Thoughts by Wandrell (30 00 2007) – PC (DOS)
Today is the great day, today the Toronto arrives at its goal, a mineral rich planet where to start a colossal mining operation finishing a multimillionaire travel. Everything looks great, until an accident leaves the exploration crew stranded on the deserted, lifeless planet, to discover that it isn’t a desert, and much less lifeless.
They also find an intelligent alien species, the Iskai, anthropomorphic beings barely cat-like in appearance. But things get more surprising when they discover that magic exists here, and that humans with a celt society have been living in this world for centuries. An inhabited planet means that the mining operation should not start, risking otherwise to damage the planet, and so they embark in search of the Toronto.
This game has its own flavour, the graphics are great with many exotic designs and some weird ones, the world is a detailed one where you can get anything that is not nailed down and find much about its background speaking to the people, and adding to this the plot is great.
Sadly, it is also very linear. You follow the road getting few sideways and less reasons for going back to places you have already visited. At least what you get to explore is fun and entertaining, mostly these are the dungeons, each with its own background well mixed with the world story. But all the isles are big enough, and good looking enough, to make a trip around just to see the place.
If you are looking for a reward for this, know that it usually serves just for getting a few fights, which as expected is an important part of the game that can become a nuisance.
Most of your enemies are animals, with a few supernatural beings and some mean people. The combat itself is turn based using a board where each turn you give an order to each character. You know, the usual: fighting, moving, fleeing, using objects, casting spells…
The last one is the only noticeably difference, as the Iskai magic (the less versatile human one is more typical) requires some special seeds along with mana. And when lacking mana, you can sacrifice part of your life to power the spell.
Luckily, fights are easy, well they are easy if you don’t avoid many and raise your skills (used just for fighting and opening locks), so you can sit and dedicate yourself to the main point, advancing in the interesting story which even though it is fundamentally magic versus technology, it is done much better than usual, transforming it into a fight between two ways of seeing the world, one of mathematical reason and one with a philosophy of possibilities that are just two sides of the same coin.
A good, but short game, pretty short, which is probably the reason of the last part of the game, a pair of tediously long dungeons, so long and tedious that I ended having to use cheats if I didn’t wish to expend days fighting my way.
