Deceiving Guidance
Wow. It was really fun to play and fight the enemies, and I liked the puzzles. The second half was kinda boring but if you take a break after the first it's really pretty good. I learned a lot from Herc's games. I like all of them.
Deceiving Guidance was outstanding with a few downsides. It is an RPG with a dungeons and dragons twist made by Herc and Hydra made in 2001. The good sides of the game is gameplay and music. The gameplay of course is RPG. You run around talking to people and doing some giving & taking. It may sound boring, but it gets better later on. The music however, is mellow and sometimes hard sounding. Sometimes, it is even better if it had no music, but the music is great and thats the story!
Oh speaking of story, here are the downsides: Cinematic, Sound, Graphics. The cinematics take you the whole time to view and they make you want to zap the box to get on with the game. Herc should of made a seperate cinematics board in the main menu. The sound is sometimes a little squeaky when you touch signs etc. The sound should have not been high pitched. It is better low pitched. The graphics, however, are badly pixilized. This may not sound bad, but sometimes you cant see where you are going. My tip, just make your outside worlds less pixilized. You can pixilize your worlds, just dont put too much complexity on!
Overall, if you are a fan of IF games (like me) go on and download. Deceiving Guidance deserves a:
Deceiving Guidance is a very impressive and fun game. It really go out on a limb to create something both original and fun for the player, and it succeeds. Because this is a very complex game, I will attempt to devide everything into sections, yet somethings will bleed over.
Story: From the begining I thought the story was good. I was pleasently suprised when by the end of the game it got even better. The tribulations between the mysterious Dark elves (The drow) and the light elves of the overworld, made for a wonderful contrast in moods as the game progressed from the nice village to the wild forest, to the cave, to the drow lair. There was plenty of history provided along with details of cultural differances. There was a nice twist and a good ending that did leave me feeling that there should be a sequal. My onlt qualm with the story, which is more of the writer's choice, was the fact that it didn't seem epic. Even though it only happened in an area maybe 2 miles wide it still could've captured more of a scope. Look at Diablo, it only takes place underneath one town!
Graphics: In standard IF style the graphics were well polished and added very much to the overall feel of the game. The first file was the most impressive with lovely cottages and well drawn forest scene. I've seen better caves, but in general the proper atmosphere was set and the gradual transformation from cave to lair was a very mood setting effect. The cutscenes at the end of the game were what really set the second file apart from the first and the last board was a great capstone to the entire game.
Gameplay: Nothing spectacular here. The standard run up and touch a creature to death. Something I'm not to good at and I had to play the game a few times to survive till the end. It was good challange but in the end my tactic was to avoid as much as possible, making for a game without gameplay. Had battle been a little less of a hassle, then there would be more fun. (YAY another thing to kill!) There was little exploration in the forest, yet the caves made up for it which in this case was a bad thing. I expected that the caves would be built around the same semi-linear fashion as the forest. Yes this is somewhat a bad call on me, but once again I had to play through a few times. This time the reason was not dying, although I did my fair share of that, it was lack of torches. I had to play through a few times finding out where everything was before loading it back up and running through doing what I had to do before the life-sustaining light ran out. In the caves another gameplay change is the addition of a "gun" actually its magic but you get the ability to now shoot at yuor enemies. I'm torn on this one. It seemed the proper thing to do, but also it seemed like the programmer(s) were making it easier for you. In the caves, you could no longer avoid your enemies as well as you could before. This makes me wonder if even the programmers technique in the forest was avoiding enemies. Not a good sign.
Music: Better than what I can do, I'm jealous. Used perfectly.
The Puzzle: Well, this thing haunted me for nights after playing it. Usually in slider puzzles you know what order they are supposed to go in, in this puzzle you need to figure it out. I think I must've missed something early in the game that would have helped me with what it was supposed to read because this thing took me as long to beat as the rest of the game. Clever and a good piece of programming, but it could be a game unto itslef and SEVERLY ruins the pace and mood the entire first file was attempting to create.
Overall: One of the best games ZZT has ever seen. It could be better(Gameplay!), but I can't argue with the high calibre story and sensational graphics. Two thumbs up, but only a 4.5.
