Krondor: The Betrayal (The Riftwar Legacy): Book 1

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Reviewing this game is a challenge for me, as it is one of those games that completely took me by storm while at a young age. For that reason, I thought it might be difficult to give it a fair review, and thus decided to do yet another play-through with a critical glance. Set in fantasy novelist Raymond Feist’s world of Midkemia, Betrayal at Krondor (BaK) received great acclaim from the press. The game attempts to blend together storytelling, puzzles, and roleplaying into a cohesive whole. Betrayal at Krondor: Midkemia – a realm of enchantment and ancient magic where elves, dwarves and man once battled an unimaginable evil across rifts in time and space. The legends tell of a boy named Pug who would become Master Magician. His friend, Tomas, would wield the unearthly armor of the Valheru and command the armies of Elvandar to fight the final titanic battle at Sethanon. In Betrayal at Krondor experience an all-new tale in the Riftwar legacy as you travel the world of Ramar. Each chapter's main plot usually takes place completely within one or two regions of the game world. However, the player is given enormous freedom to explore the world however they wish, with ample opportunity to perform optional sub-quests and enhance their characters' abilities, gain cash, upgrade weapons and armor, and so on. Only certain locations are accessible in each chapter, though the player is free to explore anywhere within those boundaries as well as take their time performing quests. While traveling, the party camps in the wilderness to rest and recover lost health and stamina, provided that there are no enemies in the vicinity. Although the game uses a GUI, many actions can be performed using keys as well. There is a glitch (or intended hidden feature) that allows the player to make certain combinations of two moves in a single turn—one using the mouse and another using the keyboard—or rest twice by pressing 'R' before the turn begins and holding it through the turn. Computer opponents also seem to use this in some instances (like moving and defending in the same turn).

urn:oclc:861518996 Scandate 20101002015147 Scanner scribe4.sfdowntown.archive.org Scanningcenter sfdowntown Source It was interesting to see a narrative pattern where instead of the try-fail cycle, you have a try-succeed try-succeed cycle – obviously because it's adapted from a game format but arguably, not so well because in book format it doesn’t make for a great read. But it was interesting for a while to see a book written like this just because it’s so different and goes against age old writing advice for creating conflict in a narrative. Combat is handled on a 2d hexagonal grid. Also right from Krondor, and still pretty cool, is that the grid imposes itself right where the combat began; you fight in the exact same game world you normally travel around in, instead of the game switching to some ambiguous area that looks sort of like it except it uses combat graphics. Combat mechanics are fairly simple: you shoot, hit or cast the bad guys to death, with some minor complications like enemies that resist a certain type of weapon. The biggest flaw in combat isn’t actually IN it—enemies you’re supposed to fight simply stand around statically, not moving, in the world, until you fight them. It’s pretty ridiculous. That nasty flaw aside, the next bad thing is the graphics. The designers did not make use of the 256 colors they had available to them well. Even without palette swapping, 256 color games usually look better than this. It’s very poor design.

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The world is great both in terms of size and quality, the story is good, the freedom to explore fantastic.

If you don’t mind really bad graphics, can put up with the inane dialogue and liked Betrayal at Krondor, Antara is worth a try. I think that it’s worth playing through once, because the tolerance ultimately pays off; the late game especially is quite enjoyable and the ending satisfying. If you didn’t like Betrayal at Krondor, can’t deal with bad dialogue and voice acting or demand good graphics… don’t waste the time.The Basics: Betrayal in Antara is Sierra’s follow-up to Betrayal at Krondor, a critically acclaimed RPG based on Raymond E Feist’s Riftwar saga. Antara takes the mechanics from Krondor and scraps the world (the rights of which were given to another developer), instead setting the game in the Empire of (surprise) Antara in the world of Ramar.

Betrayal in Antara uses an updated version of the game engine from Betrayal at Krondor. However, it does not continue Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar saga, but instead starts a new tale set in a different fantasy world, known as Ramar. But anyway, Midkemia does have elves but what I find unique and different to LoTR elves was that the dark elves or "moredhel" in Midkemia have this chance to “return” and basically be redeemed when they turn away from their war-like ways. Het brengt een aantal bekenden ten tonele zoals Martin Langboog, Prins Arutha, Robbie de Hand en jonker Joolstein maar ook nieuwe karakters als Owyn en Gorath een "zwarte" elf.

Credits (Windows version)

Character sheet. Two skills - melee and crossbow accuracy - are emphasized, as indicated by the red pommels of the swords. Antara tried to combine several interesting features into one game, unfortuantely the result was uneven gameplay.