Pic: Adventure Gamers

Do you remember the computer game company Sierra making such great adventure games some years ago? Well, Adventure Gamers have a superb review of the game about this MIDI soundtrack game with EGA graphics. Andrea Morstabilini says: Although there is no voice acting in Camelot, each location features a unique MIDI theme that manages to create a strong particular mood, from the courtly main theme to the gloomy sounds of the forest to the middle eastern score in the desert

surrounding Gaza and later in Jerusalem. The soundtrack, orchestrated by Mark Seibert, always manages to be fitting. There is also one particular theme – bright and yet melancholic, in the fashion of goliardic music – that I found very addictive. Maybe that’s because I heard it a lot, as that’s the one which plays when King Arthur fails one of his perilous tasks and sheds his mortal coil.

This obviously means that you can die, and in many various ways. However, unlike many other Sierra games of the period, in Conquests of Camelot death is a less random feature, as it’s always pretty clear which actions will trigger the premature departure of King Arthur. The bad news here is that death often occurs as a result of pure arcade sequences that intersperse the gameplay. These sequences vary greatly in amusement and quality: if the joust with the Black Knight is quite engaging, the boar-hunting is simply frustrating. The problem is that Camelot was made using the first version of Sierra Creative Interpreter, known as SCI0, which doesn’t match well with these kinds of segments: the keyboard commands are often unresponsive, and the mouse – otherwise available for moving Arthur around the screen – is totally disabled during the arcade sequences, making them quite difficult to master. Fortunately, the difficulty can be adjusted at any time between Hard, Medium and Easy, thus making the game far more accessible. Beware though, because the easier difficulty will lower the final score.

Pic: Adventure Gamers

The point scoring system certainly isn’t new for Sierra games, but Camelot differs from its contemporaries by having three different scales: Skills points record the factual tasks, such as taking and using objects, while Wisdom points concern the dialogues, the information that can be obtained by questioning characters or looking at the environments, and puzzle solving. Finally, the Soul points measure the moral choices of the player.

King Arthur frequently has to face ethical dilemmas and the decision about how to solve these situations is left entirely in the hands of the player. Most of these choices won’t affect the ending, but the quest for the Grail, at least as romanticized by medieval poets, has always been a moral one and persisting with questionable behavior might make the game unwinnable.

As for the puzzles, they’re mostly inventory-based and quite sparse. Never too difficult in their own right, the main challenge at times comes from the text parser, which is quite limited and sometimes finding the right instruction demanded by the developers can be fairly hard. In this regard, the command ‘Ask Merlin about’ is quite useful: from his tower in the fortress of Camelot, the wizard will guide every step of your quest, and the player can seek his counsel at any time. Even if the old sage has a marked preference for obscure and salacious comments, his answers often contain some vital clue on how proceed.

Early in the game, King Arthur also has to contend with riddles presented to him by enchanted menhirs, some of which can be really difficult. The whole sequence is one of the most successful in the game, however, because it forces the player to think creatively to find the answers. Later on, when King Arthur arrives at the Jerusalem bazaar, there is a prolonged sequence involving fetch quests that helps the environment to feel more alive and realistic, because every merchant has a distinct personality and a well-written, interweaved backstory. In addition, there are some puzzles solvable only through the aid of the manual, which serve as copy protection. Fortunately, these puzzles never feel out of place or contrived, instead adding a substantial depth to the background and plot.

Overall, though some of its design choices – mainly the arcade sequences and the rushed ending – are certainly objectionable, Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail is otherwise a very enjoyable title, with an engaging plot, a charming, intelligent script and a wonderful (for the time, of course) graphic design. The game even runs just fine on modern machines with the aid of DOSBox, so every adventurer should give it a try, because it’s truly a little gem and one of the most underrated of Sierra’s classic games.

Read the original article on Adventure Gamers, and the follow-up page.

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