Betrayal at Krondor

The Good
Set in fantasy novelist Raymond Feist’s world of Midkemia, Betrayal at Krondor (BaK) received great acclaim from the press. The game attempts to blend together storytelling, puzzles, and roleplaying into a cohesive whole.

Sales of the game were slow upon its initial release, but then picked up when the game was released on the then-new CDROM format. The game’s use of digitized photos of “actors” for the characters’ faces was innovative (if a bit cheesy) and even influential, given that Might and Magic VI would use the same technique a few years later. The musical score is appropriately sweeping and adds to the whole RPG-meets-Renaissance Fair atmosphere.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the graphic novel aspect of the game conflicts with the role-playing element, and thus the whole thing never quite comes together in a satisfying way. You get to control characters in combat and equip them as you go along, but this has a considerable downside: there is no such thing as starting out with a character of your own creation, nor do you have any idea which characters you will be using in future chapters. You may work extremely hard to bulk up Gorath, only to find out that he isn’t going to be a part of the story for a while, so you should have been working on boosting Owyn’s stats and inventory instead.

This game takes a long time to complete (easily over 50 hours, perhaps 100 or more if you explore everywhere and complete all of the quests), but very little of the time spent seems to be taken up by actual gameplay. Traveling outdoors is very tedious, and only by shelling out a pretty sizable chunk of your hard-earned cash can you use the jumpgates (found in temples) to move around the game world more quickly. Supposedly you can move around to the various areas in any order you want, but in reality the designers have made sure that you cannot do so. This would let the individual get too far off course from the storyline, so you are either blocked off by contrived plot devices (“Milord, this road is not passable until the snows have melted!”) or killed immediately by overwhelmingly powerful foes.

Losing even one member of your party in combat invariably means death to all, since you will almost certainly need to escape, but escape is only allowed when all members of your party are conscious (the need to keep characters in the story means no one is expendable) AND the way is not “blocked” by opponents. I say “blocked” in quotes, since I have not noticed the enemy ever doing anything in particular to achieve this tactic. Perhaps it is calculated by the CPU but not represented onscreen.

It is to Feist’s credit that Midkemia is interesting enough that some will want to plow through BaK to the end. It’s really just a blend of Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, and a bunch of other fantasy and science fiction conventions, although I suppose it’s fairly cohesive and believable as these things go.

The Bottom Line
Betrayal at Krondor is a failure as a coherent game, since its adventure/story portions ruin the fun of the role-playing/combat portions, and vice versa. I can only attribute this game’s sales success to its clever use of the CDROM format, the dearth of other CRPG’s on the market at the time, and to the prestige of its nominal author Raymond Feist. Feist has wisely turned the core of the Krondor story into an old-fashioned paperback novel, Krondor: The Betrayal. Gamers and Feist fans alike are advised to pass the CDROM up and give the book a go instead.

The Good
I loved this game. The characters and plot are very interesting, for one thing. The whole world that you are immersed in is very complex for a computer game. You really find yourself becoming interested in the fate of the characters. On to gameplay. The management of your resources is a challene in this game. Balancing your budget so that you have enough for bare essentials like food as well as less essential things like a better sword or suit of armor is a very nice touch to the gameplay. It's more realistic and it keeps your mind working when you are not fighting evil hordes. Another plus in the area of management is care of equipment. Once you buy that Dragon Armor, you need to hammer it back into shape after every battle or it won't be much use after a few encounters. Again, it increases the realism and keeps your head constantly busy. As well, you get the classic RPG element of characters talents which can be developed through experience (and through other ways which the smart gamer can find throughout the game). The graphics are very good, especially so for the time it was released, and the sound and music are both appropriate.

The Bad
There are two things I have to criticize. First and foremost, that the 3D first-person navigation is sometimes disorienting and is especially frustrating in puzzles that require you to find a certain item. It can really get you on the edge of your nerves. My second gripe is that searching the dead bodies of your enemies for equipment, while a very essential part of the game experience, can be tedious because you must click on EACH PARTICULAR BODY to see what the enemy has and sometimes the enemies' bodies hide each other.

The Bottom Line
An involving RPG adventure with a deep storyline.

The Good
Betrayal at Krondor was released in the summer of 1993, as VGA graphics were being pushed to their 2D, hand-drawn, sprite-intensive limit. This was also six months before id unleashed DOOM upon the world, beginning the push towards nearly every major game being produced in a 3D engine. As such, there is much in the way of imagination, storytelling, and overall artistry that I find most of today's big-budget, industrially-manufactured games to be lacking.

Perhaps the finest aspect of Krondor is that you can travel across the vast continent of Midkemia at almost all points in the storyline, doing as you please. Mostly, this entails traversing up and down mountainous valleys, searching out treasure caches (and attempting to open them, a joy onto itself thanks to half of them being protected by Moredhel wordlocks), battling dark elves, trolls, Brak-nur (rock-men), drakes, undead, and plenty of other sinister creatures. Then you can walk into one of the smaller towns and rest up at the local inn, play a tune for the local patrons (and get paid if you do a good enough job), sell any surplus equipment you've accumulated, have your armor repaired, and possibly take part in some other shenanigan (gambling, questing, solving mysteries, improving your combat or tradeskill abilities, and so on).

When you enter one of the major cities you are greeted with a wonderful hand-painted vista of the city and its environs, as a unique musical compositions sets the mood. This really helps create a sense of otherworldliness that allows you to sink easily into a magical fantasy mire. Great, great stuff -- just be sure you keep a window open so the odd breeze can remind you there's another world outside your house -- if you're interested in such trifling affairs.

The Bad
The graphics look dated in 2008 and were somewhat pixelated even when it was released in 1993.

When you've learned everything about the game that will give you an advantage over the armies of darkness, there isn't a whole lot of challenge inherent in the game. Combat is turn based, you can cheat in various ways (I will resist explaining here), and the storytelling is of high quality but not quite Lord of the Rings calibre.

The Bottom Line
A wonderfully deep and detailed adventure tale set in the charming medieval world of Midkemia. I'd count it among the four finest RPGs released so far, along with Ultima VII: The Black Gate, Baldur's Gate, and Final Fantasy IV.