Atlantis: The Lost Tales

The Good
The graphics were marvellous at the time the game was released, and they were beautiful too. The music perfectly fitted into the mystical setting, sometimes I just replayed certain sequences just to listen to the music - up to the point I heard about the official soundtrack and bought it.

The Bad
The gameplay was crap, reduced to "click on the right section in the screen at the right time" most of the game. Some of the riddles where just plain illogical, so most of the time I died, reloaded, tried another possibility, died again, tried again and so on until I survived. I found the voice acting and the dialoges to be ok, but the characters of the game - well, they did not look as good as their environment. Let me be more specific: they just looked ugly.

The Bottom Line
Atlantis is a wonderful, if not beautiful game with marvellous graphics and sound. But it suffers from the "Cryo Syndrome", meaning that the game looks nice and has a below average gameplay. At least Atlantis is one of the better Cryo titles, so I can still recommend it - to a patient player.

The Good
This game's story line is it's greatest strength. It expands on the legend of Atlantis creating a historical account of Atlantis from it's beginnings to it's fate. The characters within the game are both interesting and very entertaining. The voice acting and background music are both superb as well. (The background music was actually released as a separate CD by itself.)

The graphics were very well done by standards at the time this game was released. The cutscenes are well done and allow the story to flow quite smoothly. Character movement is mouse controlled and what few action scenes exist are fairly easily navigated. The game's puzzles are very well integrated into the story and don't seem to be an afterthought as is so often the case. The puzzles are neither too easy as to require little thought or too hard resulting in high frustration levels.

Even though there are seven continents to explore and multiple CDs involved there is no unnecessary CD swapping because the game requires little wasted travel between locations looking for an obscure item. All items needed are generally found before you can advance to the next area to explore.

The Bad
There isn't much I didn't like about Atlantis. The credits that run every time you exit the game are a little annoying. Doesn't seem to be a way to bypass them.

It would have been nice if there was a way to closely examine the items in inventory. On a couple of occasions it was difficult to determine what an item was when it was found.

There is no manually controlled save game feature. The game saves itself at predetermined points in the game. This is frustrating when you have to replay portions of the game numerous times to get through one of the trickier action scenes. (not many though)

The Bottom Line
If you are an adventure junkie like myself you will enjoy this game. It tells the story of Atlantis but adds a historical perspective that allows you to live Atlantis from it's origins to it's demise. The characters, sound effects and music will suck you into this game and hook you. There is treachery, comedy, romance (well sort of) and an interesting story that transcends any of the small annoyances (no game save feature).

You play Seth, the hero and Queens companion, in trying to uncover the mystery and treachery behind the Queens disappearance. The plot twists and all is not as it appears to be as you must determine who to trust and who is your enemy as you search for clues and allies. There are secret passages, hidden agendas, strange personalities, etc to keep you in front of your computer for hours. This game is one of those where saying the right thing at the right time to the right person is as important as choosing the right weapon and fighting well. The culture of Atlantis, that is the pivotal element in the story, will impress you. There was a lot of attention to detail in this game.

I have played other Cryo games (Arthur's Knights) and this is head and shoulders above the rest. I can't wait to give Atlantis II a whirl.

I have a top shelf that I put my favorite games on and this game is there.

The Good
For a game that is nearly thirty years old this plays surprisingly well. The game is fully voiced and the voice acting is believable. The controls are a bit clunky compared to the games I have been playing recently but they work and after a while I barely noticed them. Decent background music too.

The Bad
The Bad-ish: There is no manual save in this game, it saves automatically at key points so if/when Seth dies it will restart and part of the game has to be replayed. I am not a big fan of this because I like to save after tricky puzzles and timed/platform elements, (i.e. anything where progress is more down to luck than skill), but the system works and I suppose I would rather have this than forget to save and lose lots of progress.

The Bad: The game is fully voiced but there is no text option, or if there is I cannot find it, and there's no way to review recent dialogue either. This can be irritating because if you get distracted, or if your hearing isn't 100%, you can mage mistakes.

Case in point - I am still in the early part of the game and I spoke to another character who gave me instructions to activate a secret passage but first I had to get past a guard. Well I tried and I tried but the guard would not budge so tried again the next day, and the next. Eventually I had to resort to a walkthrough where I learned that the other character did not say what I thought he said, he said he would distract the guard so that I could get past and search for the secret passage and I had to wait until he did that before I could make my move. So I put that mistake right and got past the guard but by now of course I had completely forgotten the instructions on how to activate the secret passage so back to the walkthrough again

The Very Bad: This is my totally fault, but I bought the game on GoG thinking it was something else that I played way back in the 90's. The lesson here is not to buy a game, even if it is on sale, because you think you recognise the cover.

The Bottom Line
I want to finish this game under my own steam because there it looks as though there is a decent story here (and I've bought it, and I hate being beaten by a game) but I am not sure I will be able to. Based on the experiences so far this is NOT a casual game, it will require my full attention but if I have to keep going to a walkthrough to make progress I will probably cut my losses and move on to something else.