08-22-2006, 09:00 AM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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A World of Magic in The Quest
"The Quest is a graphically stunning, engaging and sinister world full of magic. Choose from five customizable races and an array of skills, attributes, weapons, armor and enchantments, then explore a huge non-linear realm of four different cities and a wilderness of mountains, caves, lakes and forests. Play an absorbing card game, solve brain-teasing quests and clash with dangerous opponents in this turn- and skill-based role playing game. You will have many choices, including some that may place you against the law, along your way to the dramatic end of your own choosing. You will need all your gaming know-how to survive and discover your destiny!"
The folks at Clickgamer just alerted us to a new title called "The Quest". It's the sequel to the old "Legacy" title, and alongside a new storyline and a new set of gameplay features, it also sports improved graphics. If you have a square-screen or VGA device, "The Quest" supports it. You can try and buy the game at Clickgamer.
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08-22-2006, 09:13 AM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 3,111
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Woot! I've been waiting for this!
The developer's homepage is here, for those who want to know.
__________________
"A planner is a gentle man, with neither sword nor pistol.
He walks along most daintily, because his balls are crystal."
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08-22-2006, 12:00 PM
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5000+ Posts? I Should OWN This Site!
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,067
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My review:
RedShift (also known for their other, older RPG title Legacy) has just released a brand new, RPG title, The Quest.
(QVGA screenshot here)
Availability
The game (current, tested version 1.0) is available here (a trial is available and the full version costs 24.95$). I also recommend this page to check the features of the game. Here, I don’t go over them all – I only elaborate on my opinions.
Visuals
First, the game is really VGA-compliant and works great on all my VGA devices.
The only problem with the graphics is the sprites’ (for example, the sword in your hand) not being bilinear texture filtered filtered; and the close-ups of objects are also bad-looking. Unfortunately, there’s no Intel 2700G support in the game (to, for example, do the bilinear texture filtering, which would indeed be needed).
The QVGA version has bigger, slightly rearranged icons. I’ve found the game perfectly playable on all QVGA devices too: the icons and menus are not blocky – they are properly bilinear texture filtered.
Note that the dynamic GUI/icon rearrangement also makes it possible to run the game on devices with other screen configurations (Landscape, Square or even Handheld PC screens).
The music
The in-game music, while it is pretty nice (it doesn’t really match the great music in Edge though), could be worked on: while it depends on the current situation (battle, just wandering around, main menu etc) it’s mono, sampled at about 11 kHz and, after a while (about 2 minutes, and, as far as the in-battle music is concerned, it is abruptly restarted), is repetitive.
The ambient sounds (for example, Nadia’s crying (another screenshot)) are OK - much better than those of Creatonia.
Classic RPG elements
Everything is here: quests (and their lists), a nice inventory interface (QVGA screenshot), a decent character and spell page, listing everything you need.
Also, the map functionality is pretty good in both the main screen (see the minimap in the lower left corner) and the dedicated, two-level (a closer and a more distant map).
Bugs, problems
I haven’t found many bugs except for the Landscape bug: if you start the game in Landscape mode, the game, albeit it switches to Portrait, will register screen taps using Landscape coordinates. This affects the game on both QVGA and VGA devices.
Compatibility
I’ve noticed no problems on any of my WM2003+ (the game isn’t compatible with PPC2k/ PPC2k2) test Pocket PC’s: F-S PL720, x51v A12, HTC Wizard (the speed on this was very good and there were no sound problems, unlike with, say, the otherwise great SuperTux), iPAQ hx4700 (with the 2.01 WM5 upgrade; note that the game has on-screen direction arrows, you can move around without having to use the, for gaming, lousy touchpad of the hx4700).
Note that if you have a pre-WM5 device with sufficiently big (say, 128M) RAM, you may want to install the game into the main RAM – then, loading times will be much shorter.
Other VGA screenshots (with some QVGA additions for comparison)
Starting debriefing: 1 2 3 4 (the same on a QVGA device is, for example, here and here).
Creating a new player
In-game conversation screen (QVGA screenshot)
Compared to...
Edge: it all depends whether you prefer a first-person or isonometric view (I certainly prefer the isometric view of Edge to the first-person view of games like The Quest, but your mileage may vary.). Edge has definitely better in-game music but it requires Styletap to run and even with that isn't as good as on a Palm (for example, it lacks full-screen HiRes+ support). It’s only really playable on a genuine HiRes+ Palm device.
Creatonia (see review here): there is in-game music and, as of middle-August and just-released version 1.0.2 (see the reports on the sound capabilities of it here) , much better in-game sounds. Also, The Quest looks much more lively. I haven’t encountered rendering bugs either (unlike with Creatonia).
Please see the first Creatonia review for other RPG games so that you can compare The Quest to them.
Verdict
If you’re into the “classic” Eye of the Beholder-type of games, do check out this title, especially if you have a VGA Pocket PC.
Additional links
An ongoing pros/cons discussion of the game can be found at AximSite. Also, the official forum of the game can be found here.
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Linear Mode
