Menzoberranzan

Moby ID: 1375

[ All ] [ DOS ] [ FM Towns ] [ PC-98 ]

Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 69% (based on 13 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 19 ratings with 2 reviews)

An old & good RPG if you go through the beginning...

The Good

For a DOS game from 1994 it's really a good RPG with a very good management of the inventory & items.

The world is in full 3D (...it's an old 3D under DOS)

The RPG rules are those of the AD&D 2nd edition like in Baldur's Gate.

Drizzt (a famous character in the Forgotten Realms world) is one of the main characters of the game and the story leads you to his homeland.

The dungeons / caverns in this game are not boring.

**The Bad**

The game didn't run at full speed under Dosbox (v.0.65) but it can run with enough speed if you set the good Dosbox parameters and it's still enjoyable to play it.

There's not a commercial side in this game... The found items can't be sold or bought in shops.

it's an old game.

**The Bottom Line**
I saw reviews of people who have played only its beginning but it's not enough to know this game... The start of the game takes place above the ground, near Icewind Dale then you go under the ground through Underdark to finally reach the drow city of Menzoberranzan. Menzoberranzan (or Menzo) is nearly a link between old RPG games like "Eye of the Beholder (1 2 or 3)" and the Baldur's Gate generation. Play it and I think you will understand what I mean. Menzo is (was) a good game, even if it's not a perfect one, and I had pleasure to play it from start until the end... Note two versions of this game exist: CD-ROM and disk-based game. I played the full CD-ROM version with sounds, musics, small movies, and more levels and creatures than the disk-based one... Lucky me.

DOS · by Melliuc (566) · 2006

A weak attempt to capitalize on the nascent (at the time) FPS genre.

The Good
Nothing springs immediately to mind.

The Bad
Like so many games, this game wasn't bad. It just wasn't good. The gameplay is similar to other computer RPGs of the time: You guide your party around the landscape and through dungeons and encounter monsters, NPCs, and quests. The gimmick was the use of the first person perspective. The first person perspective didn't really add anything to the game, however, because once you entered combat, the game became turn-based. And your chance to hit was based on a random die roll (assuming you were in range) of the monster. No fancy moves. No sneak attacks. You run around the landscape in a Doom-type graphical engine, until you find something that wants to hit you, at which point you start turn-based combat. Which made the first person perspective kind of pointless.

The Bottom Line
An easily forgotten chapter of the SSI D&D franchise.

DOS · by Afterburner (486) · 2001

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by shphhd, Jeanne, Patrick Bregger, Wizo, Alaedrain, Tim Janssen, Alsy, WONDERなパン, Parf, Sun King.