Betrayal at Krondor

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.

The Good
I never read the books about Krondor, but the game itself is quite immersive with background music to set the atmosphere. It isn't a game that will suck you in, but you'll find yourself really trying hard to finish the game.

There are some nice differences with this game that set it apart from most RPGs. It had some really good ideas that were very well implemented, like improvements in skills. After a fight, you might need to hammer out your armor or sharpen your sword. Your ability to do so depends on your ability level, which occasionally goes up when working on it. Sharpening your weapon takes materials (which run out), as does hammering out your armor. It's a twist that adds some reality to the game. You also consume food (which can go bad or get poisoned).

I really liked the limited magic addition. It was very well balanced, and you didn't always have to cringe about fighting a mage (like you do in the Baldur's Gate series).

Personally, I liked the simpler combat-engine, but many people complained about it. I also like the multi-character use in the game. While you can't pick your partners, you can customize them a little bit, and they add some changes to the game (rather than just decking-out one character).

The Bad
The graphics were sub-par for the era. Backgrounds were trianglulated and straight lines were extremely jagged. Quake pixel-pushing freaks will laugh.

Many people didn't like the combat-engine, either. It was limited, and some may prefer that, but it really won't appeal to power-gamers. Power-gamers also won't like running all over creation trying to better their characters and take advantage of everything. You can spend days trying to do everything beneficial for your character before really carrying-on with the game.

The Bottom Line
A great RPG with some very well implemented things that just don't show up in any other games. Magic isn't so powerful it will cause you to save and re-load every five steps, but can be a real asset to your group. Beware trying to take advantage of everything in the game or of trying to find every nook and cranny. While the game isn't huge, it is big enough and sparse enough to make you really spend time.

The Good
Krondor had some features that were very innovative for its time and I wish more games of today would use. The inventory system was simple and polished, with excellent descriptions for every item that could be found.You could move around using the helpful overhead map and use a yet larger map to see your position in the world.

The world was polygonal with sprites used for objects such as trees. For the time the game was made this was rather good technology, and although it is in no way passable by today's standards, it isn't all that jarring to have to play with.

There are no loading times anywhere in the game as you travel around the world, except when a chapter switches. This is a big bonus-- while loading screens from this era on today's computers would likely blink by in a second anyways, it is far nicer to simply be able to travel about the world unhampered by them.

Combat is fun and has a great system. Instead of the usual battlefield you will see appear in RPGs that don't have real-time combat, the game sets the battlefield as whatever area you encountered enemies on, which makes it seem a lot more realistic. The area is turned into a grid battlefield with the party at one end and the enemies at another.

The Bad
First of all, the artwork comes to mind. Instead of hand-drawn art, which is always the best, the characters appear to have been video captured, which never seems to work with a low-res game such as Krondor. Not only that, but the characters generally look horrible-- wizards look like farmers in bathrobes, knights like farm hands with pots over their heads, etc. It is often painful to have to see a character picture as dialogue progresses.

Furthermore, there are some problems with the game engine. The camera is 'drawn out' from the screen so that it takes two times as long to rotate 360 than it should. You can speed up rotation, but this only makes the effect more dizzying. It's very weird to see what looks like 720 degrees of landscape go by as you turn around.

The game's major strength was supposed to be that it was set in Raymond E. Feist's 'Riftwar Legacy' series. Personally, I am no big fan of his works-- I have read a few books in the series and found them to be devoid of character depth, lacking in intelligent narration, and set in an utterly typical fantasy world. The game is no different. The story for this game is no better than that of any other RPG, and it's no worse than any of Fiest's books-- which I think says a lot about the quality of the series. Enough on that point, however; put simply, the story for this game is nothing special, and I have encountered far better in the likes of Daggerfall.

Another minor issue is that the day passes too fast; one day seems to be equivinant of a natural game hour. If the designers needed it to take longer to get between places, they could have just streched the whole world making it three times as large, or made the character's steps smaller-- the way it is in the final product is totally unreal.

The Bottom Line
Since it was released as freeware by Sierra a long while ago, Krondor is worth the time to find and download. Unless you're a fan of Feist's work, however, don't expect anything special.