Quest for a better interface
As the game progresses, you can gain the trust of
other villages by completing quests for them (such as returning
a lost artifact), or take them over by force. Any "friendly"
or conquered village pays tribute to you, giving you a constant
income. Healers in friendly villages heal you without charge,
and you can instruct the village elders to build necessary structures
(walls, blacksmith, marketplace) in the village, and they’ll have
it done. (Incorporating a little RTS flair.) If you have a wall
built, it makes the village more resistant to attack from enemy
armies. If you have a blacksmith built and hire a smith to work
there, he can forge weapons for you.
In the early hours with Konung, you have to fight
one major obstacle: A less-than-spectacular interface. You can
never, ever scroll to the point that your character is no longer
on the screen. As a result, you never really feel like you know
what’s going on around you. And it seems like there’s no consistency
as to when you should right click, when you should left click,
and when you should just throw your mouse across the room. The
interface is made all the more confusing by a lack of documentation
– how lacking? There is none. After much experimentation, it seems
that you can walk by either right- or left-clicking, talk to villagers
and attack with the right button, and travel from one location
to another with the left. (There’s a little circle between two
statues that you must click to transition from area to area.)
You do get used to it however, and the gameplay is enjoyable.
It’s very easy to spend several hours with this game, which is
one measurement of a good game.
In the seven (or so) hours I spent with this game,
it became fairly clear that this is a non-linear quest-driven
game. It just drops you at your starting town, and lets you go
wherever you choose. You travel from one village to another, and
at each village you can meet with the elder and learn what quest
you might complete to gain that village's trust. (Presumably,
some of these quests would lead to the capture of the remaining
pieces of the bracelet, but I haven't made it that far yet.) As
you travel throughout the grief-stricken lands, you encounted
a lot of familiar enemies between the villages -- skeletons and
other undead, giant ants and spiders. However. many of the enemies
departed from the traditional RPG. There were some dangerous-looking
worms, and a rather wicked carnivorous plant, but I saw neither
an orc nor a goblin, so it's not completly cliche.
The revolution doesn't start here
Konung is not spectacular or revolutionary, but
I did enjoy it. The hours I spent with it went by quickly, and
once you get your character established a little, journeying through
the lands is quite an adventure. The environment and the characters
are substantially different from what you’d find in most RPG’s
on the market, and this makes it worth consideration if you’re
looking for something new. And, being a "Value-Priced"
title, you can pick it up for twenty bucks. It’s a low low-budget
cross between Baldur’s Gate and Diablo. Konung also has multiplayer
features, but I was unable to test them.
Questions? Comments? Post
in our forum.
Publisher: Strategy First
Developer: 1C
Requirements: Win95/98, P166MHz, 32MB RAM
Release date: Available now
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