Published by: Psygonosis
Reviewed by: Pascal "Saturnman" Vellet
System: PC CDROM (Also available on PSX)
Rating: 3 out of 10
Summary:
Chronicles Of The Sword is actually an awful game. Slow, tedios and lifeless, not even its hi-res graphics can save it from mediocrity. Basically, I could only recommend this graphic adventure to my worst enemies.
The Review:
You may not be aware of it, but there was a certain amount of hype surrounding Chronicles Of The Sword, or at least, that's what Psygonosis (the game's publisher) hoped the release of this game would generate. After a fairly easy installtion, the game starts off with a FMV sequence, where you see King Arthur adding a new noble knight (you) to its round table, while Morgana, the witch, kills a priest for mysterious reasons. This sequence looks pretty good, but you can't help but thinking the characters look pretty stiff. Once the real game kicks in, you'll be quite surprised that it looks very much like the FMV intro, with pre-rendred backgrounds and characters (They still look "Al Gore-ish"), similar to Rare's Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country (in hi-res).
However, enthusiasm will soon be replaced by boredom. The game is incredibly slow. The main character (you) walks around like a real person, but unfortunately, also at the same speed which makes travelling long distances a pain. To make matters worse, the game will throw around useless FMV cut scenes which slow everything down even more.
The whole goal of the game, bringing Morgana to justice, quickly becomes a tedious endeavour because the whole game is not about looking for battling Morgana, but actually performing pointless little tasks. For example, Merlin will tell you that to confront Morgana, you'll need an invisible armour. To get the armour, you'll have to get three specific objects. Once you actually get those objects and Merlin creates the armour you need, you'll be on your way to get Morgana. But without any warning, your guide will suddenly get sick. To heal her, you'll need to find a series of ingrediants to make a special medicine. But hold on, the horse you rode on mysteriously disappeared, making this latest problem a longer one to solve. Call it black magic, I call it bad screenplay. Instead of becoming an engrossing adventure, this game tries to delay everything to a frustrating point.
Did I mention there are combat sequences? Well actually, there are a few and they are really lame. They're basically slow and limited interactive FMV scenes where you can perform two attacks and the outcome is easily predictable.
Chronicles Of The Sword also suffers from a serious lack of feedback. Let's suppose you want to light up a candle. At one point in the game, you'll see a fire place so you're going to try to use it for that purpose. If it works, well, it works. If it doesn't, the game doesn't tell you if you did it wrong or you simply can't do it. You'll waste a lot of time trying to figure out those things.
Another problem is that the linear story directly affects gameplay. When you think you've searched in all nooks and crannies of every room for every potential item you could need, well, you haven't. As the story progresses, certain objects will appear in rooms you already thoroughly searched, forcing you to go back to every place you've been, because you never know if the missing item you're looking for has just appeared somewhere. There are no short cuts in Chronicles Of The Sword, you can only play it one way, and unfortunately, it's the longest way possible!
As for the sound in this game, it's not that great. The music (FM or MIDI) is some middle-age stuff and is barely adequate. All the sound effects are actually pretty good but many times, they're too repetitive sounding like they're coming from a scratchy LP or CD.
Yes, Chronicles Of The Sword is really that bad. Although the graphics and the sound effects have some quality in them, what really matters is gameplay, and you can look at it any way you want, it's medicore. I haven't played a game this bad in a long time.
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