Siege of Avalon

aka: Osada Avalona, Siege of Avalon: Anthology, Siege of Avalon: Collectors Edition
Moby ID: 5206

Windows version

Siege of Avalon doesn't reach the heights of Planescape: Torment or Fallout, but it's still well worth a look.

The Good
Story: I believe a game must have a good story to be successful. Siege of Avalon (SoA) happens to have a great story that would have made a good book, despite a few "huh?" questions near the end. It is both surprising and refreshing to find an RPG that's main focus is the story and not combat.

Graphics: The graphics in SoA are lovely. The backgrounds are large and detailed, on par with RPG greats like Arcanum and Baldur's Gate, while the character models are even better, with each piece of clothing changing the appearance of the character. Even the order in which you place them on your character sheet will affect the look. The special effects when casting spells are also nice.

Gameplay: SoA's gameplay is really a mixed bag. You'll often find yourself speaking to people and only having 1 dialogue option. Despite its large amount of side quests the game is basically scripted, the decisions you make having small impact in the game’s outcome. The interface is nicely laid out, with everything having a tab for you to go directly to the screen you want without having to go through several sub-menus in order to find what you're looking for. The game doesn't use D&D rules, and you "level up" by collecting experience points by killing enemies or completing quests or errands. The game has no class restriction, as a fighter you can increase your magical abilities, and also, as a scout you may use plate-mail armor if you so wish, however you will alert more enemies when sneaking while wearing it.

The Bad
Sound: The sound is really the weakest part of SoA. The game has no voice acting, although I consider that a good thing, and it's music, which fits nicely into the atmosphere, is quite repetitive and some times skips during loading. Finally the ambient sounds are decent, but not good enough to give the Sound department a good rating.

Combat: Combat is nothing to be excited about in SoA. The bad part is that there's plenty of it. It's your typical "click on an enemy and hit it until either you or him is dead". This wouldn't be so bad if the AI wasn't so poor. Enemies will sometimes not even notice you, and they never try and do anything other than kill you when they do. If losing they won't try and run away, or seek help from a comrade which often isn't all that far away. The only decent AI was on Mithras and the Shamans, who healed themselves when injured. The rest were really quite poor. While on the topic of AI, party AI is also quite poor, and often, when having a mage in the party, a spell that was directed at an enemy would actually hit me.

Technical: The game has, unfortunately, several tech problems, such as lock ups. I was able to fix this by "ctrl+alt+del"-ing everything except Explorer. Once that is done, the game should work better.

The Bottom Line
I suppose the best way to describe this game is as a "Good first attempt", as there's much room for improvement, yet despite the bleak picture I've painted in this review, the game is still worth playing.

by Gonchi (3590) on February 21, 2005

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