Dragonsphere

[b][u]The Good:[/u][/b] + Quite nice pixel graphics + Player-friendly UI + Every single item has its description, often witty :) + You can die in various interesting ways, and when you do, the game loads you back the the immediate action before it. + One of the rare old games where I didn't feel its age particularly took away from the experience [b][u]The Bad:[/u][/b] - Abysmal voice-acting - The plot (at least its beginning) is the blandest "lone royal hero goes on a quest against evil mage" plot ever... - The fairies are damn annoying, with the voice acting even more so. - The game is very difficult. I'm quite familiar with the adventure genre, but I got stuck right at the beginning of each of the three plot paths. Having to consult UHS Hints for everything kinda takes the fun out of playing. [b][u]Verdict:[/u][/b] not an outright 'not recommended', just a kind of 'meh, not really'. Worth taking a look for the graphics, and if you like difficult point & click adventures, but there are other, more enjoyable adventure games nowadays.

BottomLine at the Top: I'm not sure how this one managed to be off my radar for so long. As a connoisseur of P&C adventures I'd like to think I'm familiar with a lot of the titles from the 90's. Not only was I pleasantly surprised at finding a "new" retro P&C but also with how good a game it turned out to be. Highly recommended for the P&C aficionado! Pros ------------------------------------------- -As someone who grew up with 90's P&C adventures, the overall style of this game is very nostalgic for me. -Lord of the Rings-esque story and intro. -I have to say, this game has FANTASTIC sprite animations. Considering the era this game was made makes it even more impressive. I think they must have used rotoscoping or at least had actors act out the movements in the game as a reference. I've seen modern era P&C's that try for this level of sprite quality and still don't come close. -Game allows character to die but auto reloads to before death scene. -Contains an early example of a fast travel map (also seen in King’s Quest VI around this era of P&C gaming.) -Highly detailed "look" descriptions give a good sense of immersion to the game. There are modern P&C's that still have not learned this lesson. -Classic retro style verb interface. -Keeps using the word "ensorcelled" which saying out loud makes me giggle for some reason. Meh. ------------------------------------------- -Voice acting and quality. Accessing the in-game menu shows an option for "CD-ROM options". This game probably came in both a CD and disk-based version. 1994 is right around when games started offering both versions. The CD version usually included higher quality music and voice acting. I'm sure at the time the novelty and uniqueness of having voice and midi music in game was very impressive. Unfortunately, neither has aged well. Music is fine and I have heard worse voice acting in even modern P&C titles. However, the recording quality of voices is very poor and sounds as though they were recorded in a conference room. Not horrendous overall considering the games age and is mostly passable but certainly not fantastic. -Also, it seems as though the CD and non-CD versions of this game shared the programmed intro and ending. There is no voice support in either. It came as a surprise as the game finally started and suddenly, the characters are talking. This was more acceptable for the intro, however after getting used to the voices and not hearing anyone talk during the ending was lame. -Intro is also kind of long. -Dialogue recordings will sometimes continue to play even if you've clicked past the dialogue box. -At $7 asking price for approximately 5-6 hours of game play this game is pricier than I prefer for a game of this age. Picking up on Steam sale is recommended. -There are a bunch of items that are just meant to be "collected" to increase the score (pre-dates Steam achievements but same mentality). Kind of strange and almost seems like they wanted to add more to the story but ran out of time. Cons ------------------------------------------- -Being such an old game, it does require the use of DOSBox. For the most part I was able to play without issues. However, after playing for the first time it loads to a main menu on subsequent game executions. This menu for some reason won't respond to clicking on any of the given options (resume, reload, new game, etc.). Alt-Tabbing out of the game and trying to reopen the window prevents the game from playing Fullscreen. I found hitting the enter key as its loading prevents this from happening. You can also load from DOSBox Daum however I find the graphic colors aren't graded as the original version. -Also, DOSBox does not support the Steam overlay or screenshot support. As I've come to enjoy taking game screenshots and this title is currently lacking in uploaded screenshots (now I see why) it was disappointing. -Being a 90's game, it unfortunately succumbs to the problems of pixel hunting and moon logic. There are several scenes where I would never have figured out where an item was without referencing a walkthrough. I imagine that in the days of dial-up internet it would have been incredibly frustrating trying to figure out how proceed in the game. (Most likely there was an actual printed hint guide for sale at a software store. For the younger P&C aficionados out there yes, this was an actual thing people spent money on.) -References from early in the game that are easy to ignore (descriptions in the diary's for example) are required to solve puzzles much later in the game. (A very 90's P&C game problem). -I really wish the guy would shut up during the gem gambling game. (If you buy the game, which you should, you'll see what I mean.) Appropriate hardware for this game, including a CD-ROM drive, in the 1994 would have cost thousands and thousands of dollars. This game probably retailed for $50 back then (which is around $87.58 today!). Point and click adventure gaming in the 90's was very expensive! Getting a DOS game to work properly even with the proper hardware was often a difficult chore. For the time however, once you got it to work, I'm sure this game would have been tremendously impressive to the PC enthusiast back then. To me it still holds up well today. For the low price you can get this on Steam sale, the relative stability of the game on DOSBox, and quality of gameplay and story I'd highly recommend this one to all P&C aficionados!

It's well known by most gaming enthusiasts that the cult-classic Dragonsphere, originally released by Microprose in 1994, is available for free on GOG. This fact would account for the mere 8 reviews and 20,000 purchased copies on Steam, as the mindset goes "why pay for something when you can get it for free"? Well, to be brutally honest to those naysayers, supporting Nightdive in order to get more of these classic titles updated to work on newer systems is the reason. However, is Dragonsphere worth shelling out the money for? The game begins with a fairly long, and beautifully crafted, opening sequence that acts as sort of a prologue to the main plot. Twenty years ago, the father of the newly appointed King Callash stopped an evil sorcerer, Sanwe, from taking over the land of Gran Callahach. However, every twenty years Sanwe threatens to break free of his confinement, and his progress is told through the mystical dragonsphere; when it cracks and bursts, the evil wizard will be unleashed unto the land. With his father having passed away, King Callash sets out to stop Sanwe. I must say that a good plot twist to any game can make a massive difference. Dragonsphere is split up in to two sections, and the latter half is the one that truly caught my attention; in fact, it made me change my rating of the game by one entire point. The first half of the game's story is rather dull, and filled with rather drab information about the surrounding lands that you're never going to intimately remember. However, the plot twist and overall second half of the game is excellent, and it really ties the entire story together into an unforgettable one. It's easy to see why this game is a cult-classic. In typical 1990's point-and-click fashion, some of the puzzles in this title are difficult, and at times a little cryptic. In my experience, some of them even require outright trial-and-error guessing as opposed to being able to find any in-game solution. Even more difficult to find is a decent walkthrough guide when you're stuck; although I was able to find a decent one, and having used it still clocked me in at around 4 hours of game time. With that being said, if you're able to complete this game without any guides, your feeling of accomplishment and the rewards that you will sustain will feel amazing; as more often than not, when you complete a really difficult task the game rewards you with both a cutscene and long, story-driven dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, Dragonsphere does come with some pretty cheesy voice acting, made all the more astonishing for a game of the 90's era by also being layered with some sound effects. Even non-human characters have been put through a voice changing program. Every line is accounted for, sans any narrative that does not belong to a character. While on the topic of audio, the music in this title is highly memorable, and even after you've shut the game off you will be hearing the semi-dark chiptunes still playing in your head. Of course, the slightly darkened music fits well with the slightly darkened graphic art. Even in more colorful areas, this game still has a certain gothic appeal to it. Even back in 1994, the graphics present in this title were considered high quality, and it definitely has a certain aura to it that no modern retro-revival game could ever hope to replicate. I'm not entirely sure if Dragonsphere uses digitalized actors (ala Mortal Kombat) in some areas, as the 3D sprite movement during things like jumping into a well and climbing a mountain are extremely well animated. While I wouldn't say that you should jump and give over a full $7.79 CAD while Dragonsphere is available on GOG for free, I will say that if you're a fan of old cult-classic point-and-click titles that you should definitely grab it when it's on sale. I personally bought this title for $1.09 CAD, and I couldn't be more impressed and awestruck by the craftsmanship of the game. Originally, I was going to merely recommend Dragonsphere for just the audible and graphical experience, but the story really does pick up about halfway through the game, and for that I've raised my score. This is definitely an underrated classic that shouldn't be missed out on. [h1]Rating: [b]4.0/5.0[/b] - Excellent, highly worth playing.[/h1] The Horror Network [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/28221963/]Curator[/url] | [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thehorrornetwork]Group[/url] Click for Gore

[h1]Uninspiring point and click from the early 90s, give this one a pass[/h1] The command system (click on verb and object to do things) was cutting edge for the time, and the rotoscoping of the characters was high-tech for the very low-resolution graphics. But the story and characters are bland, there's nothing remarkable with the artwork, and the puzzles are not hugely interesting. Give this one a pass.

Beatiful graphics and nice animations for the time. Dull, cliched storyline, the most wooden voiceacting ever seen in commercial entertainment, clumsy interface with way too many verbs and huge, almost unreadable, "medieval-style" fonts for captions. And to top it off, the puzzles are poorly designed and the overall game is too short (fortunately). Microprose' ambitious attemt at cracking the then lucrative adventuregame market was doomed from the start, but it holds a mysterious charm despite doing *everything* spectacularly wrong. I do hope steam will distribute the superior Phantom of the opera soon though. Buy it if you love retro adventuregames.

这种用鼠标点点点的冒险游戏，让我想起了小时候玩过的凯兰迪亚传奇之命运之手。 要不断的重复尝试才能通过一个一个场景，真不知道当时的我怎么会有如此的耐心。 现在看起来这样的游戏真的很无聊啊。 因为情怀而点了推荐。

This is one of the worst adventure games I have ever had the misfortune of trying to play. What puzzles I did run across were entertaining, the issue is the game gives you absolutely nothing for a majority of it. Even the instruction manual's advice is effectively "if something doesn't work, try something else." This is a game where you have to go through every screen trying to look at, take, open, close, push, pull EVERYTHING until something works. And that's just an exercise in tedium. The items don't give you clues as to where they're going to be used, the environments have a lot of things to look at but almost all of it are red herrings. And worse, the game is *SLOW*, plodding. Even though there's a button to skip some of the walking, it barely skips any of it and a lot of times doesn't do anything at all. The entire design of this game is to make you waste your time with endless trial and error. And I cannot tolerate it any longer.

I first played this game when I was a child (born in the 1980's), and I was absolutely in love with it. I made my own walkthrough for it using MS Paint and NotePad, that is how much I cared! When I saw it on Steam, I just had to get it. The puzzles are fun, the worlds are interesting, the voice acting is hit and miss but I love it in some places (like the living vines), and it's one of those games where your choices matter because some can get result in your death. It was just a terrific experience back in the day and I still love it now. Give it a chance!

Karşımızda değeri bilinmemiş "kayıp" bir adventure klasiği olduğunu söyleyerek konuya gireyim. Microprose 90'ların başında üç adventure oyunu piyasaya sürmüştü. Bunlardan Space Quest taklidi olarak tabir edebileceğim Rex Nebular basbayağı kötüydü. Phantom Of The Opera öyküsü üzerine kurulmuş Return Of The Phantom fena sayılmayacak bir polisiye adventure idi. Dragonsphere ise her ne kadar Sierra'nın meşhur King's Quest serisine öykünse de aynı zamanda kendine özgü olmayı başarabilen bir oyun ve Microprose'un tartışmasız en iyi adventure oyunu. En önemlisi döneminin en iyi tasarlanmış, en iyi yazılmış, en iyi senaryolu adventure oyunlarından biri bu. Grafikler ve sesler dönemi için gayet iyi. Yaratılan dünya, mekanlar, karakterler ve hikayenin sürükleyiciliği oyunun asıl kuvvetli yönleri. Hele ki oyunun ortalarında bir plot twist var ki benzeri oyunlarda çok nadir rastlanan bir mesele ve çok çok iyi kotarıldığını söyleyebilirim. Oyunun kötü yanları maalesef dönemin bir sürü oyununda da karşımıza çıkan pixel hunting durumu, maalesef bazı bilmeceleri bu yüzden çözmek epey zorlaşıyor. Her bilmeceyi mantık çerçevesinde çözemiyor olmamız ve biraz deneme-yanılma durumu olması bir diğer zayıflık. Son olarak oyunun en kötü yanı ana karakterin çok yavaş yürümesi. Ancak oyunun tasarımı ve senaryosu o kadar iyi ki bunlara bile katlanmanızı sağlıyor. Eğer 90'ların adventure oyunlarına meraklıysanız ve bu oyunu denemediyseniz mutlaka şans verin.

First RPG I ever played. I am thrilled that it was ported to Steam. If you are hard core at puzzles, keep good notes. If not, get the walk through; some parts get sticky. Well designed , though dated in graphics. Twists in plot are numerous.