Betrayal in Antara

[Wyrmlord]

BiA remedies getting ahead of the curve by limiting each chapter to a certain segment of the (huge) map, plus it's also impossible to grind skills to 100 in the first chapter, i.e. in the first chapter maximum skill level is 40, then in the third 60, etc. This also means you obtain the most powerful spells later in the game, while in BaK you can find game-breakingly powerful spells in the first chapter (Gambit of the Eight, River song, Skin of the dragon).

I believed that was the good thing about Betrayal at Krondor.

If I made the extensive effort to break the game early on, then I should be rewarded for it by being allowed to break the game later on.

After all, I used the early game party to fight the Rusalki and get the River Song spell. That requires planning, rationing, and handling other details. I should damn well be rewarded for it by breaking every fight after and making the rest of the game much easier.

It's the same with how I broke Arena by finding the Skeleton Key.

 

[Mother Russia]

Ahhh, Betrayal in Antara was a true gem. A great game. Magick system was great, I loved researching and casting spells.

However, to get the most out of the game, such as finding rare spells, you HAVE to go off the beaten path and explore, explore, explore. Normally I love this, but going off the beaten path and wasting time in game didn't make sense from a story perspective. For instance, in the second chapter (or something) you have to hurry to get to a city for some reason. It wouldn't make sense to explore off the beaten path due to story reasons, but if you don't, you miss out on spells, grinding, and treasure.

Also, Return to Krondor was an excellent game. I personally preferred it to Betrayal in Krondor (though I do say BiK was the better game over all, since it had exploration.sandbox elements) The plot of Return of Krondor was really good. I really, really hated Bear and wanted to get revenge. Also, the undead/vampire town was the best implementation of Horro I have seen in a video game to date.

 

[Captain Shrek]

I think you trolled yourself there Wormlord.

 

[abnaxus]

Finished the game. The ending was both satisfying and unsatisfying, wrapping everything up nicely yet introducing a huge cliffhanger at the same time. Good game overall.

Pity there never was a sequel, although in these times of Kickstarter one can still hope. According to Mobygames Peter Sarrett (lead BiA designer) is still active in the game industry, although there's a 13 year gap between the games he worked on (last one being BiA).

Perhaps if the Betrayal at Krondor Kickstarter (ever) kicks off and is succesful, he might be enticed as well.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Finished the game. The ending was both satisfying and unsatisfying, wrapping everything up nicely yet introducing a huge cliffhanger at the same time. Good game overall.

Pity there never was a sequel, although in these times of Kickstarter one can still hope. According to Mobygames Peter Sarrett (lead BiA designer) is still active in the game industry, although there's a 13 year gap between the games he worked on (last one being BiA).

Perhaps if the Betrayal at Krondor Kickstarter (ever) kicks off and is succesful, he might be enticed as well.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Has anyone here managed to run the GOG version of Betrayal in Antara properly with Win 7 x64 and an ATI video card?

I've already tried setting the compatibility to Win 95 and 98, disabling desktop composition, etc., but it still crashes on the intro movie for me.

(Seriously, what's the point of buying abandonware from GOG if they can't even be bothered to make it compatible with newer systems/hardware? )

 

[Infinitron]

Has anyone here managed to run the GOG version of Betrayal in Antara properly with Win 7 x64 and an ATI video card?

I've already tried setting the compatibility to Win 95 and 98, disabling desktop composition, etc., but it still crashes on the intro movie for me.

(Seriously, what's the point of buying abandonware from GOG if they can't even be bothered to make it compatible with newer systems/hardware? )

Tried changing CPU affinity?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Has anyone here managed to run the GOG version of Betrayal in Antara properly with Win 7 x64 and an ATI video card?

I've already tried setting the compatibility to Win 95 and 98, disabling desktop composition, etc., but it still crashes on the intro movie for me.

(Seriously, what's the point of buying abandonware from GOG if they can't even be bothered to make it compatible with newer systems/hardware? )

Tried changing CPU affinity?

I have now, but it didn't help either.

I might try to set up a Dosbox with Win 3.1 but I can't be bothered to at the moment. I hoped the GOG version would work right away without any further fiddling.

 

[abnaxus]

No idea about GOG, but I managed to get my 3 CD version running on Windows 7 only with fix I posted earlier in the thread.

http://www.squirtthecat.com/games/betrayal_in_antara/index.html

I also managed to finish the game without too many technical issues, supposedly the final part of the game is almost impossible to get through because of crashes but I had zero problems.

 

[Mrowak]

As much of a fanboy of Betrayal at Krondor I am, Betrayal in Antara was just meh to me. It must have something to do with dimwitted characters, corny voiceovers and general clunkiness of the game. I have never finished it, and never will - somehow I prefer to replay BaK for the nth time.

 

[HiddenX]

Betrayal in Antara is a bad clone of Betrayal at Krondor, not worth playing.

 

[hoverdog]

As much of a fanboy of Betrayal at Krondor I am, Betrayal in Antara was just meh to me. It must have something to do with dimwitted characters, corny voiceovers and general clunkiness of the game. I have never finished it, and never will - somehow I prefer to replay BaK for the nth time.

Same. Though, funnily enough, BiA for me came before BaK. I found a demo on some magazine CD, was it Gambler? Can't remember. Anyway, I liked the small part of the game very much, but couldn't find the full game anywhere. A couple of years later, when internet was finally getting more popular in Potato, I downloaded Krondor. It was one hell of a ride, loved it immensely - still wanted to retry Antara, though.
Only two or three years ago I finally managed to acquire it, and the magic was gone, my memories ruined (not to mention I struggled mightily to get it to work on a modern setup - it has to be one of the most annoying Win95 engines). I probably shouldn't have touched it. Haven't completed it either, lost interest in Chapter 6 or something (the one in the north)
And Return to Krondor was even worse. God, that early 3D fugliness.

 

[octavius]

Betrayal at Antara is next on my chronlogical play list, but seeing a video of it on Youtube and being exposed to cringeworthy vocie acting and writing, and character portraits that look worse than the digitized ones in Betrayal at Krondor, I think I will pass on this one.
I guess without Neal Hallford and John Cutter the magic that made BaK such a great game was gone...

 

[pippin]

Apparently the GOG version is fucked because some files in different cds had the same name, so they were overwritten in the process of making it fit for GOG. There's apparently some p. serious bugs due to this. People said this in Krondor's forum at GOG, and they said the proper way to play this game would be to get the 3cd version. All of this is from sometime ago, though, I don't know if they have fixed this yet.

 

[Mark Richard]

I've played it up to chapter 3 and it seems okay so far, stability-wise.

 

[felipepepe]

Meh, Antara fucking sucks. The cliche characters & shitty writing aren't the main issue - what kills the game is that "exploration" is just walking a straight & narrow path from point A to B, interrupted by incredibly slow and boring fights every 5-6 steps. There's no sense of scale, walking across the world map would take like a minute if not for the 485798347598345 road-blocking mandatory battles...

Comparing Antara with Krondor is an excellent exercise in game design - technically, they work the same way, but oh man, what a difference there is in actually playing them...

 

[Jaesun]

So basically this is Wizardry 8?

 

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

More like Fountain of dreams.