Prophecy of the Shadow

The Good
Do I like this game? No. Hahaha.

Honestly, this has got to be one of the most irritating RPG's I've ever played. The only reason why I ever finished this game is that I happened to come across the clue book.

Anyway, the only thing worth mentioning is that this game is probably one pioneer in bringing "live actors" in a game. Each time you meet an important character, you have a cinematic image of him/her for a couple of seconds.

Well, the game itself is your average 3rd Person Perspective game in those days. Up down left right, statistics, the works. Nothing new worth mentioning really.

The Bad
Boy, this game has to have one of the worst story lines ever created by man. I've seen worst but one would expect better ideas from Strategic Simulations Inc. Probably why they went down under.... anyway, as I said the story line is weak. Your master gets killed, you avenge him and end up fulfilling a prophecy that saves the world. Been there done that...my God! What will they think of next? Strange people actually get paid to think up such ideas.

The Bottom Line
If I were to describe this game to others, I'd say Homer Simpson would have better ideas in creating a game...

The Good
This game has very nice VGA graphics. It also might have the first use of live action digitized "video". The interface is solid for the DOS era. That's about all the good things that I can say about it.

The Bad
The story is the standard kill the foozle. The NPCs are interchangeable and repetitive. So the writing isn't going to draw you in.

The combat is neither fun nor strategic. Combat is real time where you just keep mashing the attack button over and over till they're dead. You can use ranged weapons but it's not really any fun either. Their aren't many puzzles, and the ones that are there are too simple.

The character development is pretty simple too for an RPG.

The Bottom Line
It's a single character, real time combat RPG. Think Zelda without the fun combat, good puzzles and charm. Or Diablo without the satisfying character development and treasure hunting. It's not necessarily a bad game. It's just meant to be a beginner level RPG but it ends up being extremely boring.