One thing I do appreciate about this release – the game itself clearly isn’t for me – is how Capcom added ongoing achievements while you play. The left side of the screen shows your progress on various tasks like “Kill X of monster type Y” or “Collect X items” or “Do X move this many times”. I have no desire to play a game this sadly dated, but if I did, the ingame achievement tracking would be a pretty nifty hook.
-Tom
I do agree with Tom, it is very dated.
Though this was the game that ate many many many of my hard earned shiny shiny quarters after Gauntlet.
If it weren’t for the achievements, I probably would have just tried the demo and had fond memories of arcade days long past.
I snagged this without hesitation considering I do have a nostalgic hook, even fully knowing that the last time I attempted to replay these games was on an imported Sega Saturn collection that had some of the most unbearable load times in gaming. Even then I sadly came to the conclusion that these games do not hold up outside of stealing quarters from a bygone era, or maybe the loading REALLY annoyed me.
Almost two decades later without such technical snafus and included online multiplayer…its better, but hardly good. The achievement tasks are a nice touch, but there is no real skill to the combat(well crazy people will argue that this isn’t purely an attrition masher where the house ALWAYS wins), and really the progression choices amount to staring at slightly different backdrops between beatings.
It’s a novel attempt at translating D&D to a coin cruncher, but the core design is hardly functional, thoughtful, or tactical. There is no rebalancing in place to ensure survival is meaningful for each credit. Saving magic is pointless considering how fast death becomes you(use those screen-clearing bombs!). Retrofitting the game to consoles without any fundamental changes is not expected, but would have gone a long way to elevate this collection to more than a mere nostalgia trip, one I’ll maybe play again for ten minutes in another two decades.