I had a sudden urge to talk about this game. Anyone remember it?
This was probably one of the most well written RPG's that I've ever played. The game and story was good enough that the original author, Raymond R Feist, penned a novelization of it and incorporated it into his universe, essentially making the game canonical.
Despite the very dated graphics, because they incorporated bitmapped photo's of actors cosplaying all the memorable characters, I personally think the game presentation still holds up rather well. It's kind of like looking at a modern retro-future game. The world around each location was rendered in 3D with the actors presented at 2D images with multiple angle shots depending on whether the assets were used for dialogue or the fight scenes.
The game play was strategy board oriented during the many many "fight-scenes" but it played rather quickly if I remember correctly and was considered very state of the art at the time.
When Sierra was promoting the much anticipated sequel, Betrayal at Antarra, they were giving away the original on their website. I still have that copy! I just checked on GOG. You can get it along with the sequel for 5 bucks. Man I love this game!
I've played BaK in the late nineties, in a magazine edition I had bought when the game was past its peak. At that time, as now, I tried to play every RPG I could grab, but I only got to finish those which were really good. If I remember correctly I've played it three times.
It was a semi open world concept, where you could explore the world with a lot of freedom, to get money, armors and weapons, but the gameplot itself was pretty linear, offering little choices, and the gamethrough was a little short, especially because the money would become harder and harder to obtain, since the chests didn't respaw.
I loved the turn based combat, like in Might and Magic, and though the movements of the characters might seem very clumsy today, it was not so at the time, and fighting was not boring at all. I hated the riddle locks - my english was not good at that time and I was forced to quit many locks, after trying some hundreds combinations to open them - untill now I imagine the armors and weapons I was never able to find because of that damned riddle lock system. Thanks for the warm memories of a wonderfull game.