Avadon: The Black Fortress
Daily Review
Status: Unfinished
Currently: 3rd major story quest.
So, I never really got a chance to be a huge fan of old school PC RPGs. Mostly because I usually had a PC that lagged way behind what the current games were up to at the time, and if I was going to spend what limited funds I had on a new game, I would rather it be on one I knew would work (aka a console game). Still, loved the Baldur's Gate and similar series.
This game will definately not win awards for graphic design. You can see from the little image I grabbed for its label that the 3d graphics are about on par with...well, an old school PC RPG. Still, its fitting, and the game overall holds together really well so far. The writing and story is nice, it really doesn't dumb down the combat for you, although class advancement is pretty linear. You get one stat point, a specialization after a while which is just skill points, and 2 skill points per level. You have a skill 'tree', but they connect to each other and require each other so much you're pretty much going to use the whole tree anyway. Also, while the writing for the NPCs so far gives them fairly interesting personalities, since they have the exact same build type as you would have if you were playing that class, there is no difference between playing a main character fighter with the NPC mage...or a main character mage with the NPC fighter. I will be replaying the game at least once on higher difficulties and to nail a few acheivements, but not 4 times, especially since there's not enough difference to warrant playing every class.
As a note, I am playing this in a sort of self-imposed challenge. I'm on normal difficulty, but one of the achievements is to get through the entire game, and only bring along one companion on each journey. Notably after your first adventure or so, you can bring two, so I'm limiting my own party noticeably. Still, it hasn't adversely affected me too bad, and has actually kept normal mode challenging. It is nice to see everyone gets experience even when you don't use them, so if I did want to swap out the mage for someone else, I'm not screwed. The only major gripe I have is that any enemy with stun abilities will tear your face off if you regularly fail to resist them, since they manage to recharge them fast enough to keep you perma-stunlocked. This is actually how I died for the first, second, third, and fourth times, due to a side quest involving basilisks. Little ones were OK, got to the mother, combat starts, boom, entire party stunned with cone of effect, by the time stun wears off, stunned again. Insert facerape, game over screen, and thankfulness for auto saves, even if it was last map switch (and not sub-map switch).
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