Dragon Wars

The Good
Dragon Wars is a rare RPG that represents everything any RPG gamer could ever want in a game...and no doubt a little bit more.

The game was released around 1989, technology capabilities was minimal, but that never stopped the developers imagination for the quest for immortality represented in this game. I have to admit the creators of this game overdid themselves in creating this one.

So what does it take to be an RPG God? Well I'll show you:

The Good
The design - there's no single path to completing the game, nothing you're forced to do in order to be able to finish. One of the first tasks you're supposed to do, for instance, is find your way out of the city you start in. Well, there's at least four different ways to do it, each leading to a somewhat different game experience (eg., different NPCs with different skills will join your party). For another, there are puzzles scattered throughout the game, but you don't have to solve every one in order to win (good, because some I never did - probably didn't have the NPC with the proper skill).

The size - this is a big game. I didn't visit all the locations the first time through. The second time through was very different from the first time - not a completely new game, of course, but like visiting another part of the same country.

The Bad
The manual - some parts of the plot are advanced by reading paragraphs in the manual. These contain vital information you won't learn any other way. They're read only when the game instructs you to read a particular one (the paragraphs are out of order, and some of them are distractors, having nothing to do with the game, in order to discourage you from reading all of them at once). These could easily have been incorporated into the game itself, but putting them in the manual enhances copy protection - the game is almost useless without the manual. What is irksome is that something designed to protect the developers against theft for the first few weeks or months of release still hampers you years later.

The graphics - these are designed for an EGA display, and look very nice. But when I upgraded to a VGA display, the image pixels didn't blend as well as they had, and they looked worse.

The Bottom Line
As I recall this game got so-so reviews when it first came out, but it's really very good. I've played much more highly reviewed CRPG games that I've found ultimately disappointing - they look nice, but the gameplay is linear and the endgames surprisingly easy. Neither of those objections applies to this game. It's so satisfying, I was unsatisfied - I had to play it again right away!

The Good
The graphics - Colourful EGA graphics with a nice 3D-view and large, animated monsters with a lot of personality.

The sound - Nice title tune and digitized sound effects, all through the beeper. (So none of that pathetic AdLib stuff they used to have back then.)

The gameplay - I just can't help but long for the days when moving from one side of the city to another in a CRPG took but a few seconds (what with block-by-block movement, controlled with the cursor keys), instead of clicking and waiting and clicking and waiting as per Baldur's Gate or Fallout (...and clicking and waiting...). I also prefer turn-based CRPG's to "real-time" ones.

The automap - 'Nuff said.

The Bad
The graphics - So the monster close-ups look good, but I wouldn't have minded if you could see the monsters/NPCs from afar. (As it is, most NPC's don't have pictures at all.) Also, the monsters don't react in any way to getting their teeth kicked in - they just loop the same fancy animations.

The plot - It's a good plot as far as it goes, but there really isn't much of it. Basically you just wander around until you're strong enough to kill the bad guy. It does have some puzzles, though, and what storyline there exists is well written.

The combat - Doesn't allow for much tactics, but that was the standard back then.

The Bottom Line
I believe this was my first (legal copy of an) IBM PC game, and I really got disoriented when playing it for the first time, as it was also the first first-person game I had ever played (the same thing happened to me when I played Doom for the first time). I was instantly hooked, however, as the graphics were just as good as in C=64 games (compared to Alleykat), and the game seemed really huge.

The game may not seem huge by todays standards, and it really isn't all that difficult, either, but it took me two computers two years to finish it, and I had a lot of fun with it. It is a fun and rewarding CRPG of its time, made by high standards, and I'd probably still play it if my 400MHz AMD would run it (I guess IBM PC-compatibles aren't all that compatible any longer).