Faithful Port of an Excellent Computer RPG
Dungeon Master is one of the first examples of the "puzzle dungeon" type of games, where half the gameplay consists of solving puzzles to progress through the dungeon, while the other half is mostly defeating enemies and staying alive. There is no character development, and the storyline only shows up during the intro sequence and at the very end (there are no characters to talk to in the dungeon, and your party members never speak, so don't expect any love triangles, or getting revenge on your evil brother or anything like that). Despite the lack of storyline, the game focuses on solid and compelling gameplay.
You choose four champions (out of 24 pre-defined characters) to explore the dungeon with the ultimate goal of defeating Lord Chaos and returning with the Firestaff. Your characters can gain levels in four separate skills by exercising those skills. There is a wealth of items to equip and use throughout the game, though your characters can only carry so much, so you will have to decide what to keep and what to leave behind. You will also have to keep your party fed (food and water become scarce the farther you get). There is a magic system which consists of choosing a sequence of runes to cast specific spells with a variety of power levels (The manual is helpful here, as it lists most of the spells, while others are revealed in-game). The dungeon is quite large, and you will have to make use of the save feature (only one save slot unfortunately), but it never changes, so don't expect much replay value.
The interface was unique for it's time, presenting the dungeon in a first-person perspective, with the action happening in real-time. This, combined with ambient sound effects, gives you a creepy feeling of actually being there, with monsters closing stalking you. Turning a corner and coming face-to-face with a monster can be quite frightening! The interface was designed for computers with a mouse, so playing with a SNES controller causes a few problems (The SNES mouse is not supported), many of which arise due to the real-time nature of the combat (ie, trying to pick options from the combat menus while the other monsters are attacking). In fact, the controls in general are quite complicated, so reading the manual is highly recommended. The graphics are mostly faithful to the original computer versions, but are slightly degraded, and may seem mediocre to SNES RPG fans. The sound effects are noticeably worse in this version, and are very sparse. There are some musical cues in the game, but they are far and few between, and I feel they actually detract from the eeriness of the dungeon.
The main problem with this game is that it is very slow to react. Even in the earlier levels, players will often find themselves "buffering" movement commands while walking down hallways, and sometimes bumping into walls by accidentally pressing a direction twice because the first one hadn't registered yet. This, combined with the slow-paced nature of the game, may turn off many console fans who are more accustomed to fast action.
Frankly, if you like Japanese RPG's like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger, you will likely find this game to be slow-paced and boring. Instead, if you like American RPG's like the Ultima series or Eye of the Beholder (which itself was a ripoff of this game), then I encourage you to try this game out. I feel the Amiga and PC versions of this game are far better, but this captures most of the best qualities of those versions.Vollständige Rezension lesen
