Realms Of Arkania II

RPG by SIR-TECH

Reviewed By Lu Richardson.

I've heard a lot of hype for this game but, from the makers of the 
Wizardry series, I expected great things.

It just goes to show you; how wrong can you be!  I loaded the game 
and the intro looked good.  The graphics were fine, though I've seen 
better.  As soon as the thing was up and running, I tried to 
generate some characters - but the whole thing was so cumbersome, I 
gave up and used the built-in team.  I didn't take me long to see 
that the inferface was highly complicated, the reason being that 
there are no end of options.  I have found to my cost that, in 
computer terms, bigger is never better.

OK, I got going.  Well, now, that's better.  I found myself in a 
town and the scenario and movements were as in Ultima Underworlds.  
Great.  Only it was night and I couldn't do anything at all, so 
nothing much happened before I found myself camping.  In daytime, I 
had a look around and bought a couple of weapons before I left town.

This is a game in which each change of scene takes forever, with 
a lot of churning noises from your hard disk.  However, no sooner I 
had taken a couple of steps, I had an opportunity to enter into 
combat.  Whirrrr went the hard disk and the scene changed to an 
isometric view of the characters and orcs.  I chose the automatic 
option and five minutes later I had lost both patience and interest.

Sorry, folks, that's as far as I got.  You don't have to eat a whole 
egg to find out it is bad.  This game, which looked so promising,
turned out to be too complicated, too slow and too boring.  Combat 
was the last straw - how is it possible that people still use such 
primitive methods?  Whatever happened to all those fabulous action 
RPGs where you felt you were actually fighting the nasties and, 
indeed, you could see your sword/axe/mace in front of you, where you 
could pick things up and manipulate them, where YOU felt in charge?  
Well, this one ain't one of them, that's for sure.  But if you have 
endless patience and don't go in for direct action anyway, then you 
might like this game's many features.