What proprietary format is the soundtrack in if we need to purchase some proprietary software to play it?

I don't understand ..? The game page says it is in MP3 and FLAC.

Are you blind or did you just miss the part where it says it requires that you purchase the proprietary game in order to play it?

https://i.sli.mg/rfaOIB.png

It's just the way soundtracks work on Gog, they are treated as DLC so you can only buy them if you own the base game.

Stupid, but there you go.

Played some of the game last night and promised to share my spoiler-free impressions, so here you go.

The game is set in a world where both magic and technology exist, but sparingly. Most people live lives similar to those of folk from advanced agrarian-age Persia or Babylon, say around the 14th century or so. It centers on Tahira, the daughter of the king of Avestan (and thus a princess), who has broken away from the duties of her birthright but is drawn back into them by the events of the game.

At the start you are given the choice of four difficulty levels, which should make the game pretty accessible to just about everyone. I went with the default, but may step it up one level as it is more pitched to people who haven't played a ton of turn-based titles.

The game plays out as a long journey across country, punctuated by narrative and combat scenes. During the narrative scenes you will discover more about the story and the character, and also get to make choices. It's early yet so I'm not entirely sure how much impact the choices make, but they do shape the evolving narrative and sometimes have immediate effects as well. There are sometimes dialogue choices before, after, and even during combat, which further influence the direction of your story.

The combat is turn-based squad combat, not wholly dissimilar to classic X-COM. Movement is on a grid, and characters have movement points which can be expended at any time during their turn, even after attacking, and faster characters like Tahira can save their actions until a later turn in the round. Combat is quite rich, with a number of tactics to deploy. Characters have Guard points which are whittled down before they take actual damage. Characters also have special actions apart from their normal attacks which use Will points, and one of these special actions allows you to recover Guard points, which adds additional strategy. And there are other elements which enhance combat, such as the way your soldiers do more damage when they support each other in surrounding an enemy. Secondary characters which fight well can level up, and you will keep them from battle to battle unless they are killed.

As for the game's aesthetics, the visuals remind me most strongly of the Ralph Bakshi/Frank Frazetta rotoscoped classic Fire & Ice. The visuals scale well at different zoom levels and are clear and crisp. The character portraits have a good range of expressions, which helps with the narrative sections. And the animation is beautiful, capturing fluid motion very well. It may look like a cartoon but they feel like people. The music goes along with the game perfectly, and will change up during certain important events. It is not as idiosyncratic as the music from say Risk of Rain, where the music drives a lot of the feel of a scene, but rather it complements the scenes effectively.

I don't really have any downsides to report as this point, though I can nitpick some trivial things. It would be nice to have the option to change the direction keys from pure vertical-horizontal to isometric mapping (so that up becomes up-and-right, for example), but the movement keys are only used in exploration scenes so it's not a significant inconvenience for me. There is a loading screen between scenes, which is not optimal for immersive flow but it doesn't ruin the game. And some people might find the semi-anthropomorphising of animals a bit silly, but it helps to understand that some of the feel of the game comes from the folk tales of this time and place (such as The Epic Of Gilgamesh and The Arabian Nights), and in those animals are accorded their own personalities and even wisdom.

So far this game is a distinct and engaging experience, and it doesn't feel like just a reskin of another game. I am quite enjoying it and looking forward to when I can next pick up my hero's journey.

EDIT: typos and clarifications

You wrote: What proprietary format is the soundtrack ...
And I answered you.

Why you need to purchase the whole game if you want to purchase the soundtrack? Well, you should ask someone from the GOG team.

Maybe they can aswer you.

Just bought the game, with wallet , and thats where the wallet 'messed' up...

So i end up with one game purchace pending which i didnt see , so i purchased the game with the wallet funds that were left on it and filled the rest with psc, then i finally got a message i had a game pending ? , so now i have 1 game for myself and one which had to be completed cause a large amount was deducted from the wallet and part of it was already paid;

result: empty wallet, and ahd to fill with a psc , the psc card transaction is okay , but since the game was partly paid (wallet) i now have a giftcode:

@ Tyrrhia , i have a free giftcode for you, i hope you can play the game , otherwise you can always keep it on your account till you can play it , if you are online please send me a PM and i will send the code to you by PM.


Steam goes same way , as far as i can see all tracks need to have the game aswell.
Gamersgate doesnt have that many new tracks but most of them can be bought without the need of buying / having to own the game first.
I bought 3, for fun at sale, i heard some on youtube and the games sux imho but the music has some nice tracks

Sword of the Stars The Pit Soundtrack 15 tracks 320 kbps mp3 and FLAC
Orcs Must Die! 2 Soundtrack (256 kbps)18 tracks 256 kbps
Chivalry_Medieval_Warfare_Soundtrack_mp3 (192 kbps) 14 tracks

Depending on what pc you have and in what country you live, ram is not that expensive, even a poor guy like me could afford it, but i guess thats because i already saved backk then to be able to get 4 GB ram in my pc (2009 assembled so it is "oblolete" now) and last eyar i saved some to buy 4 gb extra, now i have 8, sadly the ram i needed was old and no longer in stock, otherwise i would have bougt 12 gb , then i would have had 16 (max) GB now.

I still play Jagged alliance 2 once a while, i own all the classic (no 3d versions for me, they are ugly and dont have the playing sensation the classic versions had)

I would like to see devs using that old engine again, back then i admired the graphics and i still think they were well animated, after a shot, they fell down, on the knees and ugh face on the ground, or after some kicking with Doctor Huaong one of my favorite mercs, some knife throwing and martial arts, I always played with exact same charachters.

So it would be great if developers would try to make an 'engine' like jagged alliance 2 used, starting from the first jagged alliance (windows versions) cause the dos graphcis were to blocky).
These games had playabily, atmosphere, lastability, and i alway come back to the game cause its so deep , and so much characters, and the voices and the faces on the videos, they were absolutely great, it took hours before you cleaned the area's out.
I would fork 25 euros out right away if a game with that charm could be made, of course the game has to run at recommended so no 10 cores or pc setups costing 2000 euros or so.

Thanks for adding the OST. Already got it as a KS backer, but I like to have it available for everyone whenever possible. A nice fair price too.

Does the game have any sort of spiral of death thing? Like if you win a battle with heavy losses, those losses persist and subsequent battles are harder and harder to the point the game as a whole is "unwinnable" (defined as "results in drastically less content being seen in a playthrough")?

I'm not sure yet how many of your forces carry over from battle to battle, though you are supposed to be able to retain any you level up. In at least one battle I had a chance to increase my forces by reaching beseiged soldiers. Whether the game always allocates a minimum or not, or balances the levels to ensure that even if just your heroes survive it's still winnable, I haven't determined.

There are cases where losing certain characters results in game over. But the game autosaves your progress and you can try the battle again. However, if the situation you mention happens and you happen to start the battle severely undermanned, then it may be a "dead end" situation. I could start a game in another slot and see how my troops look after a decimating battle.

Very good news, and thank you for saying so.

i have a question about the free black space on 1024x768 screens ( the minimum)
my screen looks like this:

attachment: tahira_1024x768.jpg

The fonts are rather small, i can read them but its not an quick and easy read.
Can the free black space be used for info or other interface parts? tehre are many games that either run fully windowed, allowing for the taskbar to be seen, or fullscreen.

2nd attachment: i copied the interface menus and resized them tot 115% , they still fit on the 1024x768 screen
(i had to sharpen the menus because they went blurry after a resize) but are a little more readable

check: tahira_1024x768_v.jpg


The games plays okay on my quadcore 2.67 8 gb ram, i guess the gts 250 1 GB is the 'bottleneck' but oevrall the game is playable without any serious slowdowns, the CPU and GPU are very busy but thats because they are old (2009).
I could try 1280 but that would make the fonts even smaller i guess and the refresh wopuld go down to 75 hz.