davidbitterbaum: I have played a good chunk of the game, at least enough I felt satisfied, and would give it 3 out of 5 stars. My reasoning would be that it has a really creative plot but doesn't seem to do as much with it as the story described in the manual makes it sound possible, has a ton of hack-and-slash combat--which is fine, but I wouldn't mind it being more of an RPG--and otherwise has a lot of "eh" for everything that made me go, "neat".

Seeing famous historical characters and interacting with them was neat, spending hours trudging through that sewer is a prime example of something that wasn't horrible but also can't be called particularly fun (Hmm, I did a double-negative). Speech abilities have some use, but you really need to be good at your magic and/or combat to survive in this game as opposed to some others where you often can talk your way around situations if you pump a ton of points into speech. Oh, the graphics are nice but sometimes the isometric view seems unaware of where you are and suddenly your character will disappear behind a wall. Not cool. Combat itself is fine assuming you put the points into it so you don't die horribly.

Yes, this game has so many interesting ideas and a lot of promise, but only delivers on some of it. I got a good chunk of playtime out of it though, so I can't hate. Maybe 2.5 out of 5 stars would be a better score, but I wouldn't say it is average, it has glimmers of things that I've described above that bump it up to that 3 out of 5.

What does everyone else think? Agree with me? Think me horribly wrong?

davidbitterbaum: I have played a good chunk of the game, at least enough I felt satisfied, and would give it 3 out of 5 stars. My reasoning would be that it has a really creative plot but doesn't seem to do as much with it as the story described in the manual makes it sound possible, has a ton of hack-and-slash combat--which is fine, but I wouldn't mind it being more of an RPG--and otherwise has a lot of "eh" for everything that made me go, "neat".

Seeing famous historical characters and interacting with them was neat, spending hours trudging through that sewer is a prime example of something that wasn't horrible but also can't be called particularly fun (Hmm, I did a double-negative). Speech abilities have some use, but you really need to be good at your magic and/or combat to survive in this game as opposed to some others where you often can talk your way around situations if you pump a ton of points into speech. Oh, the graphics are nice but sometimes the isometric view seems unaware of where you are and suddenly your character will disappear behind a wall. Not cool. Combat itself is fine assuming you put the points into it so you don't die horribly.

Yes, this game has so many interesting ideas and a lot of promise, but only delivers on some of it. I got a good chunk of playtime out of it though, so I can't hate. Maybe 2.5 out of 5 stars would be a better score, but I wouldn't say it is average, it has glimmers of things that I've described above that bump it up to that 3 out of 5.

What does everyone else think? Agree with me? Think me horribly wrong?

XYCat: I finally got through the game and i must say the ending was quite a disappointment. Not to spoil anything, i can only say that it was clearly a case of rushed development, mariolike "sorry, butprincess is in another castle" hunt with lots of fighting and in the end i got basically just "And that's all folks!" message.

XRayStar: ***SPOILERS ON ENDING***XRayStar: Which ending did you have? There are 6 different ones ;) (Which also vary minorly depending on what happens during the final battle.) Which one you get depends on
[SPOILER]
your karma stat (good or evil), the question whether you fight or talk to the old man, and, if you fight, the question wheher you actually kill im or only drive him out.
(in the following text, the four endings I talk about are the four battle based endings)
[/SPOILER]
I must admit that four of the endings are quite generic and not so interesting, but in my eyes the other two ones are very, very good. Reading what you wrote, I assume that you probably got one of the first four ones. If that is true, you should perhaps try to get one of the other ones ;)

Edit: Is there any way to mark something as Spoiler in GOG, so that you can read it only after confirming? The typical [spoiler][/spoiler] command apparently doesn't work...

XYCat: I tried talking to him, but there was no point in raising speech throughout the game so i had only 105 point in it and that wasn't enough for him although it got me through any speech checks before, therefore i had to fight him which was a bit weird since he couldn't touch me and he even healed me with fire. Finally i ended up with him going away, barcelona getting a new sponsor and nostradamus telling me "Th-th-th-that's all folks!".

XYCat: The only "evil" thing i did throughout the game was freeing the pain daeva and maybe telling the big bad dragon daeva by the entrance to Alamut i was too badass for him to even try. I'm not sure whether killing the runaway rock titan was a bad thing because it was his duty to die as was said by his fellow titans.

NightK: is it true that most of the skills are useless? (Speach, sneak, etc...) I'm pondering buying this game, it's a shame no one made an overhaul for this game...

XYCat: They have their uses in the first part of the game but not so much later on. Your character has to be good at some form of fighting anyway, so speech over 100 will get you through any speech checks except for the last one, but still you'll be fighting a lot. Finding traps and secrets is useful all the time, although you can get a lot of thievery potions to help you with that.

NightK: is it true that most of the skills are useless? (Speach, sneak, etc...)

NightK: I'm pondering buying this game, it's a shame no one made an overhaul for this game...

XRayStar: Full agreement!

Unfortunatley it probably still is very unlikely that they will make one... the game will become 10 years old next year and I can't remember ever having heard anything about plans to create a remake. Perhaps we should either convince, bribe or blackmail reflexive entertainment... or create a fan remake :D