Been playing the game for a bit. A few thoughts:
1. Wow has this game not aged well. I thought it was a bit past the SysShock 2 polygon era, but apparently not quite. The controls haven't aged well either. I've only seen right-button-to-move one other time (Pirates of the Caribbean) since and I'm glad it's gone.
2. Beautiful Britannia is awesome. Just make sure you switch to D3D mode as the readme instructs.
3. GoG did a good job with compatibility. I'm consistently spoiled by their work. Well done GoG!
4. It really needs Hacki and Grandor's old dialogue patch. I just can't stomach the default spoken dialogue. I'm sympathetic to arguments that U9 isn't nearly the travesty Spoony throws out, but sheesh is the dialogue cheesy.
5. The dialogue patch does a pretty darn good job finessing a lot of the inconsistencies and nitpicks. I thought I remembered it being a little clunky, but it's not so bad with the distance of some years.
6. The game as a whole is actually not that bad. It feels and plays like an incomplete Ultima and an Ultima disappointment, not an Ultima travesty. My opinion now is pretty much the same: if they'd stuck with it and a) made Britannia about 1/3 bigger, b) added 1/3 more NPCs with similar or deeper dialogue trees, and c) added some more scripting and scheduling I think I would've been alright with it. Nowhere near 7, but ok.
1. Wow has this game not aged well. I thought it was a bit past the SysShock 2 polygon era, but apparently not quite. The controls haven't aged well either. I've only seen right-button-to-move one other time (Pirates of the Caribbean) since and I'm glad it's gone.
2. Beautiful Britannia is awesome. Just make sure you switch to D3D mode as the readme instructs.
3. GoG did a good job with compatibility. I'm consistently spoiled by their work. Well done GoG!
4. It really needs Hacki and Grandor's old dialogue patch. I just can't stomach the default spoken dialogue. I'm sympathetic to arguments that U9 isn't nearly the travesty Spoony throws out, but sheesh is the dialogue cheesy.
5. The dialogue patch does a pretty darn good job finessing a lot of the inconsistencies and nitpicks. I thought I remembered it being a little clunky, but it's not so bad with the distance of some years.
6. The game as a whole is actually not that bad. It feels and plays like an incomplete Ultima and an Ultima disappointment, not an Ultima travesty. My opinion now is pretty much the same: if they'd stuck with it and a) made Britannia about 1/3 bigger, b) added 1/3 more NPCs with similar or deeper dialogue trees, and c) added some more scripting and scheduling I think I would've been alright with it. Nowhere near 7, but ok.
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2009
- Messages
- 520