1. Painkiller - PC2. Front Mission 4 - PS23. Wasteland 2 - PC4. Arcanum - PC5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-167. Unreal - PC8. Shadowrun - SNES9. Warcraft III - PC10. Dungeon Keeper - PC11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS312. Descent - PC13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC15. Sokobond - PC16. Hybrid Heaven - N6417. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis18. Castlevania - NES19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES20. Castlevania III - NES21. Castlevania II - NES22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC24. Fractal - PC25. Kirby's Adventure - NES26. Pillars of Eternity - PC27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NESThose of you old enough to remember video game rentals, did you have that one game you rented over and over trying to beat? This was mine. A friend showed it to me once and I thought it was the coolest thing ever; you run around and sword people from a top down view like Zelda, then you have a side view for one-on-one fights with bosses, and then there's a super zoomed out mode for huge army battles. And an inventory so you could get better gear and use heals. It was so cool. As a kid the furthest I got was right before the final boss; there's a special monster that guards the final boss and as a kid I was so nervous I couldn't get the timing right to kill it. The monster is a giant skeleton that can only be injured with a special dagger you have (weapon reach varies among weapons so this was hard to use). The skeleton will lift his sword up, swing it down, then pause for a bit, then repeat. He always matches your horizontal position on the screen so he will always hit you with the sword when it comes down if you're close enough. I think as a kid what I tried to do was to run in really fast when the sword was up, since otherwise the sword was always in front of him. This didn't work. As it turns out, after he swings his sword loses its hitbox, so you let him swing, then run in and poke him, then run out again.
As an adult I've learned the reflexes and patience to be able to overcome all of this game's challenges. Instead of ignoring the bow at the start until I can get the one-handed varieties I now snag it right away since it kills almost everything in one shot, ammo is plentiful, and it has a larger range. I can react quickly enough to take out the bow wielding guards before they can destroy my health (the biggest threat in this game), and I have the patience for the boss fights that I can't just cheese out. So it was nice being able to make it through this game that had stood unbeaten for so long.
But having finished it, the game ends up being rather mediocre. The game has RPG elements but they aren't fully fleshed out. You gain levels from killing stuff but everything gives only 2 experience (first level is 100, +25 to that requirement for each subsequent level) except for some minor enemies that die on contact which give 1. Leveling up does have a real benefit, as it increases your max health, heals you a bit, and increases your stats. The armor stat is the most relevant as it makes your HP go further (though interestingly your armor only is applied if you have a piece of armor on; naked your defense is always 0). Damage is pretty meaningless since your real damage comes from your equipped weapon; since enemies only take 3 hits at the start a weapon upgrade will hit those breakpoints faster than your level damage boost. The real stat that matters is your agility, which determines your movement speed. A faster movement speed lets you take out enemies before they can hurt you, which is vital. Agility is decreased by your carried gear, so a level up can take you over a breakpoint where you suddenly go fast. By end game you MIGHT be level 5 if you grind, so this ends up not being as interesting as it could be.
You have a party of up to 4 people including yourself, but the purpose of other party members is to be pack mules and to participate in the army battles. During regular movement you always control Robin. As a consequence the gear you give your party doesn't matter much. The main questions are "does he have a weapon", "does he have a bow", and "does he have armor", and I'm not sure that last one applies. All enemies in the army battles die in one hit so the weapon you give them doesn't mean a thing.
There's gold drops, but the only things you can buy with gold are the 200 you need for a quest (and the previous quest gives you far more than that for free and you can't miss it) and you can spend 20 on a chest key which seemed to be bugged (I didn't check my inventory, got involved in an army battle which awarded a chest key, then afterwards I only had one) and I don't think there's any chests you can open past that point anyway. It seems chest keys was another mechanic that didn't get fleshed out. This game definitely feels like it wanted another several months development and got cut off due the usual things that happen with licensed games.
At least it's short; it took an hour and a half to finish and I saw on the SDA forums that people were driving their general times down to around the 30 minute mark. The optimization points are the boss battles (there are safe strats that take a long time so you need to get aggressive), getting only the required items (lots of stuff is out of the way), and just getting good enough at maneuvering that you don't get caught up on the terrain with your weird movement hitbox.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
