Rings of Medusa

The Good
Not totally new, come to think of it, but few games were good in introducing "originality" as what Rings of Medusa has done me thinks.

The game is a "Map Based" game, meaning the whole interface is one big map. Besides the "Map Mode" you have the (of course) "Battle Mode", the "Town Mode", the "Tower Mode" and the "Casino Mode".

You enter the game with the Map Mode interface. Beautiful graphics I'd might add by the way. The map mode is centered on your character on the map which is just a dot or cursor (me thinks). Your position is always accompanied by a compas (or is it a sextant?) that indicates your longitude and latitude, which is essential in finding treasures.

The town mode occurs when your character visits a town. The map mode then shifts to the town mode interface. In towns you can either attack it (assuming you have an army at your disposal), gamble (which shifts you to the casino mode), trading goods and other stuff which I can't say I remember...sorry.

Oh, there is a difference in options whether you own or don't own a town. Owning a town will give you additonal options like town garrison, taxes etc. (Etc. referring to stuff I don't remember either...sorry.)

The casino mode when you enter the town's local gambling den. It's basically your average card game interface. The games available are black jack and poker (me thinks). You could basically play cards here more than you play the game sometimes.

The last interface is the Tower Mode. This is where you train your green soldiers into the elite envy of the land. Each unit (examples: Infantry, Wizards, Dragon Riders), have their primary stats (e.g. Strength, Intelligence, Cunning, etc.). For an example, Infantry would no doubt have Strength as its primary stat. Therefore the best race for infantry would be Giants (other races are human, halfing, dwarfs, elfs, etc.). At the Tower you can pay gold to have your armies increase their stats. The only downside is (well not really a downside) it is rather illogical to have Halfings have their strength to the same level as Giants. So basically if you have the cash, you can have each unit up to 100% for each stat, so in the end race doesn't matter much, it only matters in the beggining.

Oh, if you own the tower I think you can train for less price or free...can't remember which.

What I like most about this game is the many options there are to get money. You can gamble, find treasures, collect taxes (assuming you own a town...and there are many towns by the way) and of course my favorite by trading. This game is actually an "Encharted Waters" via land...uh that would make it encharted lands...nevermind. There are various goods you can trade from one city to another, from cotton to slaves...gotta love making money.

The Bad
There's not much not to like about this game I think. Except that finding treasures and ring's can be very irritating as they only give little clues to where they're located. Other than that not much worth noting...except the color "PINK" doesn't seem to fit in the game. You'll probably understand what I mean when you've played the game. Hehe.

The Bottom Line
Still worth playing by the way.