Hi there!
Interplaying Stonekeep (1995):
Remember me complaining about the eternal delay of Dungeon Master II in the last Interplay article? Well, the development of their own Stonekeep took only half as long, a mere five years
This article took a lot more time for preparation as usual, since the game was accompanied by a 150 page novel, "Theras Awakening" which I decided to read before starting to play. It's a considerably good story, doing a good job of introducing the scenario of the game.
I've never played Stonekeep before, so I was really looking forward to start into it, since from what I read about it, it promised to be another fine dungeon crawler in the best tradition of Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder.
After my first night playing it, I can confirm it being precisely that. Slightly outdated at the time of release already, it's still offering dungeon exploration in 90° steps, with realtime battles in a fully interactive 3D perspective.
The graphics are okay, all movement is smoothly animated, but except the monsters everything is presented in the those same shades of gold-gray which is getting pretty boring to look at after a while. I hope later levels are getting more diverse here.
The music/sfx/voices are stellar, creating an intense atmosphere.
I managed to play through the first two levels of Stonekeep tonight, the game is starting rather gently so far, (especially considering that I'm just coming from Dungeon Master II). The second level ended in a pretty tough battle against two very strong "Throgs" (=> kinda like goblins), which took me a while to work out.
Most game mechanics are looking good so far, in particular the automapping is great, but I have neither found other party members nor learned any magic so far.
Version Played: Original, from "The Ultimate RPG Archives".
How to Run: I had to configure it in DOSBox, but then it runs fine on my system
IP Status: Still owned by Interplay.
Greetings,
Manuel
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