Betrayal at Krondor - Review at RPG Codex

I was very lucky to grab a CD version at the game trading site Goozex a while back. Sweet sound in that one, really helps the age not matter.
 
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I love BaK and have tried replaying it many times. I managed to play all the way through it when I first bought it (almost *two* decades ago now - scary!) but every time I try to replay it I stop around the point where you find the silver spider amulet - the one that can poison weapons :)

The extremely well-written story and dialogs makes it an attractive replay, but the visuals are just so unbearably ugly these days :) At least the 3d exploration part - 3d graphics just ages soo much worse than 2d graphics...

Still, nostalgia makes me want to replay this game every single time I read about it, and I hope I can manage to be drawn into its world one last time eventually :)
 
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KasperFauerby said:
but the visuals are just so unbearably ugly these days :) At least the 3d exploration part - 3d graphics just ages soo much worse than 2d graphics…
Click to expand...


So true, I wish I had played BaK when it was new, but it wasn't until many years later that I tried it for the first time. I just couldn't bring myself to play very far...
 
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The music: http://www.queststudios.com/quest/bakcd/bakcd.html

BaK is probably my favorite game. It's nearly perfect. Considering I litter every other thread around here on how BaK did something better, do I really need to comment further? :)

The review wasn't really a review though, it was more of a 7th grade book report. It told me what the game had but rarely did it tell me what was good or bad about it.
 
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Personally, I didn't mind the 'battlezone' feel to the graphics, in fact I was more forgiving of BaK than late 90's stuff like Hexplore, Evil Islands or SiN. That is because in those instances (and Unreal to an extent) the technology was every bit as important as the game, so they necessarily didn't age well. BaK will reward you because it is a truly great game.
 
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txa1265 said:
I was very lucky to grab a CD version at the game trading site Goozex a while back. Sweet sound in that one, really helps the age not matter.
Click to expand...

I have a CD version too. There was exactly one copy available in ebay few years back. And perfect one at that.

I dont mind the graphics in BaK. Infact I like it as it is.
 
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Not sure if anyone will read this since it's an old thread but..

I got Betrayal at Krondor from Good Old Games and am currently playing throught it. While looking at reviews before I got it, I came across this post on Amazon.com that I think some of you may find interesting.
______________________________

"Hi folks. I'm very glad that you've all enjoyed Betrayal at Krondor, but I want to clear up a long-standing misconception that lots of folks have about this game. Neither the main story for this game nor the dialogue for it was written by Raymond E. Feist. Nor did he design the game or the systems in it. All of those things were handled by the lead designers John Cutter and Neal Hallford (namely myself).

If you want more direct proof of what I'm saying, simply turn your paperback copies of "Krondor: the Betrayal" to Ray's afterword on page 389. "Neal Hallford and John Cutter wrote the game. I got to review things, but they wrote it. I talked with them about story, gave them ideas, listened to their ideas, and the game took form. But even I had no idea what it would look like, or play like, until it was finished."

This isn't to say Ray had no significant impact on the game. He absolutely, positively did. He wrote a whole set of magnificent novels that gave me a lot of meat to play with. I had some really fun characters to threaten, beat up, and send off on weird adventures. I had the priviledge of having the personal phone number of a New York Times best-selling author whenever I wanted to bounce a story idea around. But Ray did not write the story. That burden, and that priviledge, fell to me.

Ray made a mint off the game. I never got royalties from one of the best-selling RPGs of the early 1990s. Ray made another mint off the novelization. I never received a single red penny for that, or for any of the characters I created that he later used in his other books (Lysle Rigger, Abbot Graves, or Cat (called "Kitty" in his books)).

If you wish to praise Ray for his phenomenal books, go right ahead. It is praise well deserved. But when it comes to Betrayal at Krondor, give credit where credit is due.

Thanks,
Neal Hallford "3
 
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Wonder why he didn't get any royalties?
 
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Thanks for posting this! :)

DogInARocket said:
Not sure if anyone will read this since it's an old thread but..

I got Betrayal at Krondor from Good Old Games and am currently playing throught it. While looking at reviews before I got it, I came across this post on Amazon.com that I think some of you may find interesting.
______________________________

"Hi folks. I'm very glad that you've all enjoyed Betrayal at Krondor, but I want to clear up a long-standing misconception that lots of folks have about this game. Neither the main story for this game nor the dialogue for it was written by Raymond E. Feist. Nor did he design the game or the systems in it. All of those things were handled by the lead designers John Cutter and Neal Hallford (namely myself).

If you want more direct proof of what I'm saying, simply turn your paperback copies of "Krondor: the Betrayal" to Ray's afterword on page 389. "Neal Hallford and John Cutter wrote the game. I got to review things, but they wrote it. I talked with them about story, gave them ideas, listened to their ideas, and the game took form. But even I had no idea what it would look like, or play like, until it was finished."

This isn't to say Ray had no significant impact on the game. He absolutely, positively did. He wrote a whole set of magnificent novels that gave me a lot of meat to play with. I had some really fun characters to threaten, beat up, and send off on weird adventures. I had the priviledge of having the personal phone number of a New York Times best-selling author whenever I wanted to bounce a story idea around. But Ray did not write the story. That burden, and that priviledge, fell to me.

Ray made a mint off the game. I never got royalties from one of the best-selling RPGs of the early 1990s. Ray made another mint off the novelization. I never received a single red penny for that, or for any of the characters I created that he later used in his other books (Lysle Rigger, Abbot Graves, or Cat (called "Kitty" in his books)).

If you wish to praise Ray for his phenomenal books, go right ahead. It is praise well deserved. But when it comes to Betrayal at Krondor, give credit where credit is due.

Thanks,
Neal Hallford "3
Click to expand...
 
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