Geneforge

"Spiderweb lacked "essence" when they "forged" this game. Heh heh.."

Quality, traditional, console-style role-playing games are hard to find for the PC. I went to download.com and decided to find some freeware and trial games to try. I tried several games that were listed. Geneforge and Avernum were among them. Out of all the games I downloaded and played, they were the best. Don't let this mislead you into thinking that I mean they -are- the best; compared to other games that take on a similar style, I saw little to be impressed about.

OVERVIEW.

I downloaded the shareware version of this game from download.com. The story is about you -- you're a part of a group of beings called "shapers," who have the power to create life from will and magic.

You play the role of one of those shapers -- newly initiated into the group -- and are off to training when you fall under attack by a ship. You are now stranded on an island that was marked "barred" by your people. Stuck on a forbidden island, you must now find a way off while dealing with the politics and turmoils of the beings that live there.

STORYLINE/DIALOGUE.
8/10

The story is intense. Character development is sorely lacking. Obviously, the people you meet in the game each have their own story, but what is more important is the "big picture." The big picture is painted well. The game describes areas with interesting detail. Several characters you meet and speak to reveal different parts of the storyline. Their attitudes and behavior may change depending on your actions and the things that you do. You can also change one of your character's attributes as you gain levels to make different options available in conversations.

It's just that none of this is memorable. Maybe I just haven't advanced far enough from the shareware version to know. I do know that if the characters I've met and spoken with continue to develop at the same rate they are in the shareware version, there will wind up being a lot more substance to the story than there will be to the characters that compose it.

As for the main character you're playing... forget it. There's no background here. You're just another John Doe. I suppose that makes sense, though, in this game, since you're shaping yourself and the world around you by your actions. Again, there's more substance to the overall idea and play of the game, rather than the parts that make it up.

GRAPHICS/VISUAL APPEAL.
6/10

I'm not a particularly picky person when it comes to the visual appearance of games. They don't have to be flashy or spectacular. They just need to be smooth or neatly drawn -- clean. I suppose the word I'm looking for is "decent."

Compared to Avernum -- another game written by the same company that created Geneforge -- this game has a much more decent visual appeal. There's a little more color. The characters are larger, and there's a bit more animation so that feel there's a livelihood to the environment you're in.

Most of the environment and interface isn't very colorful, though. It isn't very rich or detailed. I'm unimpressed by the fact that the author of the game decided to stick with system fonts for most of the text that appears throughout the game.

Still, the graphics are decent.

INTERFACE.
4/10

The interface is somewhat tedious. You can only control your characters using the mouse. Most actions -- such as attacking and healing -- require clicking on the character or object on which you wish to act. This can be especially complicated if you're doing this to small objects, or among a group of objects or characters that are close together.

I just wish I could have more keyboard control of the characters. All the clicking and constant moving around through the mazes makes my hand tired.

GAMEPLAY.
4/10

This is where the game hurts the most. Throughout the game, you will fight many battles. The way these battles progress and the "spoils" of fighting are disappointing.

The battle system is turn-based. Using your mouse, you must select characters to attack or cast spells upon. Frequently, I've accidentally ended a turn by clicking my character instead of clicking the enemy directly next to it. See "interface" above.

The main problem with the battle system is that the damage system seems to be variable; the various weapons your character and the enemy uses can do a range of damage. This range is very wide. So, an enemy can do anything from hitting you for little or no damage in one turn to killing you with one hit in the next turn. This could be very frustrating in the beginning of the game. In the beginning of the game, I chose to be a shaper, but then decided that I wanted to use melee weapons because the summoned creatures were worth squat in combat. I found myself having to kill an enemy, loot, run away, come back, and repeat, all the while my fingers are getting a lot of exercise through the constant scrolling, clicking, and moving. (See "interface" above.)

The worst part out of the entire game is the fact that experience received from enemies defeated is also a variable. You actually receive little to no experience from monsters that the game feels are "weaker" than you are! How backwater is that? This is a problem because it offers less flexibility on how to develop your character. What if you decided to develop your character in areas other than combat skills for a few levels? You've gained levels and experience to improve those non-combat areas, but because you're higher up in level, the game thinks that the enemies around you are weaker. It therefore awards you much less experience. At some point, it will even award you NO experience for certain monsters!

It's too bad it just doesn't stick with tradition and actually keep the experience value the same for different monsters. It should have instead just made the next-level experience requirement a variable, instead of making earned experience a variable. That way, if you are not yet comfortable battling higher monsters, you can battle lower monsters for the same experience value you've always been receiving. You can then work your way up much more comfortable.

MUSIC/AUDIO APPEAL.
1/10

The graphics don't have to be spectacular, but where's the audio? There really is little to no music throughout this game, unless there's something the shareware version is hiding from me. There's a little music at the opening of the game... and that's it. Everything else is just special effects.

Music is important for many reasons. It sets the mood for a scene, adds an emphasis to dialogue, and gives you something pleasant to listen to for those games that make you have to run back and forth between killing monsters and recovering from nearly being killed. (*Ahem*)

This isn't to imply that a game isn't enjoyable without the music. If that were the case, old RPG and computer games wouldn't have been enjoyed by many people. (Deaf people would probably never have involved themselves with RPGs, too.) But, I feel that for every game, my eyes or my ears need to be soothed while I put forth an effort to enjoy the story. Neither of them are getting much enjoyment from -this- game.

SUMMARY.

The author of the game made a great effort to make it something, and clearly a lot more effort was put into this game than other console-style RPGs available for the PC. Unfortunately, it falls short of anything spectacular. It didn't leave a lasting impression in my mind. Sound and sights are tied to memory -- both of which the game does a poor to mediocre job of presenting. The overall storyline seems to be intense, but it's hard to reveal through the tedious interface and combat system. All the while, I'm not going to enjoy much when I'm taking a break from maze crawling and battling, since the individual non-player-characters aren't deep enough to capture my interest. Unless I go back to the maze-crawling and monster slaying to advance the storyline, in which case I get back to the combat system.

Is this my cup of tea? It could be, if a little more cream and sugar were added. Instead, it's just bland. It falls six teaspoons of sugar short of a perfect beverage.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/05