It's hard to find an RPG that doesn't have similar problems, but in BaK those are particularly visible. The combat system is basically broken once you gain access to certain powerful spells, as many fights just come down to winning the initiative and then either obliterating the enemy on the very first turn or just turning some of your characters invincible for the rest of the fight. The skill system is very exploitable, if one wishes to go that way. It's also got a ton of nice little ideas, like using stealth to ambush your enemies, having to eat food and repair your equipment (which is certainly not tedious but adds a nice amount of resource management to the game), using temples for fast travel, texts written in Moredhel language only being understandable by using a spell or having an actual Moredhel in your party, and so on. The UI and combat system should be very easy to get into even if you've never played an RPG before, and mechanically the game hardly feels "dated" at all except for maybe the somewhat annoying overland travel. The "puzzles" in this case may be anything from solving riddles to interpreting vague clues, and it may involve some pretty creative stuff like lowering your character's skills by making them drunk as fuck. The quest design is surprisingly clever in places, often going way beyond normal fetch quest design and mixing exploration, detective work and light puzzles to keep things interesting. The visuals are a mixed bag, as some of the "cutscenes" and city screens look pretty great, but seeing those live actors standing in front a vast field of light green blandness isn't quite as cool or atmospheric despite having a certain charm to it. The writing is very good, as has been mentioned. I first played it a few years back, and I replayed it last year, and I think it holds up really well. You felt like you had a reason to do so other than "they're there and the exit is past them". You're still killing Moredhel troops, but now you're killing Moredhel troops in a completely different situation and for a completely different reason than before.
Also, the textual context gave the action variety. Of course, the actual control the player had was still mainly about going to places and killing things, but all those places and things now had a tremendous amount of context. And then there was BaK, with large amounts of text which gave you the feeling that there's a lot more happening then just going to places and killing things. I mean, the CRPGs I was familiar with at the time were what? Eye of the Beholder 1+2, SSI Gold Box games, Lands of Lore (came out around the same time, not sure which one I've played first) and generally, these were all pretty sparse in terms of text, which largely limited the gameplay to "go places kill things". I think what really drew me in at the time was the fact that it relied heavily on text. I loved that game, and if I had more time right about now, I might dust it off just to see how it feels today. Then came Antara, which showed that the company didn't understand what had made the story work, what had made the combat work, and what had made the skill system well-received amongst its few fans. (Though it didn't win them much praise from the "pretty textures are better" mainstream.) The combat was poorly balanced, but was also one of the last combat grids - something sorely missed. The game's 3d sucks, but the devs worked their asses off to remove the 10 x 10 square wilderness corridors of their contemporaries (and antecedents), which was really something for the time. Rather, it was more of a last gasp of a dying genre, attempting to swing things back their way with FMV and 3d, and failing.īut the game itself has a tale well told that grows out of the characters and setting, instead of being the usual big bad and chosen savior thrust onto a world that doesn't otherwise involve them. But it was no game-changer, was in fact initially a sales flop. I bought it near release with a friend, and we both enjoyed it immensely.
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