Playtime:
4843 minutes
Summary
Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown, RoA in short, is a classically inspired role-playing experience with a top-down iconographic UI akin to the early Ultimas. RoA sports a diverse, extensive, and dynamic open game world populated by numerous concisely and well characterized NPCs, with excellent world building and writing, thrilling tactical combat, and countless quests to solve, places to explore and challenges to overcome.
RoA is a technical marvel, given that this game was developed for, and runs in an emulator of, the TI99/4A home computer released in 1981. Every pixel in RoA oozes Adam Haase's, the single author's, love for classic RPGs like Ultima, Might & Magic, etc.
In short, RoA, Adam Haase's magnum opus, answers the question what would happen if you'd implement a classic RPG using modern day game design sensibilities on ancient hardware. The answer is everything an avid role-playing and retro gamer could have ever asked for.
Writing and World Building
The story of RoA is the story of a group of heroes plunged into a strange and fascinating world of high fantasy finding their way home. RoA is littered with smaller stories that unfold as you explore the world of Talanua. As in any good RPG, you can engage in those stories and steer them for better or for worse. The story is mainly driven forward through conversations with NPCs and title cards that are shown when, e.g., a building is entered.
RoA runs on a computer released in 1981. This imposes a tight limit on the amount of text or graphic that can be shown on screen and it requires a skilled writer to characterize NPCs and drive the story forward. Thankfully, Adam Haase is more than up to this task. His writing strikes a careful balance with descriptions that allow the mind to form a picture without overloading the player with text.
The world building of RoA is amazing. Adam Haase uses the limited tools available to him to create an engaging and believable world on the game’s level of abstraction. When the game can only show a metropolitan port city comprising two dozen houses and 10 people on the streets, it is up to the player’s mind to fill in the details. Yet, so much loving detail has gone in the game world, such as a bowyer shop that has an archery range out back or a hospice where you find a chest with padded armor. Its little details like these that make Talanua come alive.
Talanua is huge and chock-full of settlements, dungeons, and encounters. Although most of Talanua is a high fantasy world, there are varying themes and cultural backdrops. While you start out near the classical rural fantasy village, you will explore regions inspired by Vikings and their mythology, humid tropical jungle isles, oriental wonderlands and much more.
The world is open and dynamic. You can go anywhere that you can survive right from the start. Note, if you try to take on a dragon with a single, level one hero, the outcome will be predictable. Even with this restriction, you have many viable options to go on from the starting area and with the right tactics you might negotiate areas that would otherwise be deadly. The world is dynamic in the sense that if you achieve a particular deed, then the NPCs and the world itself will react to it.
Combat and Magic
Combat is a central aspect of this in RoA and it is tactical, turn-based and plays out and on a square-tile grid. Skills and equipment allow for different approaches to combat. Nimble fighters with light armor that can dance across the battlefield and deal critical melee damage, strong, but slow protectors built to resist all but the most deadly attacks, as well as, archers sniping from the back of the ranks with deadly accuracy, all are viable options.
How much a character can do in combat depends on his or her stats and stamina. A fatigue meter serves to limit spells, but it is also used up, if you force your character to move/attack beyond his or her action points. Once stamina is drained, the character can no longer cast spells and any exhausting action will drain health.
The effective use of magic is crucial to combat tactics. Unless it is an ambush, enemies can be seen from far off which allows for effective use of buffing spells. You know the area is infested with enemies that charm? Better cast Mindguard. The place is crawling with difficult to hit fireflies? Buff the to hit chance. Don’t want to fight at all? Cast stealth and evade the confrontation.
In battle the party has access to a variety of offensive, buffing and utility spells. Those fireflies are a pest, so introduce them to the ice ball spell. Your paladin can hardly move, but is nigh impossible to hit? Teleport the character into the fray.
Available spells are determined by which spell book a character has equipped. Spell books contain 8 spells from the different schools of magic. You can’t switch spell books during combat, so choose wisely.
The many different monsters, you will encounter in different regions will force you to adapt your tactics and equipment to counter their strengths keeping combat challenging.
Equipment
Equipment is as varied and plentiful. There are numerous melee and ranged weapons, armor, trinkets, wands to equip and a cornucopia of potions, scrolls, touchstones with utilitarian effects. Equipment upgrades will be frequent and interesting until the very late game. RoA’s equipment is rounded off by adventuring equipment (light sources, lockpicks and trap disarm kits). Finally, there is also a hunger system, so you need to buy food from time to time.
One of my few gripes with the game is that you have a limited inventory and no long-term storage. So, you will need to make some hard decisions what to sell-off.
Characters and Character Development
The defining qualities of your characters are their class, attributes, and skills. Class controls usable equipment, thief skills and magic use. Attributes influence health, fatigue, movement speed and skills. Skills such as melee, lock-picking or lore determine the effectiveness of your character while performing certain actions. There is also magic affinity the one of the seven different schools of magic. Skills can be trained by specific NPCs.
Characters can rise 16 levels and they gain more health, stamina, and one skill point at level up. Development is somewhat flat which plays into the open world nature of the game while your characters still get notably more powerful each level-up. It is a difficult balance to strike and Adam Haase has done a good job at it. On rare occasions it is also possible to improve a character’s attributes.
Graphics and Interface
Your viewport into Talanua is a tile-based, top down view on your close environs. There are many diligently hand-crafted tiles for all kinds of objects and terrain to account for the varying locales in the game. The character and monster icons are delightfully drawn and will make the heart of every pixel aficionado beat faster.
The interface is keyboard based and works very well. Everything you need to do is streamlined and requires very few keypresses. In contrast to early RPGs very few keys are used thanks to context sensitivity. If you walk into an NPC, you strike up a conversation. If you walk into a boat, you board it.
Gameplay
The world is varied, the challenges diverse, and there is always something new and interesting to find for an enterprising player. The different enemies in the different regions require adaptation, so combat stays fresh. The dungeons themselves range from short excursions to long explorations and thus require adequate preparation. Finally, the game contains substantial optional content for those who like to explore.
So, is it fun? YES! This game has the addictive core gameplay loop of any open world RPG down pat. Explore, find new stuff, learn new lore, get better, repeat. It is pure unadulterated fun to any RPG enthusiast and/or addict.
👍 : 71 |
😃 : 0