Blackadder said:
You have already finished?!
I must have too many things on my plate. I can never finish RPG's like Dragon Wars that quickly.
It went quicker than I thought. But I think the lack of endless random encounters is mostly to thank for that. But the frequency of encounters, and lack of variation, at the end made me get tired of the game, so I rushed the last part. I skipped the Royal Game Preserve, didn't explore the entire Dragon Valley and only explored about half the Depths of Nisir before I tracked down Namtar. Killing him again and again and again and again and again was also rather tireing.
All in all a good game, but not the pinnacle of awsomeness.
Graphics are very good, at least the Amiga version.
Automap is very good, probably the best one in a CRPG at the time the game was released. Too bad the game doesn't track all the encounters. Killing the same group of enemies at the same place several times is not so fun.
Only discovered one bug, with suddenly having billions of gold.
Good atmosphere and a more original world than most fantasy games.
Writing is very good, and sometimes humourous. But some things are more goofy than funny, like fighting "beach bums" and "gobbos in speedos".
The unlinearity is both good and bad. The good thing is more freedom, but the bad thing is that the game feels more disjointed.
Some heavy C&C, especially the part where saving a poor guy from being fed to a dragon leads to the obliteration of a city from the map (what I really wanted to do was to feed the feeder to the dragon).
Combat is fast and usually fun, but both the Bard's Tale and old Might&Magic games had better combat engines, with more variety and options, IMO.
Hardly any randomization is also a negative in my book. All loot is hand placed, enemies never carry anything but gold, and you tend to meet the same
groups of enemies over again.
Breathing monsters were annoying, especially the snakes (I wonder if Burger Heineman was afraid of snakes, since there are so many of them?). And it was too easy to just run from an encounter if you met annoying enemies, and then step back on the same square and fight some less annoying enemies instead.
I didn't like that there is no in game way to tell what items do, except by trying them out.
The game sometimes felt too much like an Adventure game, where you had to use a certain attribute, skill or item to progress. The whole thing with securing the aid of the Queen Dragon felt very forced.
There should have been a "fix" option so you could Bandage the whole party after each battle, instead of bandaging each party member separately.
I'd rate it as better than Wasteland, but not quite as good as Ultima V. Like with Magic Candle I got a bit tired of it, but being a shorter game than MC I only got tired in the end.