Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown

创世纪味道浓重，手册内的地图非常吸引我，画面虽然复古但是做的很漂亮，就是看久了色彩饱和过高会有些伤眼，现在假大空的开放世界真的应该回头看一看

Extremely impressive old-school tile-based RPG. It has colorful tiles that grow on you the more you play, a surprising amount of dialogue considering this was made for the TI99/4A, and a massive world with a lot of interesting maps (some of which are fiendishly designed) to explore and secrets to find. It sports a wide variety of spells, items, damage types, and armor types--it's a far deeper game than the ones originally released for 80s machines. Some areas are much more challenging than others, and you have options in the order in which do finish quests and areas. It has simplified controls, so it's not one of those old school games that uses every key on your keyboard for something. If you grew up with Ultima, etc. I don't think you can fail to be amazed by RoA. And if you didn't, this would be a great way to experience a perfected version of what some of the 80s RPGs were trying to achieve. There's no need to grind, but in the later part of the game, depending on how you have played, you may wish for fewer time-consuming combats once your party becomes too powerful for the vast majority of enemies. The game does provide a few means of reducing the incidence of these. For added difficulty you can play with a reduced party size and forgo allowing NPCs to join. On a blind playthrough, at standard emulator speed, 100+ hours is a reasonable estimate for completion time. Most of this is spent in combat. Pay attention to the readme.txt to learn how to turn off the included emulator's Appmode so that you can speed up the emulator if desired. I would recommend against doing this until you've played enough to have a good feel for how the game works. Realms of Antiquity is a blast, and you're in for a treat!

Excellent old-school Ultima-vibes game (I'd say it's ultima III with Ultima V-ish graphics and some Ultima II grade silly thrown in here and there) with a very responsive, helpful, active developer behind it.

I bought the collector's edition of Realms of Antiquity on release day at the end of 2020, and last year I finally gathered the hardware required to play it on a real TI-99. My friend and I had a blast playing through the game this past summer (manual and cloth map in hand). The gameplay can be a bit slow at times, particularly once you get to the maze-like dungeons later in the game. You should definitely try out the CPU Overdrive setting in the emulator (set ‘enableSpeedKeys’ to ‘1’ in the INI file; press F7 to enable and F6 to disable), which essentially removes the input lag and loading times present on real hardware. It took us roughly 50 hours (not reflected on Steam) spread across about a dozen weekly sessions to complete the game fairly thoroughly. You should probably back up your save file every once in a while, just in case you end up stuck in a bad situation or happen to come across a (rare) bug. Also, avoid verifying file integrity through Steam - I believe that will delete your save file. I would highly recommend Realms of Antiquity to anyone interested in retro turn-based RPGs. The open world is satisfying to explore, the lore and sidequests were interesting, and combat remained engaging throughout the game's runtime (though I did find a few violet spells to be a bit overpowered). Give this game a shot; it's worth the price!

This is one of the most engaging RPGs I've played. The combat is interesting, the classes and characters feel different and the magic system is unique. It's a relatively new game that operates within the limits of an older system (The TI-99/4a and yes, it runs on original hardware if you choose). This does not, however, limit the game at all. In fact, in my opinion, it distils it into a well-crafted open world experience. There's a lot to discover here, quests, characters, plots, a world to explore; constrained only by your party's strength and preparedness. There are some things to get used to. The magic system is colour-based, using books of a certain colour to allow the characters to cast associated spells. This lends into the need to prepare correctly as inventory space is limited. It may be a negative depending on your outlook but I think it contributes to the game. There's a quick reference guide and a manual, which can be ignored, but I recommend you read it; it's a very useful guide to things like magic and also gives a good overview of all aspects in the game, there's also a hints section which gives some non-spoiler hints on areas you may be stuck on. I genuinely love this game. The world is interesting, the mechanics are satisfying, the stories are compelling and there's various outcomes to actions. This, coupled with the character types and various party make-ups, make it very replayable and enjoyable to discover.

A stunning achievement that would have been an instant classic in the 1980s, this game is also very fun in 2025. Plays similarly to Ultima 4 and Ultima 5 in terms of combat and exploration, although I think both the combat and the exploration are done better here. It feels like this was a 1980s era RPG made with the knowledge of the past few decades of RPG development. I especially liked the secrets and exploration. The combat itself was fun, but there eventually was so much of it that it got a bit tedious towards the end. I also would have liked the ability to have harder difficulty settings, but I think this can still be enjoyed by people who like a really difficult min/max experience like me, even if that is not really what this game is. I was also surprised that the story was actually pretty good, and I was stunned at the size of the game. This is really a must buy if you enjoyed 1980s RPGs and want to play one again. I'm a little bewildered at the low number of reviews and therefore perhaps sales. The game I played before this one was Moonring, which, while free, has had thousands of players. I would say I preferred this game slightly over Moonring, so it's sad so few people have played this when it's clearly a genre and graphic style that people are okay with. I'm not sure if it's because it's running on a Ti-99/4a emulator or what (which is absolutely no issue, by the way). For that reason, I hope the developer might consider a PC build for his next game, hopefully a sequel to this one! Finally, because I have various issues with my hands, I played this game entirely with my voice controlling keys, since it has no mouse use. That was actually ideal for me, so I appreciated it!

An engrossing open-world RPG a la Ultima, the likes of which are rarely made these days. You'll want to take notes, draw maps, and save before you try anything foolhardy. Excellent writing and a world that's genuinely fun to discover elevate it to greatness.