Hillsfar
Hillsfar is developed by Westwood Associates on behalf of SSI computer role-playing game that was released in 1989 for MS- DOS, Amiga, Atari ST and Commodore 64. It combines real-time action with randomly generated quests. It also includes standard gameplay elements of role-playing game Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, which underpins the game. 1993 Hillsfar was ported from the Japanese development studio puppet on the game console Nintendo Entertainment System ( NES).
Gameplay
The game begins with character creation, stand for the three options are available: Choosing a pre-generated character, creating a new character or import an existing Characters from a previous AD & D game by SSI, such as Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. During the rebuilding of the player can race ( Dwarf, Elf, Human, Gnome ), the class ( cleric, fighter, magic user, Rogue) and the mind ( righteous, chaotic, neutral, good, bad ) set. Statistical character values such as strength and intelligence are determined by the computer by random values .
There are two aspects of the game. Firstly, arcade action, in which the player performs various tasks such as searching for treasure and travel between venues in the form of mini-games. Secondly, the adventure aspect, when the player solves quests. The choice of character class has this effect on the available quests, three for each class. While quests have to be met in a predetermined order, " it is up to yourself, what you do in your remaining time " and the player therefore has the freedom to explore the other aspects of the game.
The game is presented from three different perspectives. During the overland journey, the scene will be shown in a side view. Within the city Hillsfar the game switches to a bird's eye view. Caves, however, be shown from a first-person view. The interaction of the character with the game world is made possible by a Leslie Fiser from Games magazine COMPUTE! as a "bump interface" (from English: to bump = trigger ) designated trigger system that triggers actions when the player character bumps into the corresponding game objects.
Reception
The reviews were mixed to Hillsfar. In general, the combination of arcade action and adventure was well received. Andy Smith of the gaming magazine Amiga Format awarded a score of 72 %, noting that it was SSI successfully managed to " a good game that combines a distinct mix of two very different styles " to produce. Bob Guerra from Games magazine COMPUTE! praised the arcade - like sequences by writing that Hillsfar " in integrating these high-quality sequences in the plot a much better job done than most others." Roe Adams of Computer Gaming World praised especially the lockpicking sequence of the villains, but otherwise kept fixed that the game otherwise could not meet the expectations. In particular, Adams criticized both the repetitive sequence travel on horseback as well as the fact that magic users and clerics not cast spells during the game.
Other reviewers were less impressed with the overall look. Both Andy Slaven, author of Video Game Bible, 1985-2002, and Lucinda Orr of Amiga Computing criticized the overall gameplay. Slaven was that the game let miss a guide, and described it as ' a collection of meaningless tasks and challenges ". This also corresponded to the criticism Orr, who, although she was impressed by some of the mini-games and those described as " quite entertaining and graphically effective," the game was as generally boring and wrote, "there is not very much to the interest above the to maintain critical levels of boredom ". More opposed was the rating of the NES version by John Cooper for the website Console Classix, the Hillsfar " designated worst RPG of all time" than that.
The game was reviewed in 1989 in issue 147 of the official D & D magazine Dragon by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in her column The Role of computer where the game three out of five stars awarded. They compared this with Hillsfar Pool of Radiance. According to their tests, it let the adventure of Hillsfar miss in depth and was less captivating as Pool of Radiance, but they described it as " a nice adventure to shorten the waiting time until SSI Azure Bonds published " [Note: this is self Curse of the Azure Bonds ]. The testers concluded with the statement that "If you mochtet Pool of Radiance, her Hillsfar will also like".
According to a retrospective of all the noise for the online gaming magazine GameSpy, the game of many players was regarded as " a failed experiment ", the " good news " is but been that " Westwood Studios went on to develop some much better games ."