I’ve had this game for several years now, and I play it over and over again… In fact I'm playing it again right now. It’s a truly classic game, fun, fast paced and often challenging. It loosely follows the plot of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 novel and David Lynch’s 1984 film version. You play as Paul Atreides, Muad’Dib, as you attempt to mine the spice mélange (“the most precious substance in the universe”) from the desert planet Arrakis, while at the same time creating an army of Fremen (desert nomads) to battle the evil House Harkonnen, your rivals.
The game’s animation is extremely well done for the time period also, and is dramatic and exciting. All of the characters and settings are based on David Lynch’s film, although, many of the characters for some strangely don’t resemble they’re movie counterparts at all, although Paul does very closely. Never mind that though, I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. The novel's story is incredibly complex, of course, and confuses many people, but I think the really game does a good job of translating the story to the video game form, and make it easily understandable to people even if they haven't read the book.
It’s game-play style is incredibly unique too, combining action adventure and role-playing elements with military style strategy... Be careful
to keep track of time though, it goes by very fast and you have to accomplish a lot all at once, (mining spice, sending out prospectors, sending the spice to the Emperor, checking up on you’re troops military training, flying people around to wherever they want to go, buying equipment
All in all, the game is much, much fun, although at the same time intelligent and challenging... It’s certainly a step up from much of the stuff coming out now, despite its age. If you like this game, be sure to check out the equally wonderful sequel Dune 2: The building of a Dynasty. Anyway, this is one of those “old” games that never really get old, it’s quite simply awesome… Thumbs up!
