#Fantasy dark crypt software#

There's a long way from number 2 to 3, though, and not much difference between 3 and 10.īack in the days, I thought it was rather bland and boring, having just played CSB, but I liked it much more when I replayed it some years ago.Īmiga fanbois were wetting themselves over the superior graphics, especially the spell graphics, but it's all flash and no substance. DeleteĪs a true Dungeon Master fan (and even more Chaos Strikes Back fan) and having played virtually all real time blobbers except the Grimrock games, I rate it as the third best one I've played. So Raven Software's choices for their games' genres are consistent from that point of view.īut I wish that either they had made the combat in those games just as fast and action-heavy as in Doom & Quake, or that they had carried the complexity of RPGs like Dungeon Master (or even Ultima Underworld!) into their later games.

You could say that the 3D shooter genre provides an experience that is somewhat similar in parts to that of the Dungeon Master genre ('combat waltz' = 'circle strafing'), so maybe there was less need for further Dungeon Master style games from then on. Heretic II, using Quake II's engine, had a third-person camera which didn't fit well for its style of combat. Hexen, using an extended Doom engine, and Hexen II, using Quake's engine, have tedious combat and lots of backtracking to solve puzzles. Heretic, using the Doom engine, has less fun weapons and less dangerous (= more tedious) enemies in my opinion (in large part because none of them fire 'hitscan' projectiles, so usually you can easily dodge most of their missiles). Black Crypt seemed to be a bit less atmospheric and had more fiddly inventory management than Dungeon Master (though I only played the beginning of the game).

#Fantasy dark crypt software#

But I thought they always had less fun combat than their id Software equivalents and lacked a little something to be really great games. The Hexen games had different character classes, but they don't have experience points or anything similar.Īll the Raven Software games from the 90's that I played were consistently good games with fine artwork and flawless technology.

Raven Software's ShadowCaster ('93), Heretic ('94), Hexen ('95), Hexen II ('97) and Heretic II ('98) were all games that took id Software's engines and turned them into fantasy 3D shooters, some with light roleplaying elements.