Anvil of Dawn- any good?

[Sinatar]

I guess this game doesn't feature sidestep?

Nope, due to the prerendered nature of the backgrounds it would have increased the animation budget significantly.

 

[janior]

OLD GAME GOOD

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ya no sidestep cheating (er feature). Move thine ass on traps esp boulders. I don't recall a stat or skill cap. After finishing the game a few times I fucked around with UGE (universal game editor) and tweaked shit around. I still was able to use points to level up skills and stats. Its been a hell of a long time.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Game's got some cool combat animations tho

 

[Lemming42]

Just gonna bump this shit rather than make a new thread:

Playing this properly for the first time and I love it. I'm liking it a lot more than Lands of Lore and I think it's great fun. The dialogue scenes are all top quality, tons of personality in both the NPCs and the player. I'm a 7-ft-tall Amazonian warrior but I talk very delicately, like I've been to finishing school. This is wicked.

Nearly shat myself at a giant ghostly fist flying towards me out of the darkness. A fist striking me from behind - very symbolic.

The mechanics do all feel a bit barebones and the fact that you're a single character rather than a party does feel like something of a drawback, but I don't really give a shit in the end because the dungeon crawling is so much fun. Fantastic graphics, decent music, good dungeon design, can't go wrong.

The only thing that's really pissing me off is the rest mechanic, where you have to wait like five minutes real time to heal. What the fuck? I can restore my health and mana by going for a piss and making a drink in real life. Bizarre. Oh also fuck inventory management. I'm carrying around a sack that contains another sack that contains eight boulders, and if I drop it, I won't be able to proceed with the game. Fuck!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

By the end of the game i had so many rocks/boulders that i could build a small house.

 

[anvi]

It's what I named myself after. Sort of. I agree with the criticisms though.

 

[Daemongar]

The only thing that's really pissing me off is the rest mechanic, where you have to wait like five minutes real time to heal. What the fuck? I can restore my health and mana by going for a piss and making a drink in real life. Bizarre. Oh also fuck inventory management. I'm carrying around a sack that contains another sack that contains eight boulders, and if I drop it, I won't be able to proceed with the game. Fuck!

I finished this game this year - after starting as the thief gal years ago. This time I created a custom char at startup because of mana regen being annoying as hell. I found that Mana regen rate is tied to your power, so a low power char just has to wait forever for mana to regen. This time I created a char with middlesome stats across the board rather than a low power but high str or dex. I still had to step away from time to time tho - ok, need my mana back - I'll go watch TV for 30 minutes or such.

There was a really unique but fantastic (but hard to notice in a game so huge) mechanic of running into the characters you didn't select during your playthrough. The other players you didn't choose were also given the task of finishing the game. You find out how they do as you progress.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I can't recall, but can't a mob get hit locked in this game? It has been a while.

 

[Lemming42]

Just finished the underwater maze. Couldn't find the final pearl to open the central area. Went back through the entire level, checking every single already-opened chest, nothing. Forensically scoured every tile in the dungeon for an hour, almost cried at one point. Turns out the pearl was in fact already in my inventory and buried beneath a Magic Plant inside a sack that was inside another sack, where I'd unthinkingly placed it upon first entering the dungeon when I wasn't aware it was a crucial item, and then forgotten about it. Fantastic. I've been playing modern games too much lately, I just got filtered by my own fucking inventory.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ah! Anvil of dawn inventory system; a thing to love and hate.

 

[V_K]

You just have to be strategic with it - a sack for rocks, a chest for equipment, a sack for anything that looks like it could be a puzzle item etc.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Yep,

 

[Tacgnol]

I always found the environments and movement style quite immersive in both this and Stonekeep. Though Anvil of Dawn has much more variety in environments.

 

[Lemming42]

Does encumbrance matter at all? I'm like 50kg over my limit and I've noticed absolutely no negative effects. I can't imagine it does matter because surely the game would be impossible if you stuck to the limit, given the amount of shit you're expected to have with you at any given time. I seem to require at least two boulder-filled sacks of 50kg~ each just to make it through mandatory pressure plate puzzles.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I actually DNF'd out of this because of the rocks. The need to put eleventy million pounds of rubble on every switch ruined the game for me. Just let me drop a single stone ala EotB and be done with it. I fail to see the gameplay revelance of dragging a quarry around the entire game with you.

 

[Zlaja]

There was a really unique but fantastic (but hard to notice in a game so huge) mechanic of running into the characters you didn't select during your playthrough. The other players you didn't choose were also given the task of finishing the game. You find out how they do as you progress

This was a cool feature and I wish more similar games had it. Makes the game feel more immersive. Also, it would be even cooler if you could encounter these characters as enemies in the game in the form of mini-boss battles.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe undead or possessed or betrayal in the case of the mirelurk if you had to fight them. Generally, I thinknat various points they have lost their will to continue depending on which you choose. The scripting here isn't terrible for a game you don't get to create a purely new profile. The mage makes me think of the Conan the barbarian movie (Akiro 'The Wizard'), the tall black chick is like from Conan the Destroyer (Zula is a Darfarian warrior') The other influences I don't know.

Hmmmm......

In the movie Zula was a thief/raider rescued by Conan, who joins his brigade. Zula, a female warrior in this movie, was the last of her tribe. Zula later becomes the Captain of the Guard in Shadizar, replacing Bombaata. It should be noted that despite being a fierce warrior, she is afraid of rats.

Lol... ok. I won't recruit her in my rat war.

 

[NecroLord]

Ok,this game looks really good.
I am definitely getting it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I would have liked a few more in this line. Looking at Dreamforge developed products; not too bad.

 

[Lemming42]

Making my way through the roots of the Elder Tree, getting poisoned every five steps. This game is superb, it reminds me a lot of TES Arena in some ways - single-character-based real time combat mechanics that seem disappointingly simple at first, but then start to lend themselves perfectly to the flow of the game, where systematically exploring and clearing vast multi-level dungeons becomes an absolute pleasure. As with Arena, the game really gives the sense of being on a long and difficult adventure characterised by high concept shit (both games have you go inside the roots of a giant tree, for example) and success over incredible odds, with a tangible sense of constant progression. The pacing is great, just as any given dungeon is starting to grate you find yourself whisked off to another dungeon with wildly different visuals and themes, or you meet one of the game's brilliant NPCs.

I love some of the shit that's there just to pointlessly annoy the player, you don't see much of that in videogames nowadays. Like the collapsed mine where you've got to use a spell to clear the rubble, but the floor itself inexplicably drains your mana.

 

[Daemongar]

There was a really unique but fantastic (but hard to notice in a game so huge) mechanic of running into the characters you didn't select during your playthrough. The other players you didn't choose were also given the task of finishing the game. You find out how they do as you progress

This was a cool feature and I wish more similar games had it. Makes the game feel more immersive. Also, it would be even cooler if you could encounter these characters as enemies in the game in the form of mini-boss battles.

I was sort of hoping this is where it was going as I met several but not all of my co-heroes in the journey. They are probably all there but I may not have made the right turn somewhere and missed them. There was a part near the end where one of heroes - the lizard guy - is killed right in front of you. It would have been nice if you could have saved him as well

 

[Gentle Player]

Does encumbrance matter at all? I'm like 50kg over my limit and I've noticed absolutely no negative effects. I can't imagine it does matter because surely the game would be impossible if you stuck to the limit, given the amount of shit you're expected to have with you at any given time. I seem to require at least two boulder-filled sacks of 50kg~ each just to make it through mandatory pressure plate puzzles.

It's been an age since I played it so I might be wrong, but I don't think it does. I had the same problem as you with carrying bags full of rocks and dropping them at the dungeon entrance, coming back to them when needed, and eventually just gave up and started carrying them with me all the time - I didn't notice any difference.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I would have liked a few more in this line. Looking at Dreamforge developed products; not too bad.

The Summoning was p. fun.

 

[Lemming42]

Finished!

Ending was vaguely anti-climactic in a way that many games of the era are, but it's really cool how you can

spoilers for a nearly 30-year-old game

survive the ending by equipping two things that the game makes it quite clear can avert death. Also lol @ the ending if you try to just do the obviously logical thing of throwing the dark slag into the anvil of dawn, rather than doing the melodramatic leap the game wants you to do.

No idea why this game isn't on the Codex Top 100, especially since so much insanely awful shit managed to get on there instead. The mechanics are a bit simple, and started to grate towards the end (until you get the final two swords that turn every enemy into dog food, at least) but the atmosphere is second-to-none and the story and setting are properly cool. Dungeon design is solid throughout and the themes for each dungeon are really nice and varied, like the reeds plain where you have to carve your own path through the level, or the fire mountain where the floor just randomly opens up and plunges you into the lower levels.