“Welcome brave warrior, your quest awaits you. Bring me the five gems of Zator to stop the evil Azazreal and save the lands of Mezron.” These are the words that greet you when you fire up Galdregon Domain (I found that for optimum performance, you should use disk 2). If you haven’t smelled a rat already with the “inventive” names, then read on. This is your classic fantasy DOS based RPG. It has it all, potions, scrolls, magic books, and an interface that will infuriate and slow you down.
“Welcome brave warrior, your quest awaits you. Bring me the five gems of Zator to stop the evil Azazreal and save the lands of Mezron.” These are the words that greet you when you fire up Galdregon Domain (I found that for optimum performance, you should use disk 2). If you haven’t smelled a rat already with the “inventive” names, then read on. This is your classic fantasy DOS based RPG. It has it all, potions, scrolls, magic books, and an interface that will infuriate and slow you down.
You are in a first person perspective, and can opt to use the mouse, keyboard or a joystick as the controller for the cursor. There are different sub-menus in the game, such as general, containing talk and buy
options, and magic, items, and weapons menus. Keep an eye on your direction indicator, showing you north, south, east or west, because without it the areas will become a labyrinth with no exit. It is the silly little things that hold this game back. The fact that when you want to go through a door you must go to the general menu, select open, select which door (I only ever found 1 door in each area), open it, go back to the arrow buttons, and click forward is infuriatingly tedious. What disadvantage it would do the game to just take for granted that you are not going to walk into the door when you wish to move on is beyond me.
The actual combat is annoying as well. Due to the fact that your health is on a different menu from your weapons and magic, you cannot see while fighting how well you are doing, making the run option (which is on another menu) useless. Your weapons will break after only a few battles, so make sure you carry about 10 swords with you, thankfully they are cheap.
The whole fighting consists of selecting your weapon, and mashing left click on your opponent until he is reduced to ashes. Why he does this I cannot tell you. If you like magic, you will be disappointed. The magic system is a joke; the spells are overpriced in terms of mana (which is on a different menu from magic) and they do less damage than one mash of a weapon.
Gameplay: 3/10. It simply is a badly made game full of switching between menus and finding your way out of labyrinths.
Storyline: 7/10. If you like fantasy, you will not be disappointed.
Graphics: 5/10. The graphics are average, even for DOS.
Total 4/10.
