Wednesday 21 March 2018

Dragonsphere

A good mascot for "Too Much Information".

An evil magician threatens the kingdom and you must stop him in this very verbose point and click adventure. While dated graphics wise, the animations are quite fluid and the story is good, with a decent twist near the midpoint(?).

All spoken lines are voiced (not very well), and the detail on every scene is extreme; and this is part of the problem. With every mundane object being "active" it is easy to get overwhelemed by information, especially with all the pixel hunting going on.

I almost quit here. Effing sprites.

It doesn't help that you have 10 default different actions such as "Look, Take, Throw, Put, Open, Talk to..." and have additional ones for each item you pick up. You can "shine" a ring or "lick" a dead rat. A sword can "attack, thrust or carve up".

Said actions are also not interchangeable. You can't "put" acid on the floor or "throw" acid on the floor or "use" acid on the floor but you can use "pour contents of beaker" on the floor. Irritating is an understatement.

Set in a magical, fantasy land also makes it hard to use logic to progress. Do you know that tentacles can physically grab a teleporter and let you carry it around if you get no hints? No? Lucky I just told you then because the game certainly won't! Good luck assembling mystical artifacts too.
 
It's like it was designed be unfair, and for that reason alone I give it 1 bullshitting sprite out of 5. If you are after a dated point and click adventure, go with Beneath a Steel Sky instead.

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