Blood Oath: Trials of the Wyrm

This game starts with a rather pretty title screen and a few well drawn introduction boards. However once you actually start playing the game, the graphics disappear.

Blood Oath carries a decent storyline where you play the apprentice of a necromancer who disappeared long ago in search of immortality. You can apparently attain immortality by drinking the blood of the BIG BAD wyrm. Before he left you both made a "blood oath" that if he never came back, you would go and try an kill the wyrm yourself. So off you go, into the cave.

The cave is a fairly large place. It's drawn simply, grey walls with a grey top to give it a little more of a 3-D feel. All in all though it is sparse on detail. Sure there are a lot of dead bodies, but most of them at just #Bind'ed to another object and give you a message like: "A skeleton with a crushed head."

There is little in the way of puzzles, but there are a few simple adventure style puzzles. The real meat of the game comes with the RPG battles. The battles are decent but nothing spectacular. They are randomised enough to give it less of a programmed feel, but in general, if you lose a battle, it's usually because you missed the health potion back a few screens. In this programmers opinion, without a level system or some sort of way to improve your characters, RPG battles are fairly pointless. Not being able to get past something because you are too weak is a key part of RPGs.

The author attempts some dark dramatic writting that sometimes works, and sometimes feels like a bad movie script. The only redeemable quality of the writing is the actuall story itself.

The graphics are on the weak side, excluding the nicely done opening cutscenes, and the gameplay is on the minimal side. Despite all of that it's still an enjoyable game with a decent story that won't take you too long to play. And even if you don't finish it, you won't quit the game pissed.