Betrayal at Krondor

Moby ID: 285
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Based on Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar saga (and co-written by Feist himself), Betrayal at Krondor is a medieval fantasy-themed role-playing game set in the Riftwar universe.

The story begins as Gorath, a moredhel (dark elf) renegade, who intended to warn the people of Krondor of the upcoming moredhel invasion, is attacked by an assassin. Locklear, a nobleman who serves the crown of Krondor, and a young magician named Owyn decide to accompany Gorath to Krondor, where they'll have to think of a plan to stop the moredhel leader Delekhan.

The game's story is divided into nine chapters. Each chapter has a goal to achieve before moving on to the next one, but the player is given considerable freedom to explore the vast world of the game and undertake side quests. Gorath, Locklear, and Owyn are the first party of characters the player controls; however, characters may leave and others may join the party later, as dictated by the events of the story.

Exploration in Betrayal at Krondor takes place in a 3D world viewed from first-person perspective. Towns, however, are presented as a series of still screens representing locations (temple, tavern, inn, etc.). Combat takes place on separate grid-based screens. The player moves the characters on these screens in a turn-based fashion, attacking physically, defending, and casting spells.

Only two character classes are present in the game: fighters and magicians. Fighters use swords or crossbows (for long-ranged attacks); magicians can fight with staves, or cast spells. Characters have four attributes: health, strength, speed, and stamina. The latter is depleted when a character uses weapons or casts magic. The role-playing system of the game relies on skills. Each character has a set of skills, ranging from weapon proficiencies to abilities such as bartering or stealth. Skills improve after continuous usage. The player can "emphasize" a skill in order to make it improve faster.

Spellings

  • קרונדור - Hebrew spelling
  • 叛變克朗多 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

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Credits (DOS version)

153 People (109 developers, 44 thanks) · View all

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 16 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 102 ratings with 12 reviews)

A Feist-ian bargain.

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.

DOS · by PCGamer77 (3158) · 2011

Riftworld is done justice, thanks to Sierra and Mr. Feist.

The Good
I played the re-release of the game for Windows, with the Redbook music added, and the music was stellar. Rarely has a game's music matched the action so well. In addition, the storyline to the game was strong; you could tell a professional writer (i.e. Raymond Feist) had a hand in the production of this gem. The characters were fleshed-out, the events in the game were logical, and the game flowed evenly like a book, even organized into chapters like one. The chest-opening sequences were well done, with riddles that added to the charm of this title. Finally, the combat sequences were the perfect touch for a slow-moving story such as this one; the turn-based combat was very reminiscent of chess, and the challenges were neither too easy nor too hard.

The Bad
The graphics were pixellated, and the game's slow pace could become a bit exasperating at times. Also, the character of Pug looked nothing at all like the character was described in the book.

The Bottom Line
This would be a good game to those who truly enjoy a long rpg with strong story elements and turn-based combat. Also, if you are a Raymond Feist fan, you should pick this up. For those who enjoy hack 'n slash type games, however, or for those who prefer a more console-type action-filled rpg, they should not bother with this title. This is a true classic, and a textbook definition of what a true computer role-playing game is.

DOS · by Daniel Reed (28) · 2002

A superb fantasy yarn spun in the modestly-magical world of Midkemia

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.

DOS · by Chris Wright (85) · 2008

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
A flood of nostalgia St. Martyne (3648) Mar 1, 2010
CD and Floppy Unicorn Lynx (181788) Aug 10, 2009
GameTap SharkD (425) Sep 10, 2008
Translating BaK? Ajan (262) Jul 6, 2007

Trivia

Actors

The actors for the pseudo-video and motion capture don't look remotely like they're described by Raymond E. Feist, and some (such as Pug) are downright contradictory.

CD-ROM version

The CD-ROM enhanced version of the game includes additional goodies: * 5-minute interview with Feist * Windows-based hint system * Redbook audio soundtrack

Freeware release

Sierra has released the game for free as promotion for its two sequels. This offer only lasted for a limited time, though. The version which was obtainable through on the Sierra website was buggy and needed a patch to get it working correctly.

Novel

Raymond E. Feist, the author whose Riftwar books Betrayal at Krondor is based on, has actually written a book based on the game entitled Krondor: The Betrayal, the first part of a new series called The Riftwar Legacy. The book has the same basic plot as the game, but of course has been altered somewhat to fit the format as well as to be more consistent with Feist's Midkemia series as a whole.

Feist does display an interesting knowledge of the game, however. For example, the method by which the villain is ultimately defeated in the book is actually a valid tactic for winning the final battle.

Sales

When the Betrayal at Krondor first came out it did so miserably at sales that Sierra canceled all plans for a sequel. Later, Sierra rereleased the game on CD-Rom and the game suddenly became a huge hit. By that time, however, Raymond E. Feist already had a contract with a different publisher.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • June 1994 (Issue #119) – Role-Playing Game of the Year
    • February 1996 (Issue #139) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (155h anniversary issue) - #43 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #76 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • PC Gamer
    • November 1999 - #44 Best Game of All Time

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, Adam Baratz Kalirion, PCGamer77, William Shawn McDonie and WizardX

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

Windows added by Picard.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Tony Austin, formercontrib, Crawly, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger.

Game added September 21, 1999. Last modified January 20, 2024.