Persona 3: FES

The Short


Pros
- Essentially a mix between an excellent turn-based JRPG, a high school dating sim, and Pokemon.
- Lots of interesting characters with deep and compelling backstories
- Tons of fun (and funny) events and activities
- As much a time management sim as an RPG
- Also has practically a "breeding" game with regards to merging Personas
- Extremely addicting, very easy to sink 100+ hours into
- Music has a very unique style and flavor to it (very Jpop)
- JRPG battles are difficult, complex, and incredibly strategic
- Anime cutscenes are extremely high quality
- Game has a distinct visual style that is stylish, modern, and fantastic
- Voice acting is superb throughout

Cons
- Level grinding can get ridiculous in how much you have to do it
- Essentially only one dungeon that doesn't really change or evolve
- Enemies are pallet swapped frequently
- Has some disturbing elements that will turn a lot of people off
- Fusing Personas is one part fun another frustration: getting the ones you want can be a crapshoot
- Only able to control your main character in battle; your team auto-attacks
- The fact the spells aren't called "ice," etc. but instead called things like "bufu," etc. is a little jarring until you get used to it
- The music, while unique, has some very grating tracks (that battle song...urrrgh)
- The bonus content for FES is overly difficult and has an unsatisfying story
- Has a lot of characters, but never seems to encourage you to use them
- Has lots of voice acting, but not as much as one would hope
- Difficult to be a "player" trying to nab all the girls by the end
- Can't change difficulty mid-game.
- Cutscenes, while great, are infrequent
- While characters and character side-stories are fantastic, the main story is really lacking
- Has a game-breaking glitch that basically lets you kill everything, instantly, forever

Welcome back to high school. Which is about a billion times more exciting than your high school

The Long


A small disclaimer: I love JRPGs, but I don't really love Japan. I did the whole anime thing for several years, but gave it up cold turkey and never looked back quite a while ago. While I can understand the appeal, a lot about Japanese culture turns me off or just straight annoys me, to the point that watching most anime (or playing most extremely Japanese-style games) is an almost intolerable affair. And also, while I love JRPGs, I think it's a stagnating genre that isn't doing anything to evolve. While games like Lost Odyssey are nice because they embrace the old (and arguably obsolete) styles of gameplay, the concept of level grinding for hours on end to accomplish some small task is not an appealing one to me, especially when that consists of mashing the "X" button over and over and waiting for my experience points to show up.

Which is why it's really weird that I loved Persona 3: FES. It had every card in my deck stacked against it, and it still managed to completely grab me by its claws to the point that I was staying up late playing until three in the morning, because I had to do "one more week" because my character was so close to leveling up his knowledges and midterms were coming up soon and if I did good maybe the girl I was dating would social rank up with me and then that would unlock the next tier in her associated Persona class and...

Yeah. You get it. This game is dangerous. And it is totally, completely fantastic. 

Now there's some famous last words

Persona 3: FES's story isn't that compelling. Basically there is an hour every night that nobody knows about between midnight and one 'o clock. During the "Dark Hour," regular people turn into coffins (which makes them safe), while a few others don't. The ones that stick around usually get chowed down on by monsters, driving them crazy and usually killing them. Also, during the dark hour your school turns into this massive evil tower known as Tartarus, filled to the brim with beasties you need to go murder. Yeah, it makes no freaking sense and is totally off the wall. Whatever.

You, an emo-sulky looking protagonist high schooler, are a transfer student from...somewhere. You arrive at your new school and find your dorm-mates are a bit...weird. You are apparently in a mixed-gender dorm (or if it wasn't mixed-gender before they made it one when you showed up. Oh yeah.) full of crazies that seem weirdly paranoid. Your first night there you are awoken sometime between midnight and one (dun dun dun!) because your building is under attack by crazy monsters! You run to the roof with one of your female dormmates, only to be cornered by a bunch of beasties. Luckily, she has a gun. Unluckily, she gets incapacitated before you can use it. So, doing what any normal person would do in this situation, you proceed to point the gun at your own head and fire.

That makes a whole lot of sense

Turns out the gun is an "Invoker," and it is used by an elite group of essentially vigilantes to summon their "Personas" during the Dark Hour. Personas are powerful creatures that can do battle for you (essentially they are required for all magic) and can level up, etc. Everybody in your dorm has only one single persona associated with them, but you (being the special emo kid you are) can have multiple personas (the number you can have in your "inventory" goes up the higher you level), and can even fuse personas together to make new personas. As Keanu Reeves would say: "Woah."

Thus begins your magical, head-shooting adventure into Persona 3: FES. If you are the kind of person where seeing a bunch of teenagers (and a robot, a ten-year-old, and a dog) repeatedly put guns to heir heads and fire (with nice blue sparklies of "magic gore" popping out the other end), you probably can quit this review and just forget Persona 3 exists (but you should go get Persona 4 instead. They swapped the guns for cards). If you are still with me, then you are in for a ride. Yes, beyond all that nonsense I just spouted, the game under all of this is totally bananas. 

I'll just leave this right here. You perverts. 

I'm going to try to break this down as best I can, and hopefully it 1. Makes sense and 2. Doesn't take forever. The game is essentially split into two main points of interaction: what you do during the day (school, extracurricular activities [if you know what I'm saying: LADIES!]) and what you do during the Dark Hour. I'll break these down for you now.

During the day you are given tons of options. You can raise your stats, which help with both school and the ability to interact with certain characters (essentially Knowledge, Charm, and Courage can be raised). The main three girls can only be "courted" if you have maxed out their associated stat, so keep that in mind. You can also interact with friends from school (girls or otherwise), spend time doing sports or other after-school hobbies, blow your money at the arcade, visit an elderly couple at a book shop, hang out with a kid whose parents are getting a divorce, and more. You can only do so much in a day, however, and certain characters and options are only available on certain days of the week (and at certain times), so if you want to hang out with a particular person you'd better learn their schedule.

There is more to this than just simply "dating." First off, nearly every character's story in this game is extremely well written and incredibly engrossing. Some are downright heartbreaking. There is a young man who only visits a shrine on Sunday afternoons who is dying of a terminal disease. When you meet him he has no hope for the future, but as you spend more and more time with him you are able to help him cope with his impending death. There is a young child whose parents are getting a divorce and who thinks it is her fault; she wants to run away from home but you have to help her decide what is the best course of action. A confrontation from the parents adds another layer of depth to this. There is an elderly couple whose son died in a car accident, and the memorial tree at your school is at risk of being cut down in favor of new buildings. These stories are very real and are perfectly paced: every intractable character (or "socially linked" character) has ten levels or pieces of the story you can work on. As you "level" their links up, you get deeper and deeper into their stories. It's amazing how even a simple, drunken monk who visits the bar on tuesday and thursday evenings can have such a compelling past.

Then you have this guy, who has the best nose in video gaming

There is a point to all this, however, beyond simply their stories. Each character is associated with a tarot symbol (Lovers, Tower, Death, etc.), and each persona you can unlock and equip is also associated with one of these symbols. The stronger your relationship with the person, the better personas you can make (and the better XP bonuses they get when you make them) that are associated with that tarot card. Meaning if you want the ultimate personas, you have to max as many social links as possible.

Personas are made in two ways. First, you get them as rewards for finishing battles, though the variety here is sparse. The real way to get personas is through fusing. Starting with just two or three personas (and working your way up to crazy, five-persona fusions) you can mix these different monsters to get a better, stronger (or at least different) persona. Each persona has its own associated moves and stats, and when you have this persona equipped in battle you can use its abilities. For example, Jack Frost is a persona with lots of ice moves. If you equip him in battle, you are given both his abilities (ice moves, sometimes healing), strengths (strong to ice), and weaknesses (weak to fire). In order to get Jack Frost, you can fuse two earlier level personas. Jack Frost is of the Magician tarot, so if you fuse him and have a high relationship with the Magician person at your school, he gets tons of bonus XP.

Still following? It gets worse. 

Then the Pokemon breeding comes in. See, you can have personas inherit abilities from the personas you fused it from. For example, if you made Jack Frost by fusing a persona with heal and a persona with fire, you might end up with a Jack Frost with both ice and fire abilities (useful!). The same goes all the way down through the eighty bajillion personas that are in this game (and the FES version of Persona 3 added freaking more). As you might expect, it becomes insanely addicting to try and 1. Get the best personas 2. Fuse the best personas 3. Fuse the best personas with the best moves. Add to the fact that you can save any persona to the "compendium," which means you can then buy them back later for fusion, and this game has quickly turned into crack. 

And I haven't even gotten to the actual JRPG parts of the game.

Here's a hint: It involves turn based battles

The RPG parts are pretty simple. The game dumps you in Tartarus, a multi-floored, randomly generated dungeon with treasures, monsters, and a boss every ten floors or so. You are restricted to a set number of floors based on story, and are expected to clear these floors before a deadline (while managing all your daytime). Fighting battles causes your party members to be fatigued, which gives them a weakness and requires them to be cycled out (least they suffer a penalty) for a few days if you choose to continue to go fight. You can't be cycled out, however, so if you are tired you are essentially just boned. 

As stated, the game is turn-based, with a heavy emphasis on elemental weaknesses. How it works is simple: if you hit an enemy with its elemental weakness, the enemy will be "knocked down." That enemy forfits its next turn, giving you a free hit. This works the other way, though: if you are hit with your weakness, you fall on your butt, take bonus damage, and miss a turn. 

How you smack the enemies with their weaknesses is based on which personas you have equipped. As I said above, the personas do all the heavy lifting when it comes to magic. You can swap to any persona in your inventory once a turn, and each has their own associated abilities and weaknesses. So it's less of creating the one "ultimate" persona (since they are all limited to six abilities before you have to start replacing them) and rather having a perfect team. 

If you knock all your enemies down you have a chance for an "all out attack," where you do massive damage to all enemies at the cost of them no longer being downed. This also sparks a super goofy anime-esque animation, which I thought was pretty hilarious. 

KILL!

All your party members, as I've already stated, each have one persona, which means their strengths and weaknesses are locked. A major downer of the PS2 release of this game is the fact that you can't control any of your party members directly (they fixed this in the PSP version). You can give basic strategic commands, like designate one as a healer, but they still sort of do their own thing. They love to not think more than one turn ahead, waste magic, and generally act stupid. Luckily if you find out an enemy's weakness they'll tend to exploit it (thank goodness), but as a whole the lack of direct control is sort of a downer. 

So did you get all this? You go to school and hang out with chicks and dudes and grandpas in order to rank up their tarot cards, which in turn lets you fuse better personas with more unique abilities, which you can then equip on your character to exploit enemy weaknesses in battle, which you then level up (both yourself and your personas) as you battle your way to the top of Tartarus in an attempt to save the world. All while constantly shooting yourself in the head every time you cast a spell or use a persona. 

That, in a nutshell, is Persona 3: FES. Let's never do this again. 

Here's another one of these to make up for it. Come on, it was tiger striped boots.

This system is atrociously addicting. I seriously couldn't stop. While I'll admit Tartarus gets a bit monotonous at times (it's just the same level grinding over and over; even the unique battle system can only do so much), wanting to up my stats, up my social links, and fuse better personas was a massive timesink. It totally sucks you in, to the point where I didn't even care about actually using the personas I'd bothered to make, I just wanted to keep getting better ones. And learning more about the girl I was trying to woo. And learn what happened to the kid from my sports class with an injured knee. And...AAARRRGHH THIS GAME CONSUMED MY LIFE!

It is worth noting that while the story never really goes anywhere particularly interesting, it's a big oversight to not alter parts of it to accommodate my social links. I had totally maxed out one of the girls (read: we were an item) in my party and was about 3/4 of the way done with another one (yes, I'm a two-timing jerk. I NEEDED THOSE HIGH LEVEL PERSONAS), but in the story segments nobody says anything differently. There is one scene near the end, at Christmas, that changes depending on which girls you went for, but other than that? Nothing. Kind of a wasted opportunity, to be honest. 

Persona 3: FES has a very distinctive style to every part of it. Oh crap, I forgot to talk about how you can fuse Personas to make better weapons. And how girls get jealous of each other, which can mess up your links. Urrrrrgh...

So...what about the rest of the game? Graphically, it isn't a technological wonder or anything, but the menus are extremely clean and the graphics adhere to a very well-realized art style. Having a "look" about your game can really go a long way, especially for games that aren't in high-definition, and Persona 3: FES nails it. Everything from character portraits, personas, menues, battle effects, and the cutscenes all fit neatly together and look fantastic.

The music is also...well, it's weird. It is not your traditional JRPG, with its usual orchestral sweeping scores and what-not. It's mostly JPop (or JRap), which is catchy in the worst way. As a whole it is inoffensive, with some tracks actually being really good, but that battle song...urrrgh. The game requires a heavy amount of level grinding (which is probably it's biggest setback) which means you hear the same stupid song over and over. Which isn't bad if a song is just music (or it isn't as bad, rather), but with weird JRap dude going at it? So annoying. I turned the sound off when I decided to level grind after about the half-way point. 

Voice acting is solid throughout, I just wish there was more of it. Not really much more I can say on that; it's an Atlas game so localization is top notch. Everything is translated well and it doesn't fall into any "Engrish" traps, though it has some weird melodramatic spikes from time to time. 

There's also a dog and a robot girl. Alrighty then. 

I hate to drag this review on (it's already stupidly long), but I think I can say this fast: this game's biggest problem is it has too much level grinding, and it isn't fun. It has this amazing system built up around getting personas, forming social links, raising stats, and participating in difficult and unique turn based battles. And then it falls into that stupid JRPG trap of requiring you to fight a billion battles in order to be strong enough to beat a boss. I can understand this game would be almost impossible to balance had it not just made it really difficult (the persona fusion means skilled players can get some really good ones really quickly), but it quickly went from "fun" to "tedious." The is especially bad in the last areas of the dungeon, where enemies are really hard and don't seem to give enough rewards. I'm sure people will call me out because they found parts of this game to be easy and I "clearly don't know what I'm talking about," but the fact of the matter is on my first (and currently only) playthrough I had to level grind like a madman, and it got old fast. There. Complaint over. 

Nicholas Cage, eat your heart out. 

I could probably talk even more about this game, but I'm going to end there. The difference between vanilla Persona 3  and Persona 3: FES is the fact that the FES version has more personas, one additional social link (the robot girl), and a bonus, 30+ hour "epilogue" chapter that is both too hard and not interesting. If you beat this game and really want more Persona, I really suggest getting Persona 4, which is like Persona 3 but they took everything I complained about Persona 3 and fixed it (the music, the ability to control your whole party, the main story, the lack of a lot of voice acting...everything). Do that instead of playing the bonus chapter. Just trust me on this one: not worth your time. 

This game, like all Atlas games it seems, has an "Atlas Tax" going on (probably because they all seem to get limited releases) which means that, despite being an old PS2 game, it goes for $30 used. Considering it came out when games were priced new at $50, that can be a hard sell. I, however, totally recommend it at this price (in fact you should probably get it now; it's only going to go up). Persona 3: FES is one of the best JRPGs to come out of Japan in years (the only others I can think of that are even comparable being Lost Odyssey and Nier), and is both addicting and has massive amounts of quality playtime. 

For a star rating, I'd say four out of five. It is a superb game, and I think any JRPG fan should play it, but the minor niggles I mentioned above are enough for me to lop a star rating off. 

And here is that damn battle song. I never want to hear it ever again. 

King's Quest VII - The Princeless Bride

The Short


Pros
- Beautiful, hand-drawn graphics and animations
- Excellent midi music
- Play as two different characters, a first (and last) for the series
- Refined controls from the previous games make it much easier to pick up and play
- Puzzles are the best crafted in the series, many with multiple options
- Excellently diverse side characters
- Areas you visit are fun, unique, and extremely varied
- Final adventure game in what is considered one of the best adventure game series of all time
- Full voice acting throughout

Cons
- Unlike Torin's Passage, this game hasn't aged well
- Voice acting ranges from "decent" to "ear-rippingly bad"
- Story is borderline idiotic
- Both main characters are extremely obnoxious
- Rosella (who was a strong female lead in King's Quest IV) has been reduced to a valley-girl putz
- Has had multiple versions released, making finding the "best" version difficult

King's Quest VII's art style was a rapid departure from the series' norm. 

The Long

This review comes with a story. I have, over the years, purchased King's Quest VII no less than six times (beating out Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, which I have bought four times). I first bought the game shortly after it was released, but after a freak accident where I was holding the disc while running down the hall and subsequently scraped it against the plaster of our wall (hey, I was like eleven, I was allowed to act like an idiot), I had to go buy another copy. 

A few months later we had a yard sale, the only one I can recall doing in the history of my entire life. At it, my brother and I tried to sell some games for extremely discounted prices. Well, apparently they weren't discounted enough, because some jerkbag stole about half our games from off the table. King's Quest VII was one of them, and apparently I changed my mind about it because I bought another copy.

Skip ahead to around 2004. I was going to college, and I suddenly decided I wanted to play this game again. The King's Quest Collection (the original package) was going for outrageous amounts on eBay, so I decided to just buy a vanilla copy of King's Quest VII. Well, I got my copy but to my shock it was one of the original copies pressed, meaning it only worked on Windows 3.1. Despite complaining to the seller that his auction wasn't specific, I didn't get my money back, so I bought another copy (after checking it would work in Windows 95) and finally got some King's Quest VII on after nearly a decade. 

There is literally no indication on any of the discs which version is which. I wrote "3.1" with a sharpie on my copy so I wouldn't try to install the wrong one in the future. 

Skip ahead another few years. I was at Bookman's in Phoenix with my now-wife, and they were selling a copy of the re-released King's Quest Collection for only $10. These versions had been optimized to work on modern machines (mostly, anyway), so obviously I picked it up. To my dismay, however, the version of King's Quest VII, while still working on my machine, was actually the 3.1 build which had less features (the newer version allowed you to increase character movement speed [a much needed improvement] as well as squashed a few bugs). I am actually right now considering buying the version on Good Old Games just to 1. Have a non-physical copy and 2. See if it is the better version. Somebody should probably stop me before this gets (more) out of control.

Anyway, the point of this story is so you know how much I have invested in this game over the years, so when I tell you that - even with rose-tinted goggles - this game has not aged well, you know it is really hard for me to say it.

The face only a mother could (and does) love

Before I get into the bad let's get into the good: the game still looks pretty fantastic. The animated cutscenes are sort of a downer (as you can see above, they weren't exactly of the highest quality even back in 1995), but the in-game stuff all looks fantastic. Though Rosella does look like she's sort of moping around everywhere she walks (except when she is a troll, where she has good hustle), all the animations are top notch and the background are simply gorgeous.

The areas you go in the game are well complimented by their graphics because the places themselves are really interesting. King's Quest games thrive on taking you to unique and exciting places, but King's Quest VII easily trumps them all in terms of variety and creativity. You have the underground troll caves, which are built around a volcano and feature a depressed dragon. You have Ooga Booga land, which is pretty much a ripoff of The Nightmare Before Christmas, but that's ok. You have the absolutely gorgeous mystic forest, which has in it what might be my favorite town in any game ever: a village of animals run by Arch Duke Fifi 'la YipYip, a presumptuous poodle.

This place is so stupidly hilarious. I love it. 

There's also Etheria, a mystic city in the clouds (which you only go to at the very end of the game, and with only one character), and a sort of blandish desert, but everything just looks and feels so fresh and interesting you can't help but want to explore.

The side characters, as mentioned above with Fifi, are by majority completely absurd. Again, King's Quest is known for having some weird and crazy characters in it, but this one takes it all and ramps it up to almost parody levels. You can tell Roberta Williams had a ton of fun with this and, considering it's the last "true" King's Quest game, it makes you wonder if she knew the series was finally running out of steam and made this the last hoorah.

Ooga Booga land use to scare me as a kid. There are some pretty messed up ways to die. 

The puzzles, also, are some of the best in the series. Abandoning the "look, use, walk, item" mechanics of King's Quests V and VI, King's Quest VII reduces everything to a single button click (with the exception of items, of course), essentially streamlining the entire game. Your curser will give you indication by sparkling when you can interact with something (which may or may not kill you; this is an adventure game after all, deaths are frequent), and that's pretty much it. Deaths, as I said, are frequent, but unlike previous games where a hard reload is required, instead you get scolded by the (now dead) character before being given the chance to simply try again. It's a system that Torin's Passage and almost every modern adventure game now uses, so in that regard you could argue that King's Quest VII pioneered it.

But anyway, the puzzles: they are quite good. Another "staple" of the genre (that probably helped kill it) was the fact that most puzzles were stupidly obscure. The King's Quest games have always been good at avoiding this stereotype, and VII is the best of all. Combined with the streamlined controls, puzzles are tricky enough to make you feel smart when you get them, but easy enough that you don't feel completely stumped for too long. There are a few areas (the desert at the beginning and Etheria at the end) that are a bit too open-ended, but all-in-all King's Quest VII is totally doable without a guide, which is more than can be said for most old adventure games. 

Sorry, Al Lowe. Roberta Williams isn't called the "mother of adventure games" for nothing. 

I hoped all you nostalgia people enjoyed my positive points, because now I'm going to rip this game to shreds.

King's Quest VII has the worst story in the entire series, paired with the worst characters. It's obnoxious, trivial, borderline sexist, and has one of the most tacked-on endings of any King's Quest game I've played. Almost everything Valanice (the queen, in her first and only role as a playable character in a King's Quest game) and Rosella (who was a strong protagonist in King's Quest IV) say makes you want to hit them, and considering writing and story are what makes up for the somewhat mediocre gameplay in adventure games, this is a huge problem.

The story starts off with Valanice scolding Rosella because she won't get married. Rosella, who pretty much kicked ass and took names in King's Quest IV (she fought her way out of slavery in order to take her place as the princess of Daventry), is now a whiny, air-headed valley girl who wants nothing more than to "go on an adventure." "But mother!" She whined in the opening as Valanice points out potential marriage prospects, "he's so boooooring!" Really? This is what you turned these characters into? Walking cliches? 

I suppose Valanice does get what she wants, though, because (MASSIVE SPOILER...not really) Rosella finds some guy that she met in King's Quest IV at the very end of the game and - guess what? - they get hitched. Thus proving you can have one adventure in your life, and then it's off to makin' babies. Which is probably why Valanice didn't get a game until now, and why she spends most of the game crying.

It does have giant Gila Monsters, though, and as my wife knows I think gila monsters are awesome. I usually let this one eat Valanice every time I play, just because it gives me a good deal of satisfaction.

Seriously, see in the picture above? See the comb? That's Rosella's comb. At the beginning, when the two are bitching at each other about whether or not Rosella should be able to choose what to do with her life or get married and be a good housewife (like Valanice), Rosella jumps into some pond for an unexplainable reason which turns into a magical warping portal. Valanice jumps after, but on the way down Rosella gets grabbed by a troll and sucked to the troll kingdom, while Valanice ends up in the desert land. Cue five plus hours of Valanice whining, crying, and moping about her daughter. As an added bonus, you always have the option to "use comb on Valanice," which makes her poor, fragile emotions shatter and causes her to break down into sobs every single time. 

I find this almost as offensive as Super Princess Peach, where you use her rampantly fluctuating feminine emotions to save Mario. Almost. 

As an added bonus, the "use comb to make my character cry" is the solution to not one but two puzzles in the game. What? Not to mention if you show it to just about anybody Valanice will almost completely break down as she explains how she can't find her daughter, which makes me wonder if while her kids were off on adventures in King's Quests III, IV, and VI if she just sat in bed with a bottle of anti-depressants and a tub of ice cream until they came back. 

Rosella isn't much better. She's a spoiled brat (which makes no sense given King's Quest IV) who constantly complains. She's turned into a troll right from the start (yay!) which I think is some attempt to give her character an arch as she learns that it isn't about being ugly but about not being a total bitch, but the fact that she (again, SPOILER) turns a fake troll king into a total stud who she then marries out of the blue kind of defeats that life lesson, doesn't it? She whines constantly, and at every character, and despite the fact that she's doing some pretty amazing things and besting some pretty difficult enemies, she never develops at all. Look, I don't need a lot of depth in my adventure games. I'm really not that picky. I just want to have characters that I can like and relate to. Neither of these characters do that for me. 

Add on the fact that you have literally no information with regards to why the villain wants to (essentially) blow up the world (minus the fact that she was some ex-fairie from Etheria and got booted out? Something like that?), how Edgar from King's Quest IV got roped into this, or how the crap Rosella and Valanice got home, and you have a plot that's a jumbled mess complete with an unsatisfying, "deus ex machina" filled ending.

And they all lived stupidly ever after

And that's where the rose-tinted glasses don't save this game. I still have a great deal of affection for the game. I love the music (the gravedigger song in Ooga Booga land will be stuck in my head until the day I die), I love the beautiful places you can visit, I love the side characters (Jackalope for president!), I love the art design, and I love the puzzles. I just hate everything that has to do with the characters I'm in control of, which makes replays of this game a sort of bittersweet reunion. 

Maybe I'm just being too picky, but if you don't believe me I encourage you to pick up the game and run through it again. If you are willing to overlook these rather glaring faults in the name of nostalgia, I commend you. For me, I'll still keep buying this game if they keep selling it to me, but in the end I begin to wonder if it's out of unbridled affection or just habit at this point. 

You can get it and the atrocious abomination known as King's Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity for $10 off Good Old Games. Personally, I'd suggest picking up their previous pack (which has King's Quests IV, V, and VI for $10) first, since you are basically playing $10 for King's Quest VII which, as stated, hasn't particularly aged gracefully (like Valanice, M I RITE?). They should really just take it away from that horrible eighth game and sell it on its own for like $5, but since that is currently your only option it's up to you.

For a star rating, I'd say three out of five. Yes, I complained a great deal about this game, but even just writing this review made me want to ignore its faults and play through it again, which is a sign of a game that still works despite its flaws. If you don't have any nostalgia for it, though, dock a point from the final score. 

Wait, someone made Arch-Duke Fifi 'la YipYip fanart? A BILLION OUT OF FIVE. 

Torin's Passage

The Short


Pros
- Funny, bizarre story by Al Lowe of Leisure Suit Larry fame
- Hand-drawn art and animation looks good, made by an animator who later quit Sierra to work at what is now Pixar
- Voice acting is well done throughout
- Sidekick "Boogle" adds some flavor to interesting puzzles
- Weird, hilarious characters. Nobody in this world is freaking normal.
- Travel into the planet through five unique worlds
- Standard adventure-game fare at a time when the genre was coming to an end

Cons
- Some puzzles have stupidly obscure solutions
- Love story is tacked on and completely dumb
- Two of the worlds (three and four) consist almost entirely of puzzles with no story elements whatsoever
- Was touted by Sierra as a new series, never saw any games past the first one

Strata is a weird planet. TO THE CORE!

The Long

1995 was a weird year for adventure games. King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (which would be the last true adventure game title in the King's Quest series) had come out a year before, touting great hand-drawn animation and a simpler style. For a genre that had started with sentence text commands, it had then moved on to point-and-click but with lots of options (think LucasArt's Secret of Monkey Island games), then was streamlined further by Sierra to have simply "speak," "look," "walk," and "use." King's Quest VII dropped this all for a simple, one button interaction interface, which has remained in use to this day with the adventure games revival.

The point of that history lesson was that King's Quest VII essentially marked the final attempt of adventure games to modernize, and despite being a good game it essentially failed. Adventure games died out, never to be seen in full force until TellTale would pick them back up just a few years ago, bringing back a genre that was both beloved and completely forgotten.

Torin's Passage, created by crude-humor master Al Lowe as a game his 9-year-old daughter could play, was essentially the game that turned off the lights and shut the door on the way out with regard to its genre. Released almost a full year after King's Quest VII, it had similar graphics and interface, and was intended by Sierra to be a new game serious. However, since the market for adventure games crashed, it took whatever hope Torin's Passage had for a sequel down with it. That's too bad, because Torin's Passage is a pretty dang good game. 

It even had a full-on parody of black-and-white, awful sitcoms in the middle of it. Yes, this game is weird. 

The story is a simple one. Torin, a blonde-haired dude with a popped coller and questionable attire, lives on a farm with his parents. One day the evil Lycentia, a sorceress from "the lands below" shows up and freezes them in carbonite (essentially), whisking them away beneath the planet's surface for unknown reasons. Torin, not one to take this sitting down, grabs his purple, shape-shifting pet Boogle and goes on a world-delving adventure in an attempt to rescue his parents. Simple enough stuff.

The game's interface is unique. You have two sets of inventory: Torin's, which contains expendable items, and Boogle's, which (as seen above) contains everything he can shapeshift into. Boogle's antics are entertaining and goofy, though in truth you don't really use him as much as one would hope. This is Torin's story (and his "passage," apparently), so most of the game will be spent using, well, Torin. 

Each world has a distinct flavor about it, and while you carry a few items between worlds, most of them are self-contained with regards to items and the puzzles you use them on. A weird trick is that if you play the game straight through (rather than warping to a particular world), you keep an axe you get on The Lands Above throughout the entire game, though you never use it past the first world. Huh, alright. 

"RAWR I'M TORIN LOOK AT MY POPPED COLLER AND DESPAIR!"

The game looks pretty decent, even running at just 256 colors. While Torin and co. do look a bit like they were drawn in MSPaint, the animation is fluid and the characters delightfully odd. The animation was handled by James G. Murphy, who now works at Pixar, so it's quality stuff throughout. The long movie sequences that start off each chapter are also well rendered, a mix of CG and art that could have come straight from a 1995 Disney movie. Every object can be rendered and looked at in 3D, adding a little depth to some puzzles, and while the UI box at the bottom is freaking massive (look at it! It takes up 1/3 of the screen!) it doesn't hinder gameplay any.

Speaking of the characters, there are loads, and they are weird. From a King whose wife badmouths him constantly, to an insane "borderguard" who has been waiting twenty years for a replacement, to two talking snails who engage in leaf-boat races around a moat, to a depressed tree that cries sap, just about everything in this game is totally off the rails. It makes sense why nobody wants to go down to the lands below; as the borderguard warns: "Them worlds is filled with nutsos, psychos, malcontents... politicians!"

And this guy, who complains that he only has "10 meg" crystals to hold his sound clips in

The funny characters really help bring the game to life, which is why the third and forth worlds are so disappointing. World three has little plot aside from a horribly tacked-on "love" story that both starts and ends in that world, and aside from that simply shuttles you from puzzle to puzzle. World four is even worse: an uninhabited lava world that is essentially a massive maze with nobody to talk to or interact with save Boogle (who can't actually talk). Considering worlds one, two, and five are so completely nuts and hilarious, it's odd that they totally skimped out on putting any interesting characters in two entire chapters of their game. It really hurts the games pacing, and makes it seem like it was rushed out the door unfinished (which it wasn't, oddly enough).

The gameplay itself is standard adventure game fare, with a few tricks to keep it from getting boring. As you can see on the pictures, there is a timer on the right with a question mark. If it is down, you can click it for a "hint" at a cost to your overall score. It normally is on a timer (every five minutes or so), but you can have it so hints are always on or off if you so desire. 

My bane of adventure games - walking everywhere - is also fixed by two very simple options. You can up Torin's walking speed to an insane level, making him look extremely goofy as his animations show him leisurely walking but he is hauling around the world. Or you can simply right click anywhere and Torin will "warp" there, cutting down all walking completely. It's an appreciated gesture, though it does mean on repeat playthroughs I sort of just warp everywhere. 

The back of the box even has Al Lowe's face on it. And there's a totally secret death message you can get personally from him, but I'm not going to tell you how to get it, mwahahaha!

The puzzles are a mixed bag. Some are very straightforward, with what item you use on what making perfect sense. Others are completely random. For example, you need to find the biggest leaf in a group of leaves to give to the (previously mentioned) speedboat moat-racing snails. There's an area full of leaves, but how do you measure which one is the biggest? The solution is...obscure. You go back to your house, where an inchworm is hiding in a basket. After finally catching him you use it on the leaves until you find the biggest leaf of all (get it? Because it's an inchworm, it knows which one is biggest. That...makes total sense). What?

This difficulty fluctuates frequently. That puzzle I just mentioned was in the first world, but many in the second world are pretty straightforward. Though there is a part where you are supposed to climb down a cliff face that gives no indication that you are supposed to go down it (since it has a different path on the top of it that is more straightforward), where my poor eleven-year-old brain got stuck for days until somebody at school was nice enough to drop me a hint (we didn't have internet until Windows 98, and even then I had no idea sites like Gamefaqs existed, even if they were sort of bare-bones). Then you have the third world, which is basically a "romantic" cutscene followed by some really easy puzzles you can just brute-force your way through if you don't like to think. This sort of fluctuating difficulty is a staple of the genre, I suppose, but it also shows why these games fell out of fashion as game design became more refined.

This world sucks. No questions. 

Despite these many complaints (which only indicate that the genre this game was a part of hasn't aged gracefully), I still have a lot of love for Torin's Passage. I played it around the same time I played King's Quest VII, having just gotten off what many consider to be the greatest adventure game of all time, King's Quest VI: To Heir is Human. I liked this game a lot more (probably because it had a guy main character and a purple transmorphing dog vs King's Quest VII, which stars a bunch of ladies) even though both share a similar art style and approach to puzzle mechanics. As an end to an era, Torin's Passage wasn't the best note to end on, but it was certainly a passable one. The weird humor of Al Lowe makes up for a lot, and I still find myself awed by both the great animation and the funny, adult jokes that went completely over my head when I was eleven. So in that respect, the game certainly has found new life in my older, more dirty-minded self.

I don't know what this guy is on, but I ain't touchin' it. 

This is one of the few retro PC games I've reviews that isn't on Good Old Games yet. I still have my original disc and manual (though not the box; this was back when PC games came in those massive paper boxes) and you can actually get it to run on Windows 7 if you do a lot of compatibility changes. Used copies go for about $5-10 on ebay, which if you loved these old-school adventure games and thought Al Lowe was a funny guy, that's certainly worth the price. Despite some niggling flaws I'd give this game a well deserved four out of five, which I admit is rose-tinted by my nostalgia, but if I gave it any less I'd be doing my entire childhood a disservice.

Yes, that's Darth Vader and Yoda over there. Copyright infringement much? 

Lords of the Realm 2

The Short


Pros
- Hybrid turn based / real time strategy
- Part country sim, part resource management sim, part siege sim, and more
- Music is fantastic
- Battle against AI or over "Modem Network" (works on modern networks, too)
- Tons of scenarios, adding the "Siege Pack" throws even more into the mix
- Lots of unit types, each with their own strengths and weaknesses
- AI opponents are fully voiced and say some pretty great stuff

Cons
- After a few games you can figure out exactly how the AI works
- "Autocalculating" battles can be influenced if you know what units count for "more"
- Knights and macemen are stupidly overpowered. Crossbows during sieges are as well
- Sieges against AI opponents are too easy; capturing the flag to win instantly breaks it (the AI never guards their flag)
- Alliances are totally useless with AI opponents
- While financially ruining somebody is a viable strategy against other humans, you can never out an AI opponent by burning all his fields and starving him out. It just doesn't work.
- The sequel, Lords of the Realm III, was so awful it killed the franchise. Thanks a lot, Sierra.

Your county, my lord. Don't screw it up. 

The Long

The king is dead, and he has left no heir. You are one of a handful of lords vying for the throne, and stuff is about to get bloody. You all start with the one county you ruled over while the king still lived - the rest of the counties claiming neutrality - and now is the time to raise an army, build a castle, and conquer the land. Oh, and make sure your people are getting fed, staying happy, paying taxes, and gathering resources to make more weapons for the ongoing war effort. That's important, too!

Lords of the Realm 2 is an interesting hybrid of county management and real-time battles and sieges. The general gist of the game is simple: build up a powerful county, form an army, and crush all opposition. The difficult part comes in managing all the resources required to pull this off, and that is where Lords of the Realm 2 really shines. It's neither too hard (Civilization) or too easy (Command and Conquer) to figure out, and it fits its unique groove very well.

Sieges can be bloody affairs. Sorry for the blurry screenshot. 

Lords of the Realm 2's county simulation can be either as complex or simple as you want it. You basically are given a group of peasants (the number you have is based on population), and you can designate where exactly you want them to focus on. Some can work the fields. Others can tend the cows (boo cows! Go straight grain from the first season!). Some might work on reclaiming fields your enemies have burned, or work on the castle. Others can cut wood or mine metal or stone. They could forge weapons from your resources, and then you can enlist them into your army. The game gives you the ability to pick and choose exactly how many go in which spot.

Or, if this is too complex for you, you can use a slider to auto-assign. Again, only as hard as you need it to be (and when it's endgame and you have 20-odd counties, the slider comes in real handy to prevent hour-long turns). 

Every turn is a season, meaning you plant in winter (or spring, but your harvest will suffer for it) and harvest the following fall. You'll have to make sure you have enough food to feed your people between those two points, or else they'll lose faith in you and drop in happiness (taxes also make them pissed off). Drop happiness too low and they'll kick you out and start marauding other counties for food in a bloody, violent swath. Crazy stuff.

This game looked pretty good back in the day, and still holds up

Once you think you have all that stuff under control, you have to build an army and go kick the other nobles right back to where they came from. Army building hurts your county's happiness, but you can recruit from any county you own, making each a sort of self-sustaining city-state (though you can send supplies to and from your counties, but they have to make the trip there safely and over several seasons). You can pick from a lot of unit types: swordsmen with armor, macemen with IMBA attack power, archers, high-defense pikemen, crossbowmen, or the super-elite knights. You can also just enlist peasants to fight if you don't have the weapons, though they'll suck worse than archers in melee.

The game is a weird mix of turn-based and real time. Once you enter a season, the game proceeds in real time until everyone is finished. Armies move, changes to counties are made, etc. The battles are also in real time. However, once everyone is finished the game waits until everyone is done with the turn, and then it proceeds to the next season and the cycle repeats. It's an interesting mix, and I think it works well.

You have to have the resources to make different weapons, or you can just buy them from a merchant

Essentially, that's the game. As your empire expands it gets harder and harder to keep everything well defended, so castles are required to give you an edge. AI opponents can be bribed, complimented, or insulted, and often times they'll ally with you if they like you enough. Don't expect them to help you out ever, though, since form alliances basically means they just won't attack you (and some of the more devious opponents, like the Countess, will stab you in the back when she thinks it benefits her). The AI have four different personas: The Knight (who is aggressive and abandons county building), The Bishop (who focuses on building castles and obtaining wealth), The Baron (who is probably the smartest opponent in terms of military might and county stability), and The Countess (who is sort of a mix between the other three, and the most annoying ally of all). You unfortunately can't determine exactly who is in your scenario with you (it is all pre-determined based on the map), but the variety is enough to keep things somewhat fresh.

The game has lots of maps. The only way to get this game currently is through Good Old Games, which includes Lords of the Realm 1 (which isn't that great) and the Siege Pack expansion for Lords of the Realm 2 (which is awesome). The expansion adds scenarios that are basically just battles for you to attempt with pre-set rules, as well as a bunch of new maps including some silly ones. Ever want to battle across the United States in a medieval setting? No? Well, too bad, because it's in the game, and it's hilarious.

The multiplayer has a plethora of options available

If you think the game is too easy, you can change it up with a bunch of options. Want it so armies have to forage in the counties they are currently occupying? You can do that (and starve your enemies out by camping out on their lands). Want everybody to start with destroyed fields and no money? You can do that. Want to be forced to employ crop rotation, least your fields fall barron? Yep, that's an option too. There's a lot of cool bonuses that ramp up the complexity of the game, and doing an Impossible run (where all fields are barron and your counties start off starving to death) with everybody starting with Royal Castles (basically the biggest, most impenetrable castle in the game) is a fantastic challenge. 

There are a few issues, though. While the AI opponents are unique, they tend to employ similar strategies. Once they start losing they'll make 10 man peasant armies and just run around burning your crops out of spite, which is especially annoying since you can do that to them but they never seem to suffer any consequences. While the army mix is useful, you can also just go "all knights" if you are good at resource management and basically sweep through most battles. The "autocalculator" for battles (which you can employ if you don't want to fight them) can also be broken: it counts crossbowmen, swordsman, and knights way higher than other units, so if you stuff those in a castle you'll basically win any auto-calculated siege. When you are besieging, you can win the battle instantly by capturing an enemy's "flag" (usually in the middle of a base), but they don't do a very good job of defending it; bash down the gate, send a speedy knight, and end the battle with minimal casualties. 

Maceman are also super-powerful if you choose to fight out a battle. Their low armor is easily compensated by their insane attack power. 

The music is also a standout. Harkening back to the day when RTS games actually cared about their soundtracks, every song in the game is moody and memorable. I used to extract the .wav files from the CD, convert them to mp3s, and burn them onto CDs for my Discman (back when a CD burner was 2x and cost like $400). The battle and siege music is particularly memorable, but what was neat was the overworld songs: they changed as the situations got more and more dire, the songs getting darker and more foreboding. It was a neat touch, and really helped ramp up the excitement as you knew you were finally going to knock the stupid Baron from the game.

The early music is nice and quiet. It gets crazier later. Also, awesome CG!

I love this game, not going to lie. It was pretty much this and The Incredible Machine 2 that made up the bulk of my childhood. I still remember arguing with my mother that she should let me buy the "T" rated game (it's been re-rated to "E" now) since I was only 10. I won the battle for this game (and lost it for Warcraft 2. I might be singing a different song had that been the case) and am so glad I did. Lords of the Realm 2 is one of my favorite strategy games ever, and I still go back and play it all the time. 

It's available from Good Old Games, right now, with the expansion and the (mediocre) first game for $6.  You should go buy it right now. No, I don't get commissions off of it or anything, but I really freaking love this game and you will too. Look, I'll even provide a link; I never do that in my reviews: Click me!

Five out of five stars. Seriously, did you expect any less? Now to go punch Sierra who got bought by Vivendi who got bought by Activision right in their stupid face for releasing that atrocity that was Lords of the Realm 3 and killing one of my favorite series ever. How could you mess this up?

They won't win any awards for boxart variation, though. Did they seriously just take the original picture and Photoshop the backdrop red? I guess Warcraft II did that too, but come on...lazy!

Dead To Rights: Retribution

The Short


Pros
- Lots of totally over the top kills
- Stealth sections where you play as the dog, Shadow
- Can command your dog to go all feral on dudes
- Cover based shooting is satisfying, slow-mos for headshots
- Story is so completely stupid it's hilarious

Cons
- Looks terrible
- Controls are just barely passable; Gears of War this ain't
- Voice acting and story are awful, so if you hate B-Movies you will hate this
- Single player is short but feels way too long
- Kills are awesome but there are only about six of them
- Not enough sections where you play as Shadow
- Gets boring really fast
- Gratuitous cursing isn't "edgy," it's just obnoxious
- No multiplayer (not like anybody would be on it...)

Have a nice trip! See you next...you know what? I can't do this. 

The Long

Dead to Right: Retribution feels like a game stuck in a time bubble. Way back on the PS2 games, two Dead to Rights games were released. They were pretty decent, where the biggest hook was the fact you had a big, angry dog to run around and kill people and that was pretty brutal. The series then fell off the face for a long while, and now it's back on this generation and is ready to kick butt and be all up in your face with its bad attitude in a "gritty" reboot. Too bad stuff that passed off as "decent" on the PS2 is not acceptable nowadays, because Dead To Rights: Retribution is an ok ride, it just wears out its welcome super fast.

The story is so completely horrible I really have to mention it. You know this is good stuff when the very first scene is the main character (a hard-boiled cop who plays by his own rules!) literally sticks his badge in the face of his superior officer, then slams it and his gun down on a cop car before snarling and stalking into some skyscraper where a hostage situation is going on. Jack Slate plays by his own rules, son, and he dont' take no crap from some paper-pushing wash-up! It only gets more absurd from there, with (spoiler?) Jack's father being offed by some gang leader (right before a convenient rainstorm), Jack kneeling above him as his girlfriend/paramedic tries to bring him back to life, and Jack looking up at the sky and screaming he'll get revenge. Seriously, this game's story is completely, unbelievably awful. Which is why I sort of enjoyed it. Sort of. It's so stupid I can't help but cringe and laugh at the same time, which means I actually gleaned some sort of enjoyment out of it. I guess? 

"I AM THE LAW!" Ok, no more Judge Dredd jokes this review, I promise. 

The amount of swearing, however, should be noted, because I'm fairly certain 50% of this game consists of the word "f***" (or some variation on it). I don't really care either way when it comes to swearing if it is used as an effective storytelling device, but considering the story is butt-freaking awful, the cursing got obnoxious for me really fast. It was just cursing for the sake of cursing, so any impact it might have had was quickly swept away for general annoyance.

That describes the game itself pretty good, actually: starts off impactful and with a lot of punch, quickly degenerates into something totally uninteresting and obnoxious. It's a traditional third-person, cover based shooter, with a few stealth elements mixed in (that's your dog; I'll cover that more later). Enemies start off easy and quickly get cheap, though you can basically cheat by shooting them, staggering them, and then running up for a free and easy instant kill. In fact, it was actually way easier during most of the game to just completely ignore taking cover, bum rush the nearest enemy, punch him once and get a free finisher. You can even have finishers where you steal their weapons if you really need them, so this one-two combo is essentially the easiest way through generic thugs. The fact that your character has a pretty robust melee system actually makes the game easier, since I can combo thugs into oblivion if needs be.

Which is nice, I guess, if you like doing the same thing over and over, and watching the same half-dozen kill animations over and over. They are hilariously over the top the first couple times (like the swearing. And the story. And basically this whole game), and then they - you guessed it - get repetitive and annoying. This tends to happen with just about any game that uses a "kill animation" liberally, which makes me wonder why developers just don't add more animations. It's like in JRPGs and the battle songs;  you know they are going to be playing your game for 60+ hours, why don't you have like six different battle themes? Legend of Dragoon freaking did that, and it was perhaps the only good thing about that game! Come on, SquareEnix! This isn't hard.

I really need to stop going off on tangents during my reviews

Anyway, the game also quickly goes from "too easy" to "stupidly hard" fast. Regular thugs, as mentioned, go down easy but pretty soon they send a billion dudes at you (and those freaking snipers, like in that picture above) and on hard (which is what I played on) it gets obnoxious. Checkpoints are liberal and all, but I hate dying in games in general, so frustration hit pretty hard. I almost didn't finish it I got so pissed off, but like Viking: Battle for Asgard I persevered, and was rewarded with...well, a stupid ending. What a surprise.

There honestly isn't much to say about playing as Jack. Headshots come easy, and the fact it gives you a more precise reticle when blind firing from cover (with the pistol, anyway) than when you actually aim is pretty stupid (and hilarious when I headshot people from behind some box without even looking). The fact that it slo-mos every time I headshot is rewarding, but again...gets old fast. 

Shadow, which reminds me of Shadow from Final Fantasy VI, who also had a killer dog. COINCIDENCE?!?!

My favorite parts in the game were (again, like Viking...this is sort of uncanny, actually) the tacked-on stealth sections where you played as Jack's kick-ass dog, Shadow. Shadow can only take a few hits and (obviously) can't use guns, but he can use "dog senses" to see through walls, insta-kill enemies that don't see him, drag bodies to keep from getting found out, and sneak through small areas. These sections are actually really fun to play, because Shadow's insta-killing (one of which involves biting a dude in the nuts...ouch...and it give an achievement for that) keeps things fast, though the graphics are so bad that when he's dragging and enemy nine times out of ten his mouth isn't actually on the arm, just sort of...floating near it. Oh well.

Anyway, these sections are a good break up from the monotonous shooting and executions as Jack, which is why it sucks that they are both few and far between as well as super short. I don't think the concept of playing as Shadow could support an entire game to itself, but it was certainly a good enough diversion that they should have put more of it in. 

That isn't motion blur. The game actually looks this fugly. Ok, maybe it is motion blur, but the game still looks bad. 

The graphics look...just passable. Locations are bland and uninspired, the guns all look like boring old guns, you fight the same batches of enemies over and over, and everybody looks like they are made out of plastic or something. Faces are particularly horrifying, and Shadow doesn't look like he had any hair, just one big texture. Lighting is boring, costumes are boring...has my point been made? This game looks like an up-resed PS2 game, which sort of fits the fact that it plays like...an up-resed PS2 game. Seriously, all those years you put Dead to Rights on the backburner, and you picked the laziest way to reboot it? For shame.

Not to mention it's made in the Unreal Engine (like every game this generation), so you get texture popin up the wazoo, even when the game is installed on the 360s HDD. You thought the game couldn't look worse? Oh, think again, silly consumer!

Hooray for graphics. 

This game really drags. With no multiplayer and a single player that feels too long, I see no reason for anybody to pick it up unless they are really hurting for a violent, third person shooter that isn't Gears of War. While some parts of it are decent, and the hilariously awful story makes up for a lot, there is just too much here that feels half-baked to give it a hearty recommendation. If you can find it for $10 or under, and again...are really hurting for a third-person shooter that isn't, you know, good, then I have got the game for you. 

And, continuing the similarites between this review and my Viking: Battle for Asgard review, I'm "rewarding" Dead to Rights: Retribution with two out of five stars. Why two instead of one? Because despite myself, I did have a pretty decent time the first couple of hours, and all the Shadow parts were enjoyable. It's a guilty pleasure (my brain was protesting against my having fun the entire time), but one that only lasts a short amount of time. 

And since seeing the takedowns for the first time is one of the best things about the game, I will now ruin it for you by embedding this video with all the takedowns. What? Now you don't have to play the game! You'll thank me later. 

Roller Coaster Tycoon (Deluxe)

The Short


Pros
- An expansive theme park sim
- Build shops and rides, hire entertainers and handymen, and much more
- Actually build your own coasters in "design" mode
- Dozens of missions (more with expansions)
- Loads of coaster types and rides
- Insanely addicting

Cons
- The formula for building a good coaster can be difficult to figure out
- Easy to "cheat" your way through the game with cheap exploits
- Ride depreciation is a bit unrealistic
- Micromanagement eventually gets to insane levels on the bigger maps
- No true "sandbox" mode (though an expansion has a map with unlimited money)

Just looking at this screen shot makes me want to boot the game up again

The Long

Not going to lie: Roller Coaster Tycoon is one of my favorite old PC games. If you'll allow a moment of personal indulgence: Roller Coaster Tycoon was the game that headed off my "second wave" of PC gaming love (the first starting with The Incredible Machine 2, and the third with Warcraft III). I spent hours playing this game with my brothers, trying to design the perfect park, and salivating as we awaited for the next expansion pack to come out. Now, thanks to Good Old Games, you can pick up this game on the cheap (as well as it's ok-but-not-vastly-improved sequel), and so last Christmas I jumped on it. I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years.

Guess what? It totally did. This game is awesome.

Things are gettin' crazy

The game is basically like that really old game Theme Park, but improved in nearly every way. Essentially the game has a plethora of missions for you, staring with simple ones (here's a blank park and some money: have fun!) and getting to harder ones (get a certain park rating and guest # in this extremely limited space, etc.). Each park layout is unique and since you can't change where your park entrance is (which is too bad), you have to work around the landscape. You can always use your shovel to raise and lower land, add water, and do all sorts of crazy stuff, but since everything in this game costs a bit of money you'll nickle and dime yourself to death if you are a perfectionist.

It's a pretty simple set up at first: keep your guests happy. You start with the basics: food, drinks, and bathrooms. You can then build simple rides: bumper cars, a ferris wheel, some go-karts (those go-karts are money makers) . Once you've earned enough you can then start constructing roller coasters (beginning with basic steel ones with no loops, and eventually getting to crazy, twisting monstrosities) and that is when the game gets crazy. 

Even the main menu screen is exciting

The game comes with a handful of pre-build tracks (not enough, honestly, but if you have the expansions it adds a lot), but the real joy comes in making your own coasters. The sky is essentially the limit as you can build banks, curves, loops, corkscrews, and anything else. You can even add in-ride photos (and the price gouge the heck out of them) in an attempt to generate more revenue. If you make a mistake on coaster construction, the game refunds you completely (unlike paths, where if you mess up you are out the $2 difference), and you can make coasters that go really high, twist around other rides, go underground; seriously, you can do anything if you can afford it. Creating some wacky (and stupid) roller coasters is a blast. They don't even have to be complete; you can have those ones that just sort of shoot you forward and then let you fall back.

And you aren't just limited to coasters. Want a steam train that encircles you park like in Disneyland? That's there. How about a monorail? Got that. What about some simpler, smaller rides that just fill up the extra space? Can do that too (even if it's a cheap way to earn money). The number of coasters, concessions, rides, and options is staggering, especially with the expansions installed. It's never overwhelming, because the game unlocks things in increments (you have to "research" new ride types in each scenario, and the rate you get new stuff is equal to how much you fund research), giving you time to figure out what you want. You can even focus your research on different things, so if your park is too full of coasters you can instead research food or smaller rides (like slides or hedge mazes) instead. 

"The Purple Puker"

There are some issues with designing your own coasters, though. While the pregenerated rides are somehow immaculate with their ratings (each is given an excitement, intensity, and nausea rating. You want to raise the first one without raising the other two), whenever you build your own you seem to fall flat. Mine always are too intense, even if they seem tamer than the prebuilt ones. This can be frustrating, but it also can be very satisfying when you finally make the perfect steel coaster. You can also save the rides you make so you can build them again in later scenarios, which means your "Rat Race Armageddon" ride can grace every single park you build.

The goal of the game is to get rich and keep your guests happy, which (as stated above) starts simple and gets hard. You have to provide them with benches and trash cans, or else they'll just throw their garbage on the ground and puke everywhere. You have to hire handymen to take out the trash, clean up the puke, and generally keep things looking good. You need mechanics to make sure your rides don't break down or randomly blow up. You need security guards to prevent your stuff from getting vandalized. And you need entertainers to keep people happy while they wait for hours in line for your latest coaster abomination. 

Despite your best efforts, stuff can quickly get overwhelming.

And that is where the game gets tricky. After a while your park gets so big that micromanaging everything becomes a near impossible task. Guests tire of rides after a while, meaning you'll need to drop the prices in order to keep them coming. It's easy to box yourself in if you aren't careful, as you need pathways in order to get to other rides (and you have to keep it somewhat organized or your guests will get lost). You have to keep on hiring people proportional to how much you are expanding, and make certain you have enough freaking bathrooms and food. It gets crazy, and when all you really want to do is design wacky coasters, sometimes the financial micromanaging (especially when advertising gets into the mix) can get in the way of just enjoying the game.

Luckily there are ways to "break" the game. Since you can sell stuff back for almost as much as you paid for it, if guests are starting to get super cheap (like thinking ten cents is still too much to pay for freaking bumper cars!) then you can simply bulldoze a pre-made attraction and put the exact same one in its place. They'll all think it's a new ride, and you'll profit. This kind of feels like cheating, but the fact that rides depreciate in value so quickly (though the coasters tend to work better) makes it seem like that's what the game wants you to do. 

Once you figure out the specifics of the mechanics, you can essentially "break" the game in terms of earning money. Aside from bulldozing rides and replacing them with the same ones to regain interest, you can also make short, crappy, custom coasters (that only last 10 seconds) with reasonably low stats and still make mad bank off of them (when your down payment was substantially lower than the amount people value the ride at). It's unrealistic - who would want to ride a coaster that just goes around in a circle and stops - but it is totally feasible. You can also make pretty much any go-kart coarse and people will line up for miles to ride it, even if it is total crap.  

The game also lacks a "sandbox" mode, where it would basically just give you a huge lot of your choosing, unlimited money, and all the rides upfront. It does have "Arid Heights" in one of the expansions, which gives you a big desert and tons of money (and the charge to never let your park rating drop below 650), but that's just one scenario. It would have been great to have had a "custom map" option with your own rules and details, but it isn't that big of a loss.

You can even color each coaster segment different parts...if you are a total lunatic

I've played every Roller Coaster Tycoon game, and despite the later ones having better graphics (and the ability to "ride" your own creations), I still think the original is the best. With the expansions installed it has way more than enough options for even the craziest park manager, and the massive number of scenarios ensures dozens of hours of gameplay. If you have any interest in simulation games, you should really check this game out. It's one of the best. 

You can buy this game right now on Good Old Games for $5. I picked it up during the Christmas sale for $2.50, and they have the second game (which is essentially the same game but with slightly better UI and a few more rides) on there for $10. Good Old Games makes it so even these ancient games will run smoothly on modern machines (runs great on my Windows 7 64 bit), so you don't have anything to worry about if you get it from them. It also comes with all the expansions, which is the way the game should be played. 

If I were to give it a star rating, it would certainly be five out of five. Now would somebody please turn the sound off on the ferris wheels? I hate that music. 

And as a bonus, you can make deathtraps! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!