#12 - AD&D: Hilsfar

Hear ye, hear ye! Should ye need a D&D game on your Nintendo that doth not sucketh as much as its brethren, gaze thine eyes upon Hillsfar, an RPG dungeon-crawler for all the land!

Actually, that last statement's pushing it a little bit. It's not that good. But unlike the other two D&D atrocities, this game actually has half-way decent gameplay. You start off by creating your own character (the game also pretends that you can “import” characters from different saves, but let's remember that you're playing a Nintendo, not a computer – apparently the creators of the game forgot that) and then you get on your horse and ride to Hillsfar. Well, “ride” is kind of a strong word. It's more of a “gallop” or a “slow trot,” followed by you falling off numerous times because you couln't quite make your horse jump. Anyway, after horsey time, you arrive in Hillsfar, as a giant among rows upon rows of poor dirty, ugly people. The goal, as far as I could tell, was to traverse dungeons, collect loot, fight enemies; you know, RPG stuff. What really makes this game stand out for me, though, was the sheer amount of choices you had for an early '90's adventure game. Walk into a tavern and you have seven options for what you can do/say while you're there. I chose to buy the comely wench/waitress a drink and brag about my exploits (I hadn't accomplished any, which was even more impressive). The wench was grateful/advanced on me, and everyone else thought I was awesome. I left the tavern on a high note. Dungeon exploring is ok, if not a little repetitive, but it's an RPG so that didn't really catch me off guard. Fighting on the other hand is ludicrous. You attack directly with the A button, instead of entering a turn based battle, but based on the animation of the enemy, it's almost impossible to know when you're supposed to hit them.

This leads to my next point: the animation/overall look of the game. It's too advanced for the NES. When you're in a dungeon, it's like you're wading through molasses and thick maple syrup just trying to get to the next treasure chest. In the town, it's jerky step after jerky step, and on the horse, well, let's just say the NES about exploded trying to push all of those pixels. Had this game been ported to the SNES (which it could have – it was released in Feb. 1993), it probably would have looked and animated quite well, and just been a better gaming experience overall. Despite my fairly positive review, though, in 2010, it's not a classic game worth playing. There are far better, still-fun experiences to be had on the NES. It is the best D&D game I've played, to be sure, but that still ain't saying much. Still, at least that perv Tasslehoff is nowhere to be found.

C-