Mars Saga

The Good
This was my introduction to a party-based computer RPG. I saw it in the store, noticed the "Infocom" logo, and figured I would be in for a treat.

I wasn't disappointed - I played this game for quite a long while. I was impressed with the party system, and the need to have different characters with specialized skills (for example, carting around a skilled Computer Programmer in your party allows you a very high level of access to the cities' public computer networks - just be sure to keep him off the front line in combat).

The game world seemed enormous, and there was more than enough to do if you simply wanted to ignore the plot and play.

The Bad
Unfortunatly, when I did attempt to follow the plot, and actually complete the game, I noticed that the interval between random combat encounters was becoming smaller.. and smaller.. until it disappeared entirely, and I was being attacked by mobs of enemies every turn. Some of them didn't even "fit", such as, getting attacked by surface aliens while inside a city.

Sadly, this caused me to stop playing entirely - getting from one end of a city to the other took close to forever.

The Bottom Line
If you've got an old enough system to run this game, it can be an entertaining distraction for a while, until you progress to the point where you're constantly hassled by enemies, and can no longer progress at a resonable rate.