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Siege of Avalon: Anthology re-release

Acrux

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2019
Messages
1,489
Yeah, it's been open source for some time now (2011, I think)?

Works great in Windows 10, too, with some minor effort.
 
Joined
Oct 25, 2012
Messages
227
Damn, I misread the title as "Siege of Avellone" and thought sounds interesting... Then I realized such a game would most likely consist of getting mauled by wolves, woke bitches and Back Stabbers. Fuck, I need to go to sleep now.
 

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
SAD that they don't make hack and slash games like this anymore. Divine divinity and siege of avalon is how hack and slash games should be made.

Path of exile and titan quest shouldnt be considered rpgs...
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
All of the hack and slash games people love have grid based movement.

Unpopular opinion: this is not a coincidence.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,086
Location
Bulgaria
Really nice game,very good writing,decent levelling system and bad/mediocre combat. In the end it is highly enjoyable game,had replayed it a few times,even bought this version :). Would recommend it to old school fans and storyfags. The writing is really really good.
 

Acrux

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2019
Messages
1,489
I tried it on Steam. Runs okay, but not quite as well for me as the abandonware version. For instance, the cursor had some flickering. Honestly, the free version with some slight modding works so well, I'm not seeing a need for this one. It's nice that it's being reintroduced for people though.
 
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EldarEldrad

Savant
Joined
Sep 13, 2017
Messages
253
Location
Russia
I've just completed the GOG anthology of the game and I wish to write my thoughts.

This is an episodic game consisting of six chapters each spanning for 4-9 hours. There are options to start a mage, fighter or scout (aka archer), I sticked to mage and it was the right decision, because playing as a mage was irritating enough, but I am not sure if it is possible to beat the game with pure fighter. Experts say it is impossible, but maybe someone knows better.

Nevertheless you free to train any attributes or skills, so you can play as spellsword or any other crazy build you can end with. You definitely need magic as I say, but otherwise, you can use armor, weapon and other stuff according to your style of play. Character advancement is fine, scaling through the game is significant. Combat on the other hand is a bad copy from Diablo - it is tedious, boring and full of trash mobs. See also description of later chapters below.

The story is somewhat intriguing and good overall at the beginning but loses some grip near the end. There are a lot of texts, logs, dialogs and books, and the writing quality is very adequate for a CRPG.

Speaking of Chapters here are my thoughts:

1. The best chapter. Starting a bit slow, with the possibility to catch the nasty bug in one sidequest, but decent and intriguing.

2. Here comes a lot of backtracking and trash combat. The story is still good, but combat becomes much worse if you take companions into your party. Any fight with allies turns into a circus with running in circles, friendly fire (remember Ian from Fallout1? In this game your archer companion will shoot your ass every other fight) and random deaths of your allies because of stupid AI. Better not take them.

3. This and the next two are optional, but I do not advise you to skip them, maybe except the fifth. The amount of backtracking increases, but this chapter is pretty good as soon as you withstand trash encounters everywhere.

4. Here comes the tedium. The idea of this chapter is interesting - infiltrating the enemy camp and stealing, killing and looting everything your can. But in practice game introduces here endless spawns of enemies and invulnerable enemies. These instruments used here to enforce a stealth approach but it looks unnatural as hell because your hero already so strong that can kill dozens of enemies in a second.

5. Clusterfuck chapter. The game introduces mage enemies and mage duels in the game are about who is the first to cast Hold on its enemy. If you faster - you kill an enemy while it is paralyzed. If he is faster - you load the game. It turns tedious combat into random tedious irritating combat. Good luck in surviving this chapter.

6. Clusterfuck chapter 2. Here comes the end and all bad elements come together with the final boss being A Big Bad Mage. In theory, the story comes to conclusion organically, with a bit of drama and should be satisfying but in practice chapter writing performed pretty average and uninspiring.

In general, Siege of Avalon is not a bad game. It is mediocre with the good story and atmosphere in its first half and bad combat and a lot of tedium in its second half.
 

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,063
Codex needs to start a fundraiser to get Avalon, Inquisitor and Prelude to Darkness source codes and then sic some competent modder at it. We'd have three instant inclines in one fell swoop.

P.s. Maybe also Lionheart, but something tells me its unsalvageable past Barcelona
 

JRIz

Augur
Joined
Aug 17, 2015
Messages
502
This is an episodic game consisting of six chapters each spanning for 4-9 hours. There are options to start a mage, fighter or scout (aka archer), I sticked to mage and it was the right decision, because playing as a mage was irritating enough, but I am not sure if it is possible to beat the game with pure fighter. Experts say it is impossible, but maybe someone knows better.
Mage is easiest but fighter is also doable. Overall, this game is rather easy. You can stunlock any enemy with the officer's sword as soon as you get it. The most dangerous enemies are mages, of which there are seldom more than one at once, and the ones in Chapter 5. Those can also be stunlocked/are weak in melee.

Better not take them.
Having an archer in your party is a PITA but it enables a pretty strong combination. You can cast the shroud/shadow spell or whatever it's called on him and scout ahead and thin the enemy groups beforehand. If he is detected, it turns into a standard fight and the bonus is he won't be behind your back with his bow at this point. Very tedious, though, and most of the time it's easiest to go alone, as you said, and use the companions only as pack mules. I found Sir Dinadon and Phelic's Apprentice a rather good combination that doesn't get in your way too much. I think they are also the most obvious and strongest companions.

One thing I remember is also that you must click on every enemy corpse even if you know they have nothing interesting because the character automatically collects gold from them. On the other hand, gold is only useful for one or two items you can buy in the game. The rest, you find. And the officer's sword from Chapter 1 is one of the best weapons anyway so that's a bit disappointing.
 

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