Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone I Retro Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- A brief retrospective review of the 2004 fantasy hack-and-slash action game from Stormfront Studios. Sorry for the faint hum during my speaking parts - I was using this video to experiment with noise gates and audio cleanup in Audacity and DaVinci's Fairlight tab, but it didn't work out very well. I'll buy a pop filter and mic booth for the next video.
00:00 Opening
01:03 Summary
03:26 Gameplay
08:18 Visuals and Audio
12:29 Story and Writing (Minor Spoilers)
16:56 Outro - เกม
when I was a kid I use to love writing and reading fantasy novels, and when my mom bought me this game it really make me happy, I remember drawing the characters and writing random chapters... it was a nice game xD
*Thank you for showing us the wonderful world of obscure forgotten games.*
I've been reading the Drizzt books to my wife over the past year and playing as Drizzt to defend Mithril Hall sounds like fun!
It was pretty fun, to my memory. I haven't played in a long time.
I wouldn't say Salvatore is a bad writer, exactly, but because the Drizzt novels have been going on for so damn LONG, and the expectation that they will ever have a chance to end conclusively becomes more remote, there's been a clear trend in how they're written: more action pulp content, with plot and characterization stretched out and more thinly-spread, the ideas being prolonged so that more novels can be written and published utilizing the same extended plot threads. If you compare the Cleric Quintet, Icewind Dale Trilogy, and Legacy of the Drow to the stuff that comes after it, the earlier novels clearly spend more time on establishing and developing setting and characters. Later novels feel more like the stories you'd expect to see in an ongoing superhero comic book: characterization and plot not exactly absent, but not allowed to advance too far too quickly, characters never allowed to change too completely or too definitively. In some ways it holds the potential of Salvatore's writing back. Other ongoing no-end-in-sight pulp fiction series, like say... Mercy Thompson, where the author has more control over whether or not the end is in sight and what that means for the pace, can maintain a similar ongoing-series with better plot and characterization pacing. Drizzt was always at the mercy of the Shared Universe he's entrenched in, with the big Events often cutting across ongoing plots to interrupt and derail what Salvatore had going on (both the Time of Troubles *and* the Spellplague did this!). So it's kind of an inevitable hit-and-miss ride through his novels.
The unfortunate fate of even good corporate art is that the corporation won't let it end. The best a former fan can ever do is know when to walk away from it to leave the best memories untrammeled by the eventual sludge it will inevitably become. The best a creator can do is to try their best and move on once they've done something decent to great, and parlay any money and notoriety from the experience into some truly original.
Drizzt's story has been going way too long the same way the Simpsons, One Piece, Family Guy, South Park and the MCU has been going on for too long. And just like them, these stories should end at some point instead of being milked to the end of time.
@@samflood5631 One Piece, I'll grant you that. But why in the name of muffins did you bring up a bunch of other properties whose entire point is that they keep going for as long as you care to stick around?
As someone who loved the Lord of the Rings EA games, this looks right up there. My friend admittedly had this, but I didn't know what kind of game it was, what a shame to miss it. It's a shame that this specific genre of beat-em up seemed to die out with this game as I felt the concepts in the LoTR games were a great stepping stone but the industry went in a different direction.
Those 2D orc battles in the background are very quaint.
mixed reviews? i adore this simple slasher
16 years past i'll replay this game AGAIN, this game in my library since release
Nuh it was shit even back then. That is just nostalgia talking. I played it only coz there was nothing else to play.
A great game, when it came out I was truly hoping that more good Forgotten Realms content would come in the future (particularly, more action games like this one), but sadly this was the beginning of the end
I played this one a few years ago. It was ok, but I also felt the hits lacked the "Oomph" I like in my hack 'n' lash games. I know it sounds like a minor nitpick, but feeling the "crunchiness" of the hits is one of the things I personally appreciate the most in games like this, and Demon Stone felt like I was slashing through butter.
I love how this concept would eventually become Trine. Not really, but I see the resemblance.
We have so many Time consuming Games nowadays, that i pretty like such Games as this one, as you can have a few Days of Fun and see the Ending.
And i am not talking with the Nostalgia Glases, as i played it first a few Years ago.
Pratchett worked on Risen!? Wow. That game was almost a sandbox mmo
I personally have never played a game written by a famous writer that was remarkable in any way. I think it's because game writing, & in turn game making are team sports, and your celebrity writer may have written something cool, but by the time the game is finished it's unrecognizable, because 100 people have changed, edited, & censored it. Game development is dynamic, you can't just turn in your rough draft and walk away, which is what usually happens. The writer actually needs to be part of the team, & be there throughout development. Realistically I think the only reason they hire famous writers is for marketing anyway, and they just want a name so they can attach it to the product and make it look special. Great video btw I really enjoy all the backstory and history, and you actually looked at the concept art! I thought I was the only one that did that lol.
I've heard of this game many times before, but never played it. Reminds me of LOTR slashers somewhat.
Cool really appreciate you 🙏
Looks like they should have made the mage have more of a crowd control spells focus. Or at least spells that could buff the other party members.
As I assume all the music in this video is from the game, I have to say, in terms of score this sounds like a bit of a hidden gem.
Yep, the composer released it all for free.
I find it curious that people dont understand that "story by" isnt the same as "written by". Like hes done with other games, like amalur, RA Salvatore provided lore documents and characterizations and world building TO writers who them went and wrote the game. I dont think he tried very hard with this one, where as with Amalur, he provided an entire 10,000 year history that was highly detailed.
I know that I've played this back when it was released but the only thing I remember about this game is my friend bugging me for weeks to find a nude patch for Zhai... xD
Did you find it
@@MrEdders123 I'm pretty sure there was one, but I can't remember if it worked.
@@PsychoWedge lemme know if you find it and I'll pin it to the comments
🤘💯
Darkstone review next!
Unfortunately my bank froze my card when I tried to buy it lol. I'll try again after my next video.
I remember this game being really cool for me. I was in my teens, but it looked good and was fun to play multiple characters. I think I stopped playing because of a bug that stopped progression :(.
I didn't encounter any game-stopping bugs in the GoG release (not sure about console versions), but I can't guarantee anything :P
@@MrEdders123 mine was on PC. Might've been patched since. Could've also been that my save got wiped. I remember hoping for a sequel which never came out.
Surely SSI is the developer of the original golden age D&D/Forgotten Realms video games with Pool of Radiance? Not to change the main point of what you said with that :)
The Gold Box games were taken over in 1990 (I think) by whatever Stormfront were called at the time, I don't quite recall the specifics though, not too familiar with the GB/SSI history from prior to 93-95ish. 😓
I haven't played this game but getting additional attacks sounds like more than most rpgs give you to play around with, even the Souls-games nowadays don't give you additional attacks for your weapons.
Plus it doesn't sound as "braindead" as it's described here in the video, at least in comparission to other rpgs if you have active attacks, blocks and so on, so no clicking the enemies to death or giving commands to the character like a Pokemon trainer.
Linear doesn't sound so bad to me either when I get gameplay section after gameplay section and don't have to ride over a mountain or through a forest to maybe find something to do again. ^^
Don't get me wrong, as it's described here the game doesn't make an interesting expression even compared to the time it came out, the series I was playing back then the most is even referenced here (Prince of Persia), but since this is compared to rpgs a lot of the time in this video...I have to defend it, in this context this doesn't look that bad... ^^
This was 2004, just a year later Devil May Cry 3 came out and changed action games forever.
I would probably have done the review a bit differently if I were making it today, with more comparison to how combat worked in similar games of the day like LOTR and such.
According to Salvatore, the original story of the game had to be cut for budget reasons. The entire game had to fit on a single DVD.
Ah, thanks, I didn't know that. I don't think I discovered how to search Archive.org etc. properly until after this video.
You can also play Drizzt in D&D: Dark Alliance from 2021. Although it's supposedly not all that good? I haven't tried it myself.
I heard it's awful, if you mean the third-person action game. The HD release of the 2001 game is apparently OK, IIRC it's a bit difficult to unlock Drizzt in it though.
@@MrEdders123 that sounds right. Some kind of co-op action game?
@@AnvilOfDoom Yeah, store.steampowered.com/app/623280/Dungeons__Dragons_Dark_Alliance/
Great video, I only wish the game wasn't stretched. Really dislike stretched games, but I have no problem with 4:3 videos on youtube.
IIRC it's automatically stretched (the GoG release). These days I would probably make more effort to check/compare with the other versions :p
Can Review the orginal bloodstone of forgotten realms?
What's that?
@@MrEdders123 I think that's the RTS game.
@@PurpleWarlock Never heard of it. Maybe FR: Blood and Magic?
I actually like this game better than the LOTR ones, mostly because I prefer Forgotten Realms to Peter Jackson's LOTR vision. But it also has better graphics and cooler set pieces.
tldw
100 subs feet reveal when?
Your comments about writers and games is the reason I fear for Elden Ring.
Souls games never had a good story and characters. Only gameplay, level design and tons of lore all over the place. You can't do worse if there wasn't anything from the beginning. Plus there will be usual people who are doing these games.
the game.... is a typical PS2 game with ONE major colour (brown) which were the shit at the time i feel
all these comments and yet nobody liked your review. I will be the one who likes it. Because I know you Ed. I know what you did in China.
downvoted
I wish this game gets remastered
I think it was published by Atari, not sure who owns the rights to the game now. It had a GoG release so I doubt it's lost in licencing hell or anything.
Another one of The Picard’s torture projects gone wrong.
On a serious note: I miss when the barrier to entry was higher and developers took their games seriously. I don’t care for all the political propaganda and outright insulting the audience that these glowies shit out these days after sabotaging anything that isn’t a steam shovelware or a literal shitpost “game” you’d find on there.