Games Convention 2002: Golden land

Myrthos, 2002-09-02

It's been a little over three hundred years since countless hordes of evil spirits under command of the dark god Drakh-Shoo were destroyed and the exhausted Golden Land finally found the desired peace. But after all these years there are signs that Drakh-Shoo is coming back and Kotar, the Supreme Priest of the Heroes Cult, recognizes them as such. He knows there is only one person that can stop all of this, the great warlock and magician of the past Shurba-Hala. Three novices from the temple are selected and send out to search for Shurba-Hala. Those were Siger, Gartranger, and Hush. Each of these novices stood out in one of the major skills: Siger, the best warrior of the Temple, Gartranger, a mighty magician and Hush, a great pathfinder.
But from a vision that was send to him by the Lucid Gods, he was ordered to send a fourth novice. So a novice that nobody knows about starts a journey carrying an object that once belonged to the real heroes that lived over 300 years ago. That novice is you.

The Game
Golden land is an RPG, using a 2D engine with an isometric view in 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions, which can be changed while playing the game. There are 4 major areas that you will visit, each with many different locations. The game starts in Golden land a vast fertile plain circled by a massive mountain range. You will also visit the hot desert-like areas of Marvia, with a connection to the sea in the east. You will encounter the amazons of Alberia. And you will go to Turbern, a cold and rainy land with rough hills, where nothing grows.
There are apparently over 200 different locations to be visited throughout these 3 areas.

The game has a day and night cycle and seasons will influence the weather in certain areas of the game also. Besides that some of the NPC's will react differently, depending on it being night or day. There are apparently over 1000 different NPC's that each have their own way of reacting to you, which in itself would be a real big task if they can pull this of, as it requires a lot of scripting.

You can take along three others in your party. There is a choice from some 20 characters each with their own style and behavior. These party members are under your control, although they have their own reasons to join you or not.

Character advancement
Golden land uses primary and secondary statistics to define your character. When you create your character, you award points to the relevant primary stats, which are: Power, Dexterity, Constitution, Perception, Wisdom, Intelligence and Luck. From it are derived some 30 secondary stats, including resistances, armor class, action points and energy to name a few. These secondary stats are also influenced by the things you wear, such as armor and weapons.

Furthermore there are many skills that you can learn. Some 120 different spells are available as magic skills in Golden Land. The spells are grouped into schools of magic.
If you like to wield weapons than there are skills not only for improvement of each type of weapon there is, but also skills to improve your fighting skills in general.
Then there are some other interesting skills as well, such as trading and robbery skills, or a skill that allows you to create your own unique weapon, by using different materials.
If you decide to develop certain skills you will not be able to excel in something else so planning is essential. Some skills even become unavailable if you study alternative ones and many of them have levels.

As usual you advance your character by earning experience points. You receive them by solving quests and by killing monsters. But if you don't like killing then it is also possible to get to the end of the game without killing anyone. Instead you have to solve puzzles to get your experience points.

Combat
The combat is turn-based and uses action points for fighting and casting spells. The higher your level the more action points you have. When you try to hit your opponent it will cost a certain amount of action points. When your action points are reduced to zero, it's your opponents turn to do some hitting.
Fortunately you can save the inevitable unused action points and use them to hit back during the turn of your opponent.

The engine also supports attacks that are directed to certain parts of the body. These attacks will do more damage and have immediate effect when successful. So if you hit an eye, then the other one would loose its sight through that eye, which results in a reduced accuracy. Going for the legs would result in a reduced ability to move around freely.

The weapons and armor you use will wear out after a while. So you will have to do regular repairs to keep them in top shape. Learning the proper skill would be one way, getting it repaired by a blacksmith and paying for it, would be the other.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer mode will allow players to unite their efforts when fighting with the enemy, or start bloody battles against each other, or defend the borders of their premises and establish trade relations with other players.

The games are saved and it allows you to continue a game without waiting for all the other players of a previous session.

Some final comments
Golden land should keep you occupied for some 100 hours and tries to get its replayability from randomizing the items and by allowing you to create unique characters that can solve the game in different ways. It is said to have different endings depending on your choices in the game. So a new game might lead to another ending and even other quests that you could not have taken before.

The graphics in the game are nice and it reminded me of Baldur's Gate somehow, but I only saw a bit of them of course. There are slots in the interface that allow to quickly select several spells or several weapons. The action counter is prominently available in that same interface.
As it's a game with a 2D engine, it will run on most PC's with a reasonable video card. I haven't seen enough of it to compare the graphics it to other 2D RPG's like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Divine Divinity.

The strength of the game is not the graphics but the engine of the game. Besides the skill system and the ability to negotiate your way out of a fight, the engine also supports multiple endings and a non-linear world, where you can travel anywhere you want and encounter many different NPC's, each with their own way of interacting with you.

There will be several who won't give the game a second glance, just because it's not in 3D. Personally I couldn't care less about the graphics as long as they are functional and don't disturb me while playing the game. As far as I've seen it, the graphics of Golden land are of a 2D quality that won't do that. To me the important issues are inside the game engine. Questions such as: how will the character development work out? How good is the combat system implemented? Is the NPC interaction implemented well? And how much do I enjoy playing it, should be answered adequately by the game. The first chance to get some answers to that would be the demo that is scheduled to be released this year. The game itself will be available in the first half of next year, depending on the country you live in I assume. Until then one can only wait.

For more Screenshots, artwork and wallpapers, check out our Gallery.