Arthur's Knights II - The Secret of Merlin

Dreamcatcher, the reviver of the adventure genre, has been pumping out adventure games right and left recently. Their latest offering on the altar of gaming nostalgia is Arthur's Knights II: The Secret of Merlin, a sequel to Arthur's Knights: Tales of Chivalry, and is designed in a similar format to the original, which offered a conversation driven, inventory collecting adventure true to the genre. The story begins where the first left off, with Bradwen returning home after his adventures with Arthur. Bradwen is now married to Fydia, a fairy, and is looking forward to a return to his wife and home. Alas, things are never that simple, and Bradwen soon finds himself involved in several mysterious happenings that must be investigated before he can pick up the reins once again.

On starting the game, players can choose one of two paths: the Celtic or Christian. Each game path is completely separate, with its own puzzles to be solved, although some locations and characters are shared. In essence, then, there are two games in one. Navigation is accomplished through moving Bradwen from location to location, via the keyboard. The mouse is used only for choosing items in the inventory and to move through dialogue choices. The game is almost wholly conversation driven, with minimal use of inventory items as action instigators; most often items in the inventory are used as conversation choices with the other characters in the story. Players will spend most of their time moving Bradwen around on horseback to various locations, which are handily displayed on a map. This map shows Bradwen's location en route while on the horse, and the most recent dismount when he arrives at a specific location. However, the map cannot be used to jump from one spot to the next, sad news for the more impatient player.

Gameplay is linear, which is designed to keep players from meandering hopelessly from scene to scene, but if a crucial conversation choice has been overlooked, the players will still end up wandering around wondering just what on earth they're supposed to be doing, as most events aren't triggered until said dialogue choice has been selected. Thus, if players miss an important question (usually accomplished by choosing an inventory item or location to ask someone about), then basically they can't move forward in the story as the next person to talk to won't appear until this is done. And, even if the dialogue has been initiated, the new character will be in one of the scenes already visited, so players will have to traverse many of the locations again to see if anything new has "popped" up. Some of the guessing has been taken out of this, though, by obvious clues in the conversation pointing to the next location, but not always. There is fighting, but it's outcome is dictated by the story, so Bradwen will do nothing during the battle that necessitates any movement commands. These battles are potentially lethal if undertaken before certain puzzles have been solved, so players will need to save their games often, especially before making a battle choice.

The interface is fairly simple, but does take a little while to master as not all of the commands are obvious. For instance, I missed some conversations in the beginning because I didn't realize that inventory items could be asked about. However, once learned, the interface is easy enough. Inventory items are few and far between, which keeps players from mindlessly scrolling through endless potion bottles, nails and moldy bread, but also means there's not much to do besides ride around and watch Bradwen shrug his shoulders each time you click on something vaguely interesting. There are no remarks on anything, other than what is directly needed for game advancement. No funny "hey, did you really think you could do that here?" or "While Bradwen would love to attempt that, for safety reasons he won't" and no descriptions of background objects at all. Movement is accomplished through the keyboard and isn't difficult, that is, until it comes time for poor, clumsy Bradwen to enter a door. Evidently, he has never learned how to open a door competently, and will nervously shuffle back and forth until the magical pixel mark is found for him to stand on. Needless to say, this becomes frustrating after awhile.

The environment is 3D, which makes for beautiful backgrounds, but ugly characters, which all feature pointy angles and square heads. But, this is true for most 3D games, in my opinion. Much work and detail has been spent on the backgrounds, along with the ambient noises and movements of animals, but a background musical score is strangely lacking, which means that much of the time Bradwen is riding around in dead silence. While loud, blaring music is often a distraction in these type of games, some period music is always nice and lends itself to the atmosphere of the game.

My favorite computer game genre is adventure games, and I daily bemoan the lack of adventure titles over the last several years. Arthur's Knights is a return to this classic format and features many of the great things about these games, namely the story-driven gameplay and puzzles. But, it also revives some of the worst features, as in the extreme linearity. I have to say that I'm biased against linear games, and didn't like previous classic adventures like Callahan's Saloon and Xanth because of this aspect which forces players to stay in one spot until the next clue is found. Many people loved those games, though, and will find nothing remiss in this game's linear path. Personally, I would have forgiven this game of the linearity if there was more interaction with the environment. While Arthur's Knights allows players to revisit certain locations while trying to figure out what needs to be done next, there still isn't anything to do because unless an object can be picked up, there's no information to be learned from it. There are NO comments about any of the characters, locations, or objects, that makes so many adventure games great, like the Monkey Island series, which allows gamers to listen to countless humorous remarks about any and everything. Bradwen never remarks on anything, but just shrugs his shoulders. I believe that most adventure fans will miss this lack of involvement, regardless of their taste in linearity.

The puzzles are easy to solve, and mostly revolve around Bradwen choosing the correct conversation choice and visiting the right location afterwards. The game paths are fairly long, though, and will take many hours to finish. Also, there is a databank of interesting historical information about the period of time the game is set in, Arthurian England, which is very interesting reading. Having two game paths is a great idea, and really does offer two games for the low price of one, as this game is a bargain price compared to many on the market. The storyline is interesting and involving, and will offer good entertainment for most fans of adventure games. However, at times the gameplay can be tedious and boring, which would have been alleviated by having much more interaction with the environment available. A good dose of humor wouldn't have hurt, either.

Graphics: 7 
The backgrounds are very nice, but the characters are somewhat unattractive.

Sound: 5
This game really needed some background music.

Concept: 7 
The Arthurian legend is a good choice for an adventure game, and will interest many people.

Overall: 6.9
A decent enough entry in the adventure genre, and one that will provide some hours of entertainment at a budget price. The setting is interesting, and the storyline logical and fairly involving. More interaction is needed, though, to elevate this average game to a higher level of gaming.