I played both Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back! back in the 80's - my friends and I spent ...literally... months of game time mapping out every corner of the place, noting every trap and making extensive notes on the spells (we were even convinced that there were some rune combinations that would have produced an effect, but fizzled on us. Many hours went into banging out these combinations). We had all kinds of theorycraft on the monsters and their damage, etc. and the various "undocumented" effects of the magic items.
I still count Dungeon Master / Chaos as the greatest dungeon crawl of them all. The traps are hard, the combats terribly un-even, but the sense of accomplishment is amazing.
On to the game...
It is identical to DM/CSB, almost down to the nuance of timing. It is exactly what my nostalgia remembers it to be, but updated and better.
The Rune Magic System - I can understand the complaints - although I do love the system. It's a bit cumbersome to use, but I'm of the notion that any game that requires me to write things down in the real world, is probably a game I'm going to become immersed in.
The Automap - I like being forced to hand-map things, because I think it's a good real-world analog for an ingame activity. This kind of thing draws me in, but I have to admit that automaps are handy.
Uneven Combat - The combats are uneven. Some seem too easy, some seem nightmarishly hard. There's no way to get through this game without dying (several times).
Overall, it certainly is a welcome blast to the past, and I can honestly say I would play more just like this one.
I played both Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back! back in the 80's - my friends and I spent ...literally... months of game time mapping out every corner of the place, noting every trap and making extensive notes on the spells (we were even convinced that there were some rune combinations that would have produced an effect, but fizzled on us. Many hours went into banging out these combinations). We had all kinds of theorycraft on the monsters and their damage, etc. and the various "undocumented" effects of the magic items.
I still count Dungeon Master / Chaos as the greatest dungeon crawl of them all. The traps are hard, the combats terribly un-even, but the sense of accomplishment is amazing.
On to the game...
It is identical to DM/CSB, almost down to the nuance of timing. It is exactly what my nostalgia remembers it to be, but updated and better.
The Rune Magic System - I can understand the complaints - although I do love the system. It's a bit cumbersome to use, but I'm of the notion that any game that requires me to write things down in the real world, is probably a game I'm going to become immersed in.
The Automap - I like being forced to hand-map things, because I think it's a good real-world analog for an ingame activity. This kind of thing draws me in, but I have to admit that automaps are handy.
Uneven Combat - The combats are uneven. Some seem too easy, some seem nightmarishly hard. There's no way to get through this game without dying (several times).
Overall, it certainly is a welcome blast to the past, and I can honestly say I would play more just like this one.
David Jackson
http://www.starhelm.org