lords of Midnight on Android, but I'll try to answer as best I can.
Lords of Midnight takes some getting used to, but it isn't clunky as in 1985-clunky. I am used to old games, but these days I'm not willing to waste much time on games that are too clunky, and even then I got around to playing Lords of Midnight for several hours.
It *is* one of those games where there's little in the way of instructions, no in-game tutorial, you're just left with the game screen and ye olde list of controls, but a list of controls hardly tells the whole story in a game like this. I had to dig on the web to understand why I could or couldn't go certain places, recruit certain soldiers and lords, attack or leave certain locations, win certain battles, etc.
I'm guessing Doomdark's Revenge is very similar: a great hard game.
XYCat: I absolutely love the graphics of this and the lords of midnight but how is it in terms of gameplay? I'm not sure if i'd get into it if i had to cope with some way too clunky interface and slow game mechanics, so can anyone elaborate on this?
Ghorpm: I believe I can. I will give you a general description of the Lords of Midnight series, without detail about specific game. But at the beginning let me remind you that the game was designed for (among the others) C64 which has 64 kB RAM + 20 kB ROM so don't expect anything too complicated. Nevertheless the game is absolutely epic!
OK, so how is the gameplay: you start with a few heroes and you can move them around the map (first person view). Each hero has some movement points, some terrains are easier to cross than the others. You may encounter monsters, special locations, strongholds... In special locations you may find artifacts, in strongolds you can recruit armies or station some troops there to increase its defenses. You find and recruit other heroes, sometimes you have to free them first...
When you are ready you can end your turn and then the opponent will move and send vast armies to conquer you. The path he chooses is random so each gameplay may be a bit different.
When two armies meet the battle begins. You don't have any direct control over the battle, the only things that matter are:
- how many troops did you bring
- their morale and tiredness
- WHEN did they join the battle. Example: at the very beginning of your round you move regiment A to attack the opponent who is directly next to you. A battle begins. Then you switch to your other hero with regiment B and move him to join the battle. But he was a bit further and it took 1/2 of your movement points to reach the battle. You do the same with regiment C but you had to use almost every movement point. When you end your turn the outcome of the battle will be calculated as follow: regiment A fought the whole day, regiment B half a day and regiment C almost not at all. So it may turn out that regiment A was destroyed before regiment B joined the battle. In many cases it's better to wait a bit, join your forces and attack simultaneously to decrease your losses. Sometimes it will be even better to give your troops some rest and wait for your opponent to start the battle. Some battles will not be resolved after you end your turn so in the next day you can send additional regiments to join the battle (if you have any available nearby)
How does it look like in practice. At your first playthrough you will send your heroes here and there, find a nice artifact and... get horribly slaughtered by the enemy.On your second playthrough you will send you heroes in different direction but you will get eradicated just the same as before. After some time you will start winning some battles and you will get an idea how to win them. So finally you will combine your experience (map exploration and battles) and you will win the game. Believe me, it's very rewarding! If you continue to play you will master your strategy and will be able to win 9/10 games.
I'm aware that this type of gameplay is not very popular nowadays. Back in 80s figuring out what you were supposed to do was an integral part of most games. My final advise is: don't ever use a walkthrough. I believe there are some and they will present you the perfect strategy how to win 9 out of 10 times. But if you read it... you will beat the game within 10-15 minutes (it's entirely possible!) but I doubt you'll have any fun at all. Because, frankly, beside figuring out how to play this game, there is not much left there! So if you know this perfect strategy at the very beginning... what's the point in playing? If you, however, decide to play it as intended you will have several hours of fun. I know it may seem that the game is terribly frustrating but in my opinion it's the other way around: it's very rewarding when you finally accomplish something (winning a big battle, pushing the enemy back, hiring an admirable army and so one)
A short conclusion: if you like figuring out how to play the game and losing many times is not discouraging you then I can wholeheartedly recommend it. If you, however, think that it'll be a very frustrating experience and you will read a walkthrough anyway... well in that case I recommend you to not even try it. Play other games. I do love LoM series but it's definitely not the game that every gamer will like.
And HERE's the strategy guide to LoM I've been looking for. ;-)
NoNewTaleToTell: I'm not really interested in this game but I'll have to admit that the art style (color choices aside) is quite nice.
Apparently the colors are supposed to be faithful to the original, so there wasn't really a "choice" of colors...
To me it feels weird because it's a non-pixelated 8-bit style, but personally I got used to it and I like it.
