Amulets & Armor

The Good
Amulets and Armor is a mission-based action-RPG, from a first-person viewpoint.

When you begin the game, you have to design a character. Well, 'design' isn't really putting it the right way; you choose a name and an Archetype, and that's it. You don't even choose how you look. But the selection of Archetypes is wide and they all have nice, big (considering the screen size) pictures. The Archetypes each have various armor and weapon limits, and a magic system; Knights are actually the only class that can wear all types of armor and use all weapons, but they have the weak Arcane magic. Mages, while very powerful with Wizard magic, can only use Leather armor, for example.

When you start your character up, you're at a 'mission selection' screen. You can pick between the seven missions the game offers to go a-questing on, view their details, and see the rewards you get at the end of them. That's right, just seven. I winced when I first realized this, and predicted that I'd be done by the end of my play session. I'd see later that I was wrong again.

There are also 'Store', 'Inn', and 'Bank' options. At the Inn, you can rest for the night at rooms with absolutely exorbitant prices-- the best room costs 1 Platinum, about as much as you'll save up after you've completed the entire first game mission. The playtesters apparently ignored this aspect of the game-- pretty much like I did-- and thus it never got fixed. You can restore many more hit points by quaffing bought healing potions from the store—or, amusingly enough, simply waiting in a safe part of one of the missions!

The Store is more interesting; at it you can buy scrolls, armor, potions, runes, or other items to help you in your adventures. The spell runes are really only the ones you've already had a chance to get, but if you missed them in your adventures, you can pick them up at The Store. All of the items 'level up' as you complete harder missions; for example, at the beginning of the game, potions of healing +10 are only available, while when you're almost done there are +50s in the shop. The weapon selection is often better than your own, so before your next mission you'll often find yourself wincing at the Draconian prices before giving in and spending your life savings on a sword that does 0.5 more damage. (I really did this! Hey, every little bit helps...) As to be expected, the prices you get for selling an item back to The Store is about 25% of the item's value. I assume this is explained by the fact that there's only one The Store around, so they get to charge you whatever they please. This is why you should oppose monopolies, kids!

The Bank is where you can store your money in-between missions, and it's important because you lose about 75% of your gold you’re carrying on missions when you die. It also sells rings, and when you're much further in the game, Amulets (for totally insane prices).

I didn't give any of those features much thought, though, as I got ready to go on my first mission. I wanted to get a taste of the graphics'n'gameplay.

Graphics.. Well, I can't really describe them here, but they aren't something I liked about the game. The game resolution and graphic quality was reminiscent of Daggerfall, which I love, so they didn't annoy me too much.

The first mission starts out in a rather dull way. You begin in what is supposed to be a forest on what is supposed to an exciting mission. The problem? With a game made at the time of, and with the production value of Amulets & Armor, outdoors looks more like ‘set walls covered with canyon texture and some trees’. The first enemies you meet will be Elves, who look ill and make even sicker noises. I began to wonder if they were Plague Elves ala Heretic II, but the game informed me they were quite healthy.

However, the first mission really isn’t a good example of the game. As you continue, the missions get much better—the mainly-set-indoors mission Exingus and the Undead is the pinnacle of the game, and really shows what it could have been.

Each mission takes, for me, about 30-45 minutes to complete. There are a few exceptions, however, that take up to an hour; but that’s for me, and I’m a pretty slow-paced gamer when it comes to RPGs.

There are some parts of the missions which are really quite brilliant. There are rolling boulder traps, hidden rooms behind waterfalls, magical cages, etc. But the thing that makes them truly great is how well designed object interaction is. If you lure your enemies right, you’ll be treated with the delicious surprise of the boulder crushing them, and then rolling their loot along to the end of the hall! Enemies float down rivers, too, when you shoot them in. Furthermore, all non-3d objects can be ‘queried’ by right-clicking on them, from dropped inventory items to tables to fire to blood and corpses and enemies. (Investigating a bit of gore triggers the message ‘Huh… I don’t really know what that is’) This excellent system allows for loads of fun in the missions.

Essentially, gameplay consists of finding and killing enemies, taking items they might drop, pushing the occasional button, finding the occasional hidden treasure, and leaving. I think the minimum IQ level for the puzzles is 2; you won’t even think of them as ‘puzzles’ or ‘challenges’. They really just serve to make you walk around a lot and fight lots more enemies, which really isn’t bad because it’s actually pretty fun.

The enemy AI isn’t awful, as one would expect from a shareware game made at the time of Amulets and Armor. In fact, it’s pretty good. Enemies steadfastly chase you over hillocks, through doors and up staircases (and sometimes run away just as skillfully). Wizards will stay back and shoot fireballs, and cast Shove spells that spin you around and away when you get too close. Again, this is executed the best in Exingus and the Undead. They aren’t brilliant, but none of them live quickly enough for you to notice that anyways.

There is a pretty large selection of weapons and armor throughout the game, along with Rings, Amulets, Potions, Scrolls, food items and water. All the items are set, so you’ll never get that ‘hunting for better items’ feel that made Diablo & Diablo II work (and roguelike games if you’re an enlightened fellow), but it is still likely to put a smile on your face when you find a better breastplate or boots.

Spellcasting is actually the game’s high point, and I recommend you play through as a wizard-type (as the minimal replay value will stop you from playing through again period). The 3 schools of magic each have different combinations of runes one must use to cast spells, runes which are collected as one advanced in missions. Spells vary from ‘Eagle Sight’ to ‘Pull’ and ‘Push’ (which were actually quite useful!) to ‘Flight’ and ‘Acid Ball’. They are all well designed and well balanced.

On the upside, Amulets and Armor is solid fun, especially in select well-designed missions.

The Bad
Unfortunately, Amulets and Armor has its share of issues, too, and they're pretty major.

The most obvious and huge problem is level design. With the exception of a few missions, it's just plain boring, and there are a couple where it's so bad it makes one want to scream. Critical errors can be found all through the game.

In one level, for example (Mission 2 of Knights of Andrew-- be forewarned), there is a point where you simply need water walking. If you don't have it, you have to exit and get yourself a water walking item, 'cause if you don't have it all your work is wasted.

But that's not the worst-- in another level, clipping errors are so bad that it's a real challenge to find out where you're really going. Polygons don't render and chunks of the screen disappear and reappear randomly. The game also crashes excessively in this area.

I thought I'd reached the very worst of the game's level design at a mission near the end, which simply couldn't be completed because the level had somehow compiled wrong. I actually had to get around and switch around map data filenames to continue my character. When level design gets this bad, there is simply no excuse for it.

But even that isn't the worst of all. The final mission, the grand finale, the overture that should have been the paramount of the game's detail-- wasn't there. Allow me to explain. You begin the game in a very simple room. There are no details about it. There is one door, and it doesn’t open. Bugged. Glitched. Broken. Failed. In short, the anticlimax of this game made Half-Life's much hated ending look like a masterpiece. No editing tools are anywhere for the game, so you can't edit that door at all. Nothing can be done-- the game is simply unfinishable.

This seriously lowers the game's score. I can't imagine how a design flaw that huge could have escaped the game's development team. You never get to meet the final boss who you've been spending the whole game trying to get too. Talk about a letdown! I searched for many anguished hours trying to find out if there had been some mistake, but the only error was on the design team's part.

Other minor gameplay issues infest the game. For example, there are other levels that require water walking, but properly supply it-- only once. You die once past that point, you gotta restart. This only applies to a few missions, but it's still a problem. The classes are nightmarishly imbalanced-- archery is pretty useless because it's slow and does just about no damage, and arrows are expensive and rare (excluding one mission). Only the pure warrior really gives fully balanced play, but he's not really that enjoyable. To make up for the lack of difficulty level, I played a part-mage, part-'thief' class, and the game's total lack of anything related to stealth or thievery made my game that much more difficult.

The graphics are awful at points. The pixilation is pretty bad, but bearable, but sometimes the art is just nightmarishly bad, particularly the textures on some of the worse levels.

The Bottom Line
Amulets and Armor is worth acquiring, if you can somehow acquire it (it was never published, the company that made it has been dead for 6 years, it had less than 100 sales, and hardly anyone has ever heard of it... you do the math). It's an interesting game and, at the same time, shows how small-time coders can both make great games, and fail utterly. If the game design had been a bit more polished, the inexcusable level flaws fixed, and the graphics upped a notch, perhaps Amulets and Armor would have gotten the attention it deserved.

The Good
Despite the primitive graphics, The game has become more enjoyable each time I play it. I have only taken one archtype through all the missions. (I've notified Dark Mouse that the last mission is in fact winnable, but there are two missions that I haven't been able to solve.) Each of the archtypes presents unique challenges. I like speed and strength, so I've had a great deal of success with the Sailor, but not the stronger, slower Knight.

The Bad
Graphics bite and I can't get sound to run on my rig. I have only encountered one area where the game sometimes crashes.

In the game, money is a problem early on, particularly if you're a weaker character who can't lug out all the gear (e.g. my Mage) to sell for $ to buy more healing potions and mana scrolls.

Like darkmouse pointed out, there are certain areas that if you don't have a certain piece of equipment you can't finish the mission (e.g. Ring of Waterwalking in the 2nd Mission, last map) There aren't any in game clues that suggest you need this.

The Bottom Line
definitely a case of substance over style.