The Old Video Game Review Thread.

[SinisterDeath]

This thread is going to be dedicated to Video Game reviews of games that are at least 5+ years old. This will not only allow people to share those games they loved, that no one has ever heard of, but should have! Because they are so awesome!

So with out Further Ado...

 

 

 

Evil Islands: Curse of The Lost Soul.

The main focus of this games story is your Zak; you woke up on in some ruins, told you’re the 'chosen one' by some natives. You have no memory of your past, nothing. You make your way to a village and receive quest after quest in order to find out a little more about your past.

 

 

Gameplay:

The game is of the Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur’s Gate play style. 3rd person, point/click to attack, strategy based game. Except this game also deals with stealth to.

 

The game also has some revolutionary ideas when it comes to this genre, that hasn't even been touched upon by most games now days.

When you attack an enemy, you can attack its various body parts. If you attack its arm, its damage against you will be less. If you hit it in the head, you can do some massive damage. If you hit it in the legs, it can't run as fast. These facts, allow for you, and your 'mercenaries' to effectively cripple and kill your enemy before it knows what hit him!

 

Crafting

This game has an extraordinary awesome crafting system imo. It’s simple and complex at the same time!

In order to craft items, you need to be in town, at the local 'merchant'.

You purchase Blue-Prints, and these blue prints call for certain types of material..

For instance a spear calls for (Stonex3)

And you can use, Stone, Granite, Obsidian, Silicon, ect. There are about 6+ different types of every material in this game. And with all the various types of weapons it makes for a huge amount of weapon possibilities! Add unto that, is the fact that you can attach spells to your items! You can make items that Buff your Strength, or Weapons that shoot lightning at your enemy!

 

 

Difficulty

If your a Hard Game Junky, and love games that are painfully hard to beat, this game is for you!

On Normal mode, 2v1 = death, and 1v1 is not exactly in your favor either. Hell 2v1 is an epic battle!

On Novice mode, 2v1 = usually death, and 1v1 = you win, unless it’s an ogre or something. :P

And there is no Hard Difficulty.

Another aspect that is awesome yet hard in this game is the leveling system.

when you kill creatures you get XP, but you don't exactly get levels, Instead you spend your hard earned XP to buy things like skill increases, You can buy a 'weapon focus' to make you much better at using that weapon, or you can buy a hp skill... The only problem of course is that if you buy a skill for 200, it exponentially increases in cost! 200 to 500, 500 to 1000, 1000 to 2000, 2000 to 5000, ect.

It gets to the point that within 4 or 5 purchases your up into the 10k range. But at least your main stats are dirt cheap comparatively. :P

It basically stresses on, staying FOCUSED on what you want to be skilled at. Magic? Melee? You can't be good at both, else you'll be weak at both...

 

Combat

As I talked about above, you can damage a person’s limbs, body, head ect, dealing various different effects to them. Be that more damage, or crippling there attack/defense.

Aside from that melee/ranged combat is basically point and click.

Spells are obviously point and click, with the spells being rather basic... Fire balls, fire arrows, fire walls, lightning balls, fire shields, lightning arrows, lightning walls, Lightning Shields, ect. With a few random buffs that increase your strength, speed, and of course your basic heals, and de-buffs with the opposite effects as your buffs...

The magic system isn't very flushed out, But you can Craft your own spells... And by Craft your own spells, your basically adding 'runes' that increase the damage, range, area of effect, duration, and whether or not it can be used on items or not.

 

Graphics.

This game was made back in the good ol' year of 2000, and comparatively the graphics were top notch. Looking back at them they make our eyes bleed. But at the time, the graphics were very high poly, the textures were damned high, and it’s even got tri-linear & bi-linear stuffs! :P

The animations aren't exactly anything to applaud but they did try to have some voice acting. It’s not anything great but it’s not sucky either...

 

As an aside, the graphics almost remind me of Warcraft, specially the intro-scene. Not that they are 'cartoony'

 

Sound

The sound is probably one of the top 5 best features about this game. I can't think of any game that has this much Voice Acting prior to 2000! I mean we have Morrowind that came out in 2001, or 2002, and even then, that voice acting is only in a few dialogues, where as in this game every time you talk with an NPC its Voice Acted. Though, I guess that’s not something 'new' to this genre either, I remember dungeon siege having its fair share of dialogue, but I also remember it having allot of text to click through... :P

One slightly annoying aspect about the voice dialogue in this game is while your out in the field of combat, your characters have a tendency to say the same phrase over and over and over again to the point of nausuem, until you either mute the pc, tune them out, or find the option to shut em up.

I'm not to sure about the musical score in this game, but it isn't horrible, but it isn't too great either...

 

 

Replay Value

The game has little single player replay value, assuming you can put up with the frustrations of the game difficulty and say "I beat this game on normal!". But it does have multi-player.... GL trying to find anyone who plays it though!

FYI, multi-player does allow you to play through the games single player, online. But this also means you have to create an online character and beat it all the way through...

 

Lasting Appeal:

The whole of this game is definitely greater then its parts.

While the graphics aren't anything by today’s standards, it’s still playable, its gameplay is surprisingly revolutionary even by today’s standards, and its various systems in play make it fun despite its difficulty. And while the voice acting can be quite annoying at times. The first play through definitely has that 'emersion' factor. Assuming you can get over the graphics that is. :P

I think one of my favorite aspects of this game is the crafting, it’s simple, intuitive, yet flushed out enough to make a pretty nice sized combination of items... If it were possible there would be a few changes to the game I could think of that would make it even better, but as is, its pretty good imo.

 

Also, this is probably the best Russian Made game since Tetris! 

 

 

 

Gameplay: 10

Graphics: 6

Sound: 7

Replay Value: 5

Lasting Appeal: 8

Over All: 8

[Segurant]

Good review.  I don't remember this game though.