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centauri.alliance
centauri.alliance
Cranford, who also wrote the Bard's Tale series. Cranford actually switched from
Electronic Arts to Broderbund before writing this game. Cranford seems to have
cleaned up a lot of details that were slightly annoying(i.e. your "experience
points" are how much you have left until you can improve a skill) which are listed
in cool stuff below, but the game doesn't have quite as much soul as Bard's Tale II
and III. Quite.
Story:
Cool stuff:
Thorough job of "converting" traditional RPG stuff to the future. Spell points
become PSI(psionics), which opponents can reduce by psychic attacks, and there are
various different types of spells. Temples become hi-tech healing facilities for
psionics and bodily healing, and gold becomes credit. Characters have more of a
range of skills to choose from dependent on their race, so you can choose skills.
There are various weapon skills(sidearm/guns, throwing, and melee) and technical
skills(hardware, bio(healing) and ancient) and even metamorphosis. When you gain a
level, the experience you need for the next level depends on which skill you chose
to improve--the higher its number, the more experience you need for a level. It
presents a nice dilemma so absent in early role-playing games(i.e. just get a bunch
of levels, with one character of each class, and everything else will follow). It's
a bit unrealistic that your best strategy may be to use broadswords to trash
opponents that shoot guns, but it's amusing. And it means you don't have to buy
ammunition. Although it is neat to see the different power packs for the
differently named guns.
Neat, original names. Races include Manstrak, Donsai, Praktor, Human, and Arcturan.
The player profiles are like Bard's Tale, and the pictures are neat. The planet
names are neat, too, like Veladron II, Omicron VII, Kevner's World, and Keppa
Var(which the pamphlet mentions the Council has barred you from).
You can buy non-player characters(robots) at a shop. Although they don't obey you,
they are loads of fun and have neat pictures in their profiles.
Movement is keyboard, like the Bard's Tale, although you have an automapper
feature(along with futuristic pentagonal doorways). You can switch to the
automapper(aerial) view and still walk around, although it gets cleared when you
move from one planet to another or to a dungeon.
There are also "action clips" during critical parts of your adventure. The text
scrolling in a side box adds to it. "You meet Evil Guy X. (one of your players,
picked at random) socks X in the jaw before he can run away. X starts to deny but
breaks down in tears and confesses a huge part of the plot against the Council."
The video sequence then continues to re-play. Good for a few laughs on the limited
graphics.
Irritating stuff: space shuttle transport between planets goes through a graphics
routine that's tiring before the first time through. It's not so bad on an emulator
off a 300 MHz processor, fortunately.
The game itself came in a neat hexagonal box. Only mentioned as irritating because
I threw it out.
Reviewer's Score: 8 / 10