Retro Review 2: My Introduction to My Fantasy Addiction. BAK was perhaps the greatest RPG of the early 90's.
User Rating: 10 | Betrayal at Krondor (CD Version) PC
Recently I downloaded DOSBox after a long hiatus from trying to figure the bloody thing out. They've made a lot of improvements to the program, to the point that the program is a lot easier to use and accurately emulates the old Roland and Soundblaster cards of the heyday of DOS gaming. Older gamers will understand exactly what I'm talking about. Heck, anyone who's tried playing with the inbuilt Windows "compatibility" options and finding no possible way to play any program even just now hitting its 10th anniversary in the year 2007 will understand what I'm talking about. For the younger generation, who may never have that sickening experience of being unable to get the classic games of your youth to run on modern computers, simply bear with me - an old gamer at 25 years of age (who'd have thought?). I reviewed Dune the other night - so late at night that the review is probably only barely coherent. That classic which helped introduce elements of the RTS genre got me digging deep into my CD folder. Over the years, I've kept a LOT of old CD-ROM games in the hope that one day I'd be able to purchase an old computer capable of running the old games. I would nickname that system "Rosetta Stone", or perhaps "The Flux Capacitor." But (I promise, this is the last plug for it) thanks to DOSBox, I no longer need to shell it out. Searching through that mass of CDs, I came across a CD bearing the name of a game which won at least one publication's RPG of the year game back in 1993. Betrayal at Krondor had something resembling 3d graphics, and it was obvious that the people who made it used photographs of actors instead of artificial sprites. Granted, any JPEG with the look of the characters in the game would get unceremoniously booted from the internet these days, but at the time, this game was trying to be different - to bring a breath of fresh air into the gaming landscape. Boy did it succeed. We originally got the game because of my brother's great love of the books of Raymond E. Feist, which this game is based upon. It was an amazingly open ended game, as well, considering that the hallmark series of open ended gameplay - The Elder Scrolls series - was still a few years away from its first installment. Because of the source material, much of the events that take place in the game are related as if you are reading a novel. As boring as that might sound to a modern gaming audience who demands fully rendered in-game cutscenes for the most inconsequential non-playing moment of story advancement, but it made for a longer, more satisfying game. The story was as compelling and engrossing as any Final Fantasy game. When you're not reading, the game was way ahead of its time. Walking around the main world in a simulated 3d environment, was a jaw dropping experience at the time. For the first time, you felt like you were dropped inside a real breathing world - time advanced as you moved along (no need to pause though, since time only advanced with each step you took). If you wanted to visit a shop, you had to be sure that you clicked on the building during its open hours, and tavern were not open before noon or after a certain time at night. If the town was represented in one of the beautiful paintings, it had a daytime and a nighttime painting. But the kicker is that while these are nice touches that add a bit of ambiance, they would merely be annoying if it were not for the fact that the game forces you to manage your time wisely. Not only will you be penalizedif you go too long without sleep, but at midnight every night, your characters each eat one ration. If you don't have any food, your characters will begin to starve, and starving characters will initially be unable to heal through rest, though enough time without food will actually begin to dock their HP as time progresses. Quite aside from that, you had to read the description of the rations you pick up as well, because food could be poisoned or spoiled, thus making you sick. It gave the player a lot to think about and manage as they progressed through the game. Character advancement was also ahead of its time. Though somewhat simplistic, at the time it was a total departure from anything seen before in the states. There were no levels to contend with, only skills. Use of certain skills would dictate when strength and stamina would increase. You could go to the character sheet screen and click on which skills you wanted to have rise faster, but you had to be careful not to select too many at one time since the more you selected, the more diluted the effect would be. The skills themselves dictated the probability of success in terms of percentage - i.e. you have a 67% change of hitting the goblin with a thrust or 52% chance with a swing. Speaking of battles, there was not a single random encounter. All battles, with the exception of certain ambushes, were somewhat easy to spot and prepare for. If you click on the enemy before you got to them, your characters would attempt to ambush them. A successful stealth check meant that you not only got to go first, but that for the first round, you got certain damage bonuses. Or you could try to avoid the fight altogether, years before a similar concept hit popular acclaim in games like Final Fantasy XIII. The battle itself was laid out on a grid, with each character having a certain number of squares they could move on a turn, but if you were to click on the square in front of you, you would move there and the turn would be over. As long as you could get to the target before with one square to spare, though, you could attack the enemy with your melee weapon. Ranged weapons were a concern too. This is literally the first game I can ever remember where shooting at an enemy with your crossbow and missing could result in the arrow hitting and damaging one of your other characters. Of course, if the enemy was lined up right, you could be presented with an opportunity to take a shot with no chance of missing an enemy, as well. The use of magic was also handled in a unique way. The spells are all inventive, thrilling, and maintain the atmosphere of the game, but the real kicker is the way in which you must manage the spellcasting. In an era when MP was a video game staple, casting a spell took away from your health in BAK. Since restorative objects were relatively rare, and resting your troubles away was the only way to heal outside of a temple you had to be careful about managing your everyone's health and especially the health of the caster. Veterans of Neverwinter Nights and even the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale series might be tempted to ask what the big deal about that is, especially since this game had absolutely no random encounters. Well, I must remind them that they had to manage their stores of food, which took up valuable room in the inventory, which was limited not only by the size of the object, but the shape as well. In the beginning of the game, taverns and shops are easy to come by, and you even can get by by foraging. Later in the game though, food is so scarce you won't even throw away spoiled or poisoned rations because of how scarce food is. So bearing in mind how much you had to watch your health, was it really worth it to put that extra 5 hp into that fireball, especially sine you've only got a 70% change of hitting the target? Seems like a sure thing, but that's almost a 1 in 3 shot of missing... The music of the game was extraordinarilly well crafted as well, expertly matching dramatic strains to plot extrapolation, revelry and medieval fun to the inns, and rousing up-tempo charge music for the battles. The CD-ROM version of the game was even more amazing since it used actual recordings of people playing lutes and other such instruments, though the music faded all to quickly. The sound effects were all artificial, but fit the feel of the game perfectly. Though it took a very long time, there was eventually a sequel to Betrayal at Krondor. It really didn't have any of the same flavor, but when they released it, the makers decided to put BAK out on the internet as a free download, which many fans have pounced on and continue to this day to make sure is still available for download at places like this: http://www.alt-tab.net/games/betrayal-at-krondor/download/
Any big fan of fantasy novels should count themselves very lucky for the chance to play this game, especially those who enjoy the worlds of Raymond E. Feist (but take it with a grain of salt - it's fairly obvious at times that he didn't actually write a lot of the text in the game). 
