Pilgrim: Faith as a Weapon

The Good
Pilgrim takes place just after the Crusades .. the most traumatic, bloody period in the Catholic Church's history. It is a time of superstition and controversy .. a time when church leaders confused politics with religion and zeal with faith .. an age when anyone who spoke out against the Church was put to death as a heretic. Secretive groups formed to fight against the Pope and his minions, the Knights Templar and the Inquisition.

You play Simon de Lancrois whose father, Adalard, was the leader of one such secret Order, "The Tradition". As he dies, Adalard entrusts his son with a sacred manuscript, tells him to travel to Toulouse, France, and deliver it to a man named Petrus. Simon soon learns that the precious scroll could be the last gospel of St. John, and that the Pope's Inquisition members have been dispatched to find it .. at all cost. While at first a naive and insecure young man, gradually Simon grows up as he learns about his destiny and important heritage.

It sounds like there will be fighting .. but there's not. The situations in Pilgrim are pure adventure with no "action" at all. You'll be helping other characters by way of conversations and using inventory objects with people and to solve puzzles.

I played the 2001 re-release of Pilgrim for Windows 95 and was excited that it installed and played great in Windows XP. (So many old games these days don't.) Both of the CD-Roms are necessary for installation and Disc 1 must be inserted each time you start the program. After installing, disc swapping only happens once at a specific point in the story. A handy walkthrough can be found on Disc 1, which I admit needing! In the Windows version, the game screen appears on your desktop as a 640x480 window topped with your standard program bar. Although at first I wasn't particularly fond of the small screen, after awhile it became inconsequential. As an added bonus, while playing the game you can move the whole game screen around and "multi-task" with other programs without problems.

The interface is simple and intuitive. Icons represent picked up objects in your "bag" as well as a separate area for "people" and "items", which are both used during conversations. All of the icons have a title so you know immediately what you picked up. You can access the main menu, the in-game hints, speech and encyclopedia at any time by clicking on the proper words above the iconic inventories. Keywords appear periodically to help you hop to that particular section in the encyclopedia. Saving and loading games is elementary, too, and there seems to be no limit to the number of saved game files. I liked being able to name my saved games, too, even though limited to 8 characters.

The graphics in the game depict the Middle Ages very well, although drawn in a cartoon-like fashion. Homes, markets and churches look realistic enough made of wood and stone, interiors illuminated only by lamps and candles. Characters are puffed up in layers of clothing with the stern faces of those who want to appear pompous and important.

I enjoyed most of the music which seemed to represent the period of time well. Some flutes and lyres as well as violins. Sometimes, though, the music did drown out the voices. The only option is to turn the sound completely on or off (music, sound effects as well as voices). [Sigh] At least the subtitles are always on so you can read along.

There are 2 endings and neither one is considered "bad".

The Bad
Pilgrim is linear to a fault. So much so that it can be a show-stopper. Do something in the wrong order and you may need to restore.

I didn't like the tiny interactive cursor, even though the directional arrows are easy to see. Speaking of direction, sometimes it's difficult to get yourself in just the right position. Some puzzles, for instance, can only be viewed from one angle.

Although you can ignore the encyclopedia for most of the game, you'll need it for a final question and answer trial. And, to me, that was way too much reading.

I hate chess and know very little about it, so playing it in a computer game is just not my thing. Luckily I had saved a game before starting it. Even using a walkthrough, the mechanics of the puzzle itself were weird and hard to use.

The Bottom Line
If you browse through the early adventure titles produced by Arxel Tribe, you'll realize they all have common elements, although their actual storylines are completely different. Consider Faust, Ring: Legend of Nibelungen and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin, for instance. All of those games explore the complexities of the human spirit, the depth of the soul, and the sins as well as virtues of man.

Pilgrim is their very first game .. and the underlying meaning in it is very similar to those that followed it. It forces players to think about themselves and their relationship to others. While this game isn't as "emotive" as some of their later releases, I found that I did have inner feelings about some of the content.

This game is entertaining and I would recommend it to all adventure lovers .. especially those of you who like games with history or religious backgrounds. It will take you about a week to finish (even using a walkthrough) and it plays well on computers with operating systems much faster than the one it was created for.