Time for another old school game to reach my desktop. In this case, it’s a game that’s been sitting in my library for years as it was one of a selection of games Gog.com was giving away to entice people to get accounts on the site back in the day. When the dice selected it, I figured it couldn’t be too bad and started playing. Well, I was right… it wasn’t “too” bad.
Story: 20 years ago, an evil sorcerer named Sanwe threatened your father’s kingdom of Gran Callahach. But your father was a clever king who hatched a plan to have the court wizard Ner-Tom imprison Sanwe before he could enact on his threat. But this was not the end of the tale, for the dark magician made a prophecy that he would return when the magic ward broke down to extract his revenge on the king. With your father’s recent death, you are now in his crosshairs.
To make matters worse, the dragonsphere, an artifact used to monitor the strength of that shield is starting to crack! When the dragon within breaks free, it will mean the shield is down and Sanwe is free again! The only thing that is in your favor is that the artifact is still intact, meaning the dark wizard is not yet at his full strength. For the sake of your kingdom, you must take him down before he can regain his fuil power. And since a single man will not be seen going on this quest you must go alone. With the sword and shield spell of your father, you walk outside the castle to embark on the most important mission for your kingdom… ever.
This generic opening will serve to explain the main quest, but it won’t be long before you are getting to know the various peoples of your kingdom, each of which offers advice and tools you will need to complete that quest and destroy the evil wizard. Their stories will prove interesting as well, though the game will not let them get in the way. If anything I think this is my major gripe with the writing as this game seems to go out of it’s way keep the story simple with only some scattered background details available. It seems as if the writers assumed a young audience who would forget the main plot if it wasn’t the central point constantly, resulting in the kind of writing I might expect from a kid’s show.
It will, however, offer one major twist about halfway through the game that will likely come out of nowhere, and yet make perfect sense due to a few clues it will put in your face with about as much skill. In essence it is the single most important moment in the game with everything else wrapped around it to make sure anyone and everyone will understand this is why you are here… before and after it happens.
6/10
Graphics: Dragonsphere is a classic styled point and click adventure, and to this end there are certain things you can expect: The bottom of the screen will be dedicated to your inventory and commands, leaving most of it to your environment and the people/things that exist there. That interface works out well visually as it balances your commands, inventory list, and even a picture of your currently highlighted item and special commands for it evenly, without clutter, but also with little fanfare.
But that may be for the best as the game world itself doesn’t look half-bad! The background scenes of this game were clearly made with care and attention, going for a painted look that oozes style even to this day.
But the characters within benefit perhaps even more then the look of the world. Instead of the usually cartoonish characters like most point and click games used, Dragonsphere opted to go a much more realistic route, animating pretty much everything much more like a living being would move around then you have any right to expect. It even includes cutscenes designed specifically to show the struggle for longer events you would not want to have to watch from a still screen. It’s a shame the resolution put most of these scenes in an uncanny valley where you can not really be sure if an actor (or dev) put on the costume to be filmed or it’s just a really good animation technique.
8/10
Sound: And this is a place where the game gets a little more dicey. The voice acting is actually really good for games of the time, even managing to avoid the dreaded “CD Pause” most “talkie” versions of games of this time which was used to compensate for the slow read-times of the first CD-ROMS they read from. True the voices can be a little muddied and the king is a little flat at times, but overall, the voice work is not half-bad.
What is, however, is the music. Some tunes are ok and even might be descent, but the main theme’s arc is going to stick in your brain for just how jarring it manages to be on literally 3 notes. Nor is it alone, as most of the music designed for some intense moment relies on what passed for “horns” in the day of 8-bit midi music to much the same effect. Its a good thing a lot of the game like’s its more quieted down instrumental work.
6/10
Gameplay: As mentioned before, Dragonsphere is an old-school point and click game from the 1990s, and carries with it a lot of the tropes. You will guide the king on his mission by clicking where you want him to go and right clicking things you want to look at. For all other actions, there is an interface below the main screen.
And that interface was designed with the intention to try to get the convenience of a game driven completely by clicking the mouse, but the flexibility of the typing commands from games of the past. The result is a hybrid that proves rather clunky, as to do anything outside of walking or looking, you generally need 2 to 3 or potentially more clicks to create your command from a selection of actions, items and the environment itself. This would not be so bad if the game does not have events which require you to beat the clock from time to time building these things.
But should you fail, you don’t need to worry too much, as this is one of those games where a death means it puts you back to a point where you can try again (or go do something else if you are stumped), making this a relatively easy title. It’s just annoying when the interface itself becomes your enemy.
Although this game does offer a few more issues on way. In particular it is very possible to miss required items as they blend into the world around you. Yes, it all looks good, but functionally causes the dreaded “pixel hunt” from time to time. In addition, there is one puzzle in the first half of the game that pretty much drives everyone insane between the logic and just keeping track of everything going on on the screen.
6/10
Bugs: Once again, we have another game that had literally no bugs at all. The closest this game has to a bug is that it resorts to the DOS prompt when loading the intro or the end credits. It’s spooky for a second, but it’s just a sign of a very old DOS game.
Overall: Honestly, I can think of a lot better point and click titles then this one, but that does not make it a bad game. It makes it a very average one and a product of it’s time. When I picked it up, Gog.com was offering it as a freebie to everyone who made an account, and as such, it wasn’t half bad. Not sure I recommend it to spend your cash on though.. at least not instead of other games you could spend a couple bucks on that site to get.
Score:
6/10
Requirements:
- Anything 1.8 Ghz or faster
- 512 MB RAM
- Direct X 7 compatible graphic card
- 2 GB hard drive
- Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10
System Specs:
- AMD FX 8350 (8 cores) running at 4 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- NVidia GeForce 960 GTX with 4 GB VRAM
- Windows 10
Source: GoG.com
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