Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown

Played many, many hours with one of the early versions (bought from website) before also getting the steam version. Absolutely recommend if you enjoyed the Gold Box games, Bard's Tale, Ultima, Darklands, and other classics. Should be a lot of fun if you enjoyed more recent games such as Dungeons of Chaos, Amberland, Knights of the Chalice, etc. This games doesn't have everything that the others have, but it has parts and pieces that compose a satisfying dungeon crawling, party-building, light puzzle solving, grand questing, old-school format adventure! If you like this genre, then try it (you can always refund if it isn't you) because it will have positives for everyone who likes these types of games. As I got deeper into the game, filled-out the party (recruit not create), and advanced the storyline I had the WONDERFUL experience that the challenge level remained steady, the plot grew, and the gameplay had more aspects to it. Grindy at times, but not in a bad way. 5/5 stars

I uninstalled Elden Ring because all I wanted to play was this.

I was surprised at how quickly this retro RPG transported me back to my childhood days of playing Ultima and kept me playing for hours on end. The exploration and maps are fantastic - you can tell the designer put a lot of thought into them. The dungeons are better designed than those in AAA games in many cases. I actually felt a sense dread and danger while exploring certain large dungeons, which I think is rare. This is largely to due to the fact that you can't rest to instantly heal, and must rely primarily on healing spells (potions to a lesser extent). Spells take energy, and energy can only be restored by rations and potions. The combat mechanics are simple but fun, and allows for turn based combat that doesn't take too long. There are many different monsters with different strengths and weaknesses that you have to figure out in order to fight them effectively. Magic items are rare, but definitely worth finding. Overall, I can't recommend this game enough!

Despite being restricted to such archaic hardware, Realms of Antiquity The Shattered Crown is the next step on the evolutionary chain of Ultima inspired role playing games. The world of Realms of Antiquity is fun to explore, in fact the world design is this games single strongest aspect, and is full of things to discover. Either it be loot or entire dungeons! What truly makes the world design great is how diverse each area is while not becoming a theme park like so many other games. Logically telegraphed transition zones. you will start seeing cacti and brown dirt before entering the gulch. Areas placed in a manner that is environmentally logical. No scorching desert adjacent to icy plains. Towns themed around their environment. Stone buildings in the highlands and mud brick designs in the desert. While it seems odd to assign so much praise for what should be relatively minor aesthetic choices. It is important to remember that all of these things are all marks of passion from the single developer. That he made the game not solely for profit but because he wanted to make something outstanding, something ignored or even forgotten by some many people in the industry today.

Great RPG with an intuitive control scheme, superb exploration, quality world building/narrative and a well balanced/fair combat system that isn't very grind reliant in the least (leveling does grant you some additional life/stamina/a skill point which are useful but for the most part if you're really struggling on a particular encounter/area you really ought to go elsewhere, the game is very open and working your way through a tough section will always reward you with useful equipment, which is never stat gated). The inventory limit can be a bit challenging to manage at first but makes finding new recruits all the more rewarding (assuming you're starting as a solo hero, you can also create a party of up to four custom characters to start your adventure as well). Visuals are colorful and very readable (for the most part, there's a few issues where large boss tier enemies share the same enemy icon as a smaller less threatening variant). Outside the starting splash screen there's no music so you might want to load up an OST/podcast of your choice as you play. Dev is very responsive and helpful, so if you're looking for a high quality game with high quality support look no further.

Great retro Ultima inspired RPG - highly recommended if you're into old school RPGs where you have to pay attention, map where you go and overall aren't mindlessly led where the next objective is by a hovering point on the horizon :) Keep up the good work with updates too!

A good game that captures the spirit of games like Ultima 4 / Questron / Magic Candle... if you can afford to spend the time it requires to play it. My gripe with it is that's It's sometimes slow paced, with only a few keyboard commands that don't make party management user friendly. It would be nice to have some kind of option since it's emulated (like a key combo to speed up things as featured in some emulators) to speed up the game when the user wishes it so. Crossing large plains or fighting weak monsters is sometimes a chore. As for the developer, he is a very nice person and follows closely the developement of his game and tries to be as helpful as possible to solve problems you might encounter. Having played a lot more after my first failed endeavor (some characters are really more powerful than others and I refuse to pick up the hero, that would be too easy... why was my first character a thief? I wonder...), I sometimes feel the constant respawning of monsters in cerain dungeons very tedious, that would be my number one problem with some areas: it is either a waste of time for powerful characters or a hamper on game progression and suspense. The interesting storyline and the scope of the game are impressive for something meant to be played on an oldie computer of times gone by. Maybe if this game was ported to Android, it would be a nice time killer there too.