Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood Review

For a game full of mysteries, and unsolved riddles, Arcatera has serious troubles keeping the players in suspense for long. Although the NPC's confirm and explain the existence of Black Sun, your character refuses to believe or make a note in his diary. Unfortunately, all of the mysteries are revealed in the opening few sequences with each character, and it's up to you to simply prove them. During the conversation with the NPCs, the hero has several choices in asking questions, depending on the mood of the NPC. The conversation is a simple process, but a very important one for the progress of the game. A window is activated with topics of discussion, along with some other parameters. The number of topics heavily depends on the Charisma statistics of your character. If the NPC's give you a quest to complete (usually "Go Fetch Something For Me" quests), their mood changes significantly out of gratitude. When the NPC grows tired of being questioned, he/she will simply end it. To continue a conversation with a character, try using flattering and compliments; it should do the trick. Naturally, there is a way of ending a conversation with an insult, and sometimes start a fight. The player decides whether to attack, or simply question a NPC. While attacking a NPC, or breaking into a house within city walls, the character runs a risk of being arrested by the guardsmen.

Experience Points are gained by talking with other characters, unveiling secrets, solving quests but seldom through battle. Combat system looks a lot like the one in Return to Crondor, but with simplified commands. The game is real-time based, and the hero, as well as the members of the party can, by default, attack or defend themselves. The system is rather rudimental, as it doesn't require any complex actions from the player. There are possibilities of casting different spells (like Fireball, or healing companions) or switching between weapons. This includes placing characters in strategically significant places, and all that... It is also possible to run away from a battlefield, or surrender to the enemy (like when the Goblins surround you in the woods with intentions of using you as the main ingredients for their soup...).

The whole point is to trigger certain sequences in the engine, in order for your character to familiarize with the ongoing plot and advance through the game, activating pre-rendered movies. Each character has a set of cut-scenes that add to the impression of big effort being put into the graphic design of the game. With all the animations and separate intros for each character, you could say that the authors wanted to create the grandest cinematic feeling possible. The graphics are 2D rendered, therefore boasting some nifty attention to detail. The backgrounds are static and don't scroll with the character's movement; instead, they jump from one screen (scene) to the other. Wouldn't it be better if the artists created a pseudo 3D perspective, with a distant landscape, to add to realism?

The background music is simple, and uninspiring, although each location has its own music score. It also reflects on the present mood of the characters, or the change in tempo, in case of danger. Narrating highlights each turn-point in the game, and each character has its unique voiceover. Voice acting is done in a lousy way, and it can get very irritating at times. The characters don't have well fitted vocals, or comments for certain occurrences. (Who did the voiceovers for this thing anyway? Off-stage Broadway theater pushovers?) The designers chose the old English pronunciation, in order to provide medieval atmosphere, but have failed miserably. As is the case with the overall music score really...

Arcatera offers nine different endings to the game. This certainly increases the replay value, and should appeal to the hardened P&C adventure fans. The game's non-linearity will make the coherence of the storyline a little dubious; although it's mainly preserved through the supporting animated cut-scenes. Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood is a game that was inspired by a Pen&Paper game by Sascha Hussock. It was under development for 12 years, and should've represented a near-perfect RPG system. Some of the guys on the developer team are Pen&Paper Arcatera players, and it's obvious that they worked on it more out of enthusiasm then to create a profitable mainstream game. The computer iteration of the game could intrigue hard-core RPG players eager to experiment with new, and odd concepts --- meaning all five percent of the whole RPG population. (C'mon, there's gotta be more than that - Ed.)