RETURN TO KRONDOR SERIES

Bear has been carving a grisly path of destruction throughout the world of Midkemia as he has sought to capture the power of the Tear of the Gods to achieve his nefarious ends. Set directly in the city of Krondor and its nearby surroundings, Return to Krondor's main plot involves retrieving an immensely powerful artifact, the Tear of the Gods, after it was relegated to a watery grave by an ambitious pirate, Bear. The linearity of Return to Krondor will alienate role-playing game fans who prefer more open-ended experiences such as those offered by the Fallout games, but the strength of Return to Krondor's main storyline will certainly appeal to adventure game fans and other gamers wanting to play an often-compelling 'interactive movie.' Still, even if you want to stop and savor the game's surroundings, your ancillary activities are primarily limited to opening doors in Krondor to encounter random human enemies or, in the sole chapter set in the not-so-vast wilderness, hopping along from territory to territory looking for random, mostly human, enemies to engage. In fact, you are likely to race through the already brief game because the lure of advancing the storyline by proceeding directly to the next key objective is difficult to resist.

The handful of available subquests are all interesting and do an excellent job at drawing you deeper into Krondor's world, and the main storyline is consistently compelling. Each chapter in Return to Krondor is set in a very discrete, confining geographic area (one room, in the case of two of the chapters), and most chapters have no subquests at all, forcing you to focus solely on your primary quest objectives. But while Betrayal at Krondor allowed you to develop your character in a variety of ways while exploring a vast gaming world and undertaking numerous subquests, Return to Krondor offers much more restrictive gameplay. Similarly, both games require you to use preset characters, each possessing a fully developed, distinctive personality, and determine party membership solely in response to plot developments over which you have no control. Both games provide strongly story-driven experiences, as evidenced by the fact that they are divided into 'chapters,' during which the plot is advanced in a very linear, predetermined fashion. Feist's swords-and-sorcery world of Midkemia. Return to Krondor, like Betrayal at Krondor, is set in author Raymond E.

Judged on its own merits, however, Return to Krondor is an enjoyable adventure/role-playing game hybrid notable for its outstanding graphics and immersive, if brief, storyline. Gamers who were desperately seeking a 'Betrayal at Krondor 2,' a game that essentially just replicated the original game, may be disappointed by developer PyroTechnix's design decision to make Return to Krondor a third-person-perspective game that is considerably briefer and even more linear and story-driven than its predecessor.

Unlike last year's Betrayal in Antara, which was very similar in style, if not in quality, to Betrayal at Krondor, the official sequel is a very different game from its predecessor.

RETURN TO KRONDOR SERIES

After an incredible series of twists and turns during development, the official sequel to one of the most popular role-playing games ever, 1993's Betrayal at Krondor, has finally arrived.

Return to krondor