(Many thanks to GOG for releasing one of my favourite games of all time.)

One tip: set the resolution for this game to a 4:3 ratio, even on a widescreen monitor. Otherwise it will display stretched. You don't want your hero to look fat, do you?

how it runs on 4:3? black borders?

btw does it run well on newer rigs? Seven x64? Does it support hardware acceleration or the whole game is a mess of giant pixels and wobbly polygons? :)

I just fired it op as a test. No problems.

Win 7 64 bit.

If you run it 4:3 on a 16:10 monitor it has "black" (actually, a wallpaper) borders.

Same thing here (but on a 32bits OS). A wallpaper is visible as background, and the game appears maxed out to reach the top and bottom of screen, whatever the settings (in-game or in your GPU driver).

If you use T&L HAL as a driver, the characters are filtered it seems, but the terrain stays quite raw (you can see pixels). However the engine holds up quite well given its age I think. It looks like the Myth series (1 and 2), yet less blurry (so characters are actually sprites looking like 3D, the rest is 3D).

Agreed! This was one of my favorite games ever. A very beautiful score and a very orignal style. Loved it. One of the few that kept me going to sunrise and entranced the whole while. Not a perfect game, but the overall experience is fantastic. And I loved the combat - always wondered why no one emulated it and perfected it in later games. Much better than most combat systems in games of this type.

And I thought the graphics were visually very interesting - great artwork and colors in many areas. Though technically not so great, in all respects, the feel was very good. It was a fun world to explore and adventure in.

I very much look forward to playing this again.

It's good to know this works well on modern system.

How are the load times on modern computers? I've been watching videos of this game on Youtube and they seem fine, but one reviewer mentioned that there was a second or so pause when they accessed the menu?

I have to say, though, this game looks fantastic.

Not sure why people say the graphics are bad. I find polygonal graphics to look very stylized and creative.

The combat looks amazing too.

The loading times are strange. They seem longer than on Youtube videos, up to 2 seconds to come back to the main screen from a menu. It's not particularly annoying, and it might be normal (I doubt it though)... I've tried running it on only one CPU, doesn't change anything.

Just to add another info, the font isn't very easy to read, that was mentionned in old reviews too. If you avoid 16:10 or very low resolutions, it should be readable.

thanks to all of you guys, as soon I have some bucks to spare I'll get this one

The combat is very good, once you get used to it and understand the system, and there's a lot of it! In general, you can use strategy and it pays off very well. In one battle, I found a good spot and used my Bow to pick off antagonists at a distance and by constantly moving around I eliminated most of them this way with little risk. Other times you have to wade in sword swinging. My only gripe was that in some "boss" battles at the end of a level, you do have to eliminate the boss in a very specifc way as he/she/it are invulnerable to normal attacks (even if you figure out a strategy that you think should work, it does not, you can pound on them forever to no effect)..

** I also like very much the way you can compose a sequence of combat moves, i.e. attack, parry, thrust low, sweep high, etc. and save it and use it during combat. And the animation of the combat accurately portrays your moves and their effect. Pretty cool. **

Overall, it is one of the best games I've ever played. Everything just clicked with me and I enjoyed it very much and loved the graphics and music. I dearly hoped they would do a sequel to polish up on it and improve it, but it never happened.

For me, this what GOG is all about, extending the life of great games like this and making them available to those who might have missed 'em the first time around. Or to those, like me, who would love to have them working on modern systems and play them again.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

A fat hero would be a big step forward at the moment.
Has anyone got this game to run in Win7 64 with a Nvidia graphics card?
I have a 580GTX with 285.62 drivers & it won't start because it can't detect my graphics card.
I have downloaded the game twice.
Installed 3 times & reinstalled the display drivers, with the same result.

I have Win 7 64bit w/an Nvidia 460m -- will be trying it on that system and will get back to you here with the results when I get time. Hopefully soon.

I just tried this on my Asus G73 w/Nvidia 460m and 268.30 drivers and it worked fine. No issues and I did not do anything special, just a straight install, did not check any compatibilty stuff, just let the GOG installer run. I get a choice of various modes, including 2 HAL moves and 2 460M choices (couldn;t see any diference, so chose first one), tried various resolutions and all worked., all are DX7, two of the choices are Direct 3D HAL and Direct 3D T&L HAL, I did not try those.

I also know that I ran this before on XP on a very low end system and it ran fine.

Good luck!

Thanks for the reply Bron.
I'll just give this game a miss, I have too many games installed that run well on these drivers to bother going back to older ones.

I understand. A pity though.