Old Dominions I. reviews....!

[Particle]

I have found an old Dominions I. review.
You guys won't like, but oh well...here it goes:

Introduction
First and foremost, I am a huge fan of the RPG genre. I have played RPG's since the late 80's and have always put the time and effort into a game that deserves it. So when I heard a new RPG for my home computer was about to be released, I got ready for those days when I didn't sleep for three days straight. After all an RPG on the home computer can be quite rare these days and they can't screw that up can they?

If only I could eat my words right now..


Graphics (3/10)
The only "bright" spot of Dominions is the graphics itself and that's not a good thing folks. Dominions graphics are terrible, bland and way too dark for anyone to see anything wortwhile. From the moment you open the program you'll see muddled text slapped together in an obvious attempt to make itself look big.

Dominions colour scheme is probably the worst I have seen since the early 90's. There's literally about 5 different colors here, if that and the most common is brown. The landscapes are the exact same which wouldn't be so bad if they changed the color from green every so often, but that's not the case.

Even the "god" animations are terrible, you get no real closeup of your god character and the battle sequences are just as bad. Players select a small army to ransack a castle which takes about 3 hours to do so and the "battles" consist of little red blocks attacking each other which you can barely even see.


Audio (1/10)
What audio? This is the hardest section to review because there is literally no audio at all in this game. You are treated to a nice little score at the beginning which sets you in the mood for this game, but that's about it. The only "audio" I heard was the clicking of my mouse, which I don't really think was part of the game and the occasional bleep as I clicked on various options to see if I could make sense of what was going on.

Your best bet is to load up a soundtrack from your favorite RPG while you play this game, otherwise you'll be staring a dark screen for pretty much the entire game.

Gameplay (1/10)
For an RPG, gameplay is the most important area of the game. Sure graphics and a good soundtrack make the game a little better, but the gameplay is the meat of any good RPG and as you probably expected, Dominions fails miserably.

The game is full of menus. This is what you'll be doing for about the first three-four hours when you first start up Dominions. You'll be selecting your "god" and creating a small army, ready to do battle. There is a ton of options here and lots to do before you get ready to go to war with anyone, so a player must be patient.

However the graphics are so muddled up it is nearly impossible to see what is going on at times. I got lost in the swarm of options in the first five minutes because I couldn't even read any of the text. Players will no doubt be confused on how to leave a screen once they have selected what they want because there is no exit screen!

Dominion is simply terrible and while the options might lead to some excitement, you'll have to play longer then I did to find anything enjoyable in it.

Concluding Thoughts (1/20)
Quite possibly, the most boring game the world has ever seen. Dominions: PPP (which is what i'd like to do on the CD) contains nothing of value at all for any player whatsoever.

Dominions has terrible graphics, no sound during the game besides a bleep here and there, and is so muddled together that even the best of players will have a hard time reading the text and understand just what the heck is going on.

Even if you can get past the horrible graphics and finally get into the game, Dominions battles are terrible and are over in thirty seconds or less for over three hours of work.

Do yourself a favor and pick up any RPG besides Dominions. You'll have a much better time and not have to worry about damaging your eyesight from reading too close.


Total Score 6/50

[ October 20, 2003, 13:07: Message edited by: Particle ]

[Particle]

..and another user review:


Introduction
I had never heard of this game before, a multiplayer RPG I was told, vast lands, control armys, use magic, sounds good? So is this the game to beat Baldurs Gate II, or was it more along the lines of Shogun:Total War. I was looking on the website while waiting for the game to wind its way onto my PC and I saw that it was neither really, it reminded me of WarlordsIII which was a turn based strategy game around about 3-4 years ago, Warlords was a good game if you liked turn based games, but it was tainted by the computer cheating. Dominions could build on this and make epic battles, the turn based style would mean that you can use cunning strategys and watch the battle unfold. Oh how wrong was I.


Graphics (1/10)
In the old days of computing there was a game called Angband (similar to Moria), this game was an RPG but as it was old it didn't have graphics, it used the character set, so a capital Red 'A' was a dragon or so (Angband nerds, please dont mail me saying the its really a giant ant or so). Later Versions of Angband redefined the characterset, but basically it was poor. Take a guess what the graphics in Dominions looks like. They're very poor, blocky and uninteresting, limited in colour. Infact my mousepointer has better graphics than this game. The landscapes are repeated, which is fairenough, but they're repeated every five pixels, so its basically just green. Imagine Zelda, on the gameboy except at a lower resolution. All of the Gods look the same just different colours. The menus are the best thing this has to offer, but even these are animated badly and jerk as they move.


Audio (1/10)
I didn't experience much in the way of sound from this game, there is a beep everytime you do something but even that single sample has some crackles to it. There are various other beeps and thats about it. Essentially all you're doing is clicking menus and options so maybe I'm being silly expecting for more. But even when its game over it could play me a tune to wake me up. I want to hear the battles, hear the screams, I want the sound to draw me into the game not crackle when I click, and that is only occasionally.

Gameplay (1/10)
Well this is what counts really, a game of this style could live without graphics and sound if the gameplay cut the ice. I had an old turn based strategy game on my old Amiga that just had a tank a plane and a boat and I used to play that for hours, but this... I even considered just getting rid of it, forget the review its not worth it, but it was either this or work. The game is full of menus, and they're badly designed for instance when choosing your castle you have a screen with various castles on it, but then what do you do? There is no 'Back' button no 'Ok' button, where do I click? For those wondering, you right click near the bottom of the screen... I played a while and then I did something which I'm still not sure what and it came up 'Game Over' with the only option being to Quit. But the Quit didn't put me back to the mainmenu, it just threw me out of the game (maybe this is a good thing!). So I go back in and start a game just to be presented by the game over screen and the Quit option just popped up, silly me, I had to go and create a new God and then create a new world before playing a game.

Concluding Thoughts (1/20)
The game has a small footprint on your harddisk and it's easy to see why, there are no graphics or sound! This game is truely aweful, I'm sure there is more to it than I saw, when you get powerful armies (rather than my collection of peasants) and you have some mystical magic there may be some enjoyment, but I saw none of this.
I want to be drawn into the battles, I want the fights to remind me of fights in Braveheart or Gladiator, not Horrace Goes Skiing.
I couldn't recommend this to anyone, not even my pet cat.


Total Score 4/50

[Particle]

...and another:


Introduction
Wow. This game sucks. It really does. Maybe if you are the developer and you know exactly what to do, well then MAYBE it could be fun. It does look as it is a long game to play, since you will spend 2-3 hours trying to figure out how the damn crap works. Man this is a really disappointing game. I don't even know what to write, so don't complain if this is a really crappy review, but its for a crappy game. Sigh, if this was only a once in a lifetime release but we see more of these. Oh well, at least if you read this you won't spend $50 on it. And if you really want it wait until its in the bargain bins for $2.


Graphics (1/10)
The graphics for Dominions suck, with muddy little characters that look like pixels slopped together, and even the loading screen is a horribly rendered spinning cube. I have it on screenshot, I would like to you take a look at the shadow. Well, you might be asking why I am flaming the loading screen, its because everything else is just menus, menus, menus, menus! And when you actually get to the gameplay, then it sucks. All you see is red blips moving and it takes hours to complete. I'm sorry, but this game is just horrible. I didn't know what the hell to do, so I left it running, went to the TV and waited for something to happen. Is this the way a game should be?


Audio (0/10)
What audio? The only sound I found was the sound your mouse makes when clicking on a menu. That's it. No speech, no music, no FX when in battles. No fanfare when you win a battle! This is appaling.

Gameplay (1/10)
The gameplay just shows that this game is one of the most confusing released for a very long time. I don't know what to do, didn't know what to do, and probably never will know what to do. All it shows is browsing through menus, menu after menu after menu after menu. The only cool part was the ability to play over email, as this is a rare feature in games. But even that will suck when the game you try and play is horrible. You get to make your own god, then try to become a Pretender. you make an army, which I found was just clicking through some more menus. I had to get through some menus to finally get to the quit button.

Concluding Thoughts (1/20)
This is a bad game. Maybe it could have been better, but now it is too late for maybes. Confusing and boring gameplay will fend off all of the RPG enthusiasts, and the bad graphics and sound just isn't good enough these days. The only plus side is the email gameplay system and the fact that you can create your own gods. Other than that this game is pretty much worth a demo download, but other than that just get a different RPG that will be much more fun. Lets get the TGTB over with quickly.



Total Score 3/50

[johan osterman]

The first dominions review that appeared on the net, which I unfortunately cannot find anymore, was even more off mark. That particular reviewer failed to realise that dominions was a TBS and wrote in his review that he left the game to get some food, and hoped that something would have happened after he returened, unsuprisingly nothing had. If I recall correctly he gave the game a whopping 4/100.

If anyone is still interested there are a few Online reviews collected at: http://www.illwinter.com/links.html. Of these I understand that CG Online at least is also a major magazine in the US. These reviews are for the most part fair and accurately descibes both the games strength and weaknesses.

*Edit particles third posted review is the one I was talking about.

[ October 20, 2003, 13:16: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Particle]

I am still shocked by these bad reviews.

[Pocus]

the more generalist is the site (or mag), the less he will likes Doms I suppose. I just hope that this time big dedicated sites, like the Wargamer, will get a copy of dominions II, and pay him his due appraisal.

I suppose this PR stuff is handled by Shrapnel anyway

[johan osterman]

Well, both CGW and CG Online which I understand are the two biggest gaming magazines in the US gave Dom 4/5.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
Well, both CGW and CG Online which I understand are the two biggest gaming magazines in the US gave Dom 4/5.

didnt knew that. If the review on these mags were positives, then it is even stranger that Doms I sold so confidentially. Or perhaps it means that Online mags arent a big factor in changing the buy/no buy decision of customers.

edit : time for a new poll

[ October 20, 2003, 14:10: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[Gandalf Parker]

We really tore one up in the newsGroups. And the stupid review is still up!

http://tinyurl.com/rldb

Gandalf Parker

[Vodalian]

I've been introducing dominions in several mainstream gaming forums for the mac with equally dismaying results.