Far from Gold (Silver (PC))

Name: MykReeve

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Product:	Silver (PC)
Date:	26/11/00 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good presentation, great graphics

Disadvantages: Frustrating combat system, tedious gameplay, amazingly uninvolving plot

'Silver' was reasonably well received by the less trustworthy computer magazines, i.e. those liable to give out high marks regardless of game quality, when it first came out, but indifferently received elsewhere. Being a fan of RPGs, and having been reasonably impressed by a demo of the game, I was still interested in buying it. The game is now available as a budget release in the "Best of Infogrames" range for just over a tenner.

'Silver' is an RPG. You play David (oh, don't you love fantasy RPGs where characters have got normal Earth names?), a warrior forced to fight the evil Silver to rescue his wife, Jessica. Silver has kidnapped all the women in David's hometown so that he can pick a bride from among them. That's pretty much the plot – in order to defeat Silver, David has to explore the world collecting magical orbs, and at various points in the game, he's accompanied by one or two other characters from six that you encounter.

The presentation is very similar to Final Fantasy VII and VIII and the Resident Evil series, consisting of 3D characters placed on a pre-rendered backdrop. This works pretty well, and moving about is generally very easy, simply clicking once to walk to an area of a screen, or pick something up, double-clicking to run. The combat system is probably my main problem with the game though. Unlike most RPGs, Silver has gone for a far more arcade style of combat. Battles in 'Silver' are in real time, and your character is commanded to fight by holding down the Control key on the keyboard, clicking the mouse in the direction you want your character to fight. While holding the mouse button down, you move the mouse in the direction you want to swipe your sword in. It's an interesting idea, and works quite effectively initially, but soon becomes frustrating as you work through the game. The pre-rendered nature of the locations means that the camera angle often makes battl
es irritatingly difficult, and the sheer number of opponents your characters encounter mean that it becomes quite tedious very quickly. There's also a very real danger of wrist-ache as you progress through the game.

Battles are made slightly more interesting by the addition of 'Special moves' that you pick up as you progress through the game, and implement during combat. Using these is not the easy experience you'd want them to be though, because unless your character is facing in the direction of the opponent, they can sometimes fail to hit the opponent entirely. Pointing your character in the right direction should be easy, but as mentioned above, the pre-rendered backdrops sometimes mean your character is far in the distance in a location, and therefore you can't really tell which direction it's facing.

The magic system is pretty well implemented though. As you collect the eight orbs you need to defeat Silver, each one contains a type of magic (e.g. fire, ice, health, lightning, etc). By equipping an orb rather than a weapon, your character is able to cast the corresponding class of magic. As your use of magic increases, you gain magical experience, and the level of spell castable with each orb increases. My problem with this is that, say you have one character in your party with relatively few Spell Points they might be able to cast a level 1 spell, if another character uses a lot of magic and increases the spell to level 2, the first character may well be unable to cast the spell. At a couple of points in the game, one of my characters (not even the worst magic user in the game) was unable to cast the 'healing' spell at crucial moments due to the level going up on the Health orb. This smacks of ill-considered game design.

The world design is pretty unremarkable. All the visitable locations in the 'Silver' world are connected by pre-rendered locations, so unlike the Final Fantasy series, there
9;s no need for an isometric "world map" view. However, a 2D map is provided in 'Silver', which is updated when you visit new locations, making travelling between them rapidly much easier. Locations on the map include David's hometown, Verdante (it's green and lush), Haven (it's safe there), Winter (it's snowy), Rain (it always rains), and several other regions with names that indicate what you can expect to find there.

The story is remarkably weak in 'Silver', and given what a fundamental feature this usually is to RPGs, this is a tremendous disappointment. You aren't even given choices about what line of dialogue David will give next in a conversation! Incidentally, conversations have been entirely recorded, and by default, you can listen to some adequately competent voice actors over-emoting into microphones. Fortunately, the game comes with the option to turn this off, which I chose to do, so I could progress through the conversations as quickly as I can read.

The final battle in 'Silver' is tremendously frustrating, because it basically comes down to an arcade-style fight with a "final boss". Where failure in a final, and indeed any, battle in most RPGs can usually be attributed to choosing an inappropriate strategy, there is no scope for strategy selection in the final battle of 'Silver'. If you were to play through the game, you'd know what I mean – and so as to retain some sense of suspense to the game, I won't explain further here. But suffice it to say, I've not completed the game, and have made several attempts at the final battle!

Presentation of 'Silver' is very good. The opening animation is visually impressive, if overlong and tedious. Locations are beautifully presented, and characters have been nicely animated throughout. However, the lack of plot and frustrations with the combat system make gameplay irritating and downright t
edious at times. Reaching the final battle of 'Silver' took about 12 hours of gameplay, which isn't too bad for £10, I suppose. But the game is pretty disappointing overall.

Summary: