The Forgotten Realms Archives
                           (RPG)
                       from Interplay

           Reviewed By Keeks on a P166 with 32Mb

For those of you who don't already know, the Forgotten Realms
Archives consists of a pack of 12 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
games for the PC. Included in the set are The Forgotten Realms
Epic, which consists of 4 games, The Pool of Radiance, The Curse
Of The Azure Bonds, The Secret of The Silver Blades and the Pool
of Darkness. Also Included in the pack is Hillsfar, The Eye of the
Beholder Trilogy, Dungeon Hack, The Savage Frontiers Epic which
consists of two games Gateway to the SF, and Treasures From the
SF, and also Menzoberranzan.

According to the box these are 12 of the greatest role playing
fantasy adventures gathered together in one incredible box. Each
'exciting' adventure takes you into the magical and mystical world
of the Forgotten Realms, the most popular of the AD&D worlds. How
true this last statement is unknown to me as I am not a major AD&D
fan or claim to know even the slightest bit about AD&D. Then why
may you ask did I buy 12?. Well, let me explain.

Last summer I upgraded my computer to a PC and for the first few
months I was happy playing demos of games on cover CDs and games
friends lent me. But you get bored of that and since most of my
friends here are not major RPG fans I decided it was time to
splash out a buy a few games which were more to my liking. So off
I went into Game and had a good look around. Spoilt for choice I
was about to go to the counter with Heroes of Might & Magic 2 when
out of the corner of my eye I spotted on the bottom shelf the
Forgotten Realms Archives (FRA). After seeing that there were 12
'great' RPGs in the collection my hard earned cash was handed over
thinking I had enough content in the pack to last me a life time.
Although there were two things which should have stopped me buying
it:-

1) It had AD&D all over the box. As I mentioned before I am not a
fan, having played few AD&D games on the C64 and never like one of
them even remotely or never really understood them. They all
seemed long drawn out games with little exploring to do and more
go here and get this type games. Boring.

2) There were no pictures showing any type of gameplay of any of
the games on the back, just pictures of what I believe to be the
covers of the original manual.

But I overlooked these two niggles on the basis that I had always
want to play the Eye of the Beholder games and the rest could only
be a bonus.

When I got home it didn't take long for me to start to try and
install the games and there is where my first problem happened.
There were no CDs in the box and I had to go back the following
day to Game to get them. In the mean time it seemed like a good
idea to browse through the very large manual that came with it.
Looking back this was a bad idea as the large manual that came
with as it was full of tales of fantastic adventures. It also gave
me the feeling of complete freedom to explore anywhere in the
realms but alas each game is confined to a single area except for
the Frontier games which do allow some movement between cities and
other places. This is not such a bad thing but is an example of
how the manual built up the games to be something they're not.
Let's have a look at the games themselves.

We will start with the Forgotten Realms Epic games and the Savage
Frontier Epic games as they are essentially the same. These games
are to each other as Chaos Strikes Back is to Dungeon Master, an
extension of the last. They all look and feel the same. The game
window is on the left of the screen, the player stats is on the
right and a message window is on the bottom. A friend told they
look quite like the Bard's Tale game he had on the Speccy.
Needless graphics are absolutely dire although they do get better
with each game, but difference is negligible. I shouldn't really
knock the graphics as the games are quite old (1988-92) and don't
hinder the gameplay. As for the gameplay, well, you go around
exploring cities and solving the problems in the cities. The games
aren't linear and you usually have a choice a quests to do. I
found the exploring part of the games fine but with it came to
combat the games fell flat on there face. It is awful. The
viewpoint switches to a 3d isometric one, with your six characters
on screen and the enemies and you take it in turns to beat each
other up.  I found the whole thing unbearable and slow. Move man
here and attack, move another there, wait, cast hold person on my
own men.  Maybe it's just me but I couldn't get the hang of it and
resorted to letting the computer fight my battles for me and this
usually ended up with me being killed so I gave up.

Next up is Hillsfar. I enjoyed this one more than the previous
ones. What you basically do is wander around a town and solve
quests for your guildmaster. Since there are four different guilds
there are four different games. The quests involve you searching
houses for items under a time limit. And all you have to do is
find a chest and open it, using a knock ring or picking it or
bashing it if it is locked. And that's about it. Pretty boring
really. There are a few arcady bits such as archery and fighting
in the arena but these were pretty hit and miss affairs.


And on to Dungeon Hack. Well it's a cut down version of Dungeon
Master. You control a single character around randomly 3d
generated dungeons. It proved enjoyable for about 10 minutes but I
got bored with it far too quick. Enough said I think.

Now getting on to the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy, the main reason
for buying the collection. It is not like I had expected. From all
the reviews I have read about the games I was expecting a game
that was better than Dungeon Master. All three games are exactly
the same.  There is nothing new gameplay wise that sets them
apart.  They all play the same and seem very boring especially
when fighting.  All you do is move left and slash right and slash
and so on.

And on to the last game, Menzoberranzan. This is the game I
enjoyed most. It is a first person perspective scrolling view much
like Ultima Underworld. But if you prefer you can also switch to a
stepping mode like DM. The story is you are resting in a village
after saving it from a large Dragon when it is attacked by the
dark elves, The Drow. They have taken a lot of people and it's up
to you to rescue them. The game plays well and is easy to
control.  Fighting is simple and the computer intelligence is
pretty good, but not good enough to vary the fights and after a
while it all seems the same. There is a hand map which draws you a
map of where you've been but you'll hardly ever use it as the maps
are small with not a lot in them.

Overall I was disappointed with the collection. If I had bought
these games where they first came out it would probably be a
different story. It is a good collection for anyone who has a
couple of the games and wants to play some more.

Rating:  50%






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