Four Crystals Of Trazere, The
An unknown epoch during the Middle Ages, when barbarians invaded at will, cruel despots rose and fell, blood spilled across the land, and magic and mystery wove their spell. It is a Time of Dread and Woe. An evil stench has arisen in the land of Trazere, and the world is in chaos. A strange, powerful and ghastly entity as old as time itself has risen from its sleep, and has cast a pall over all humanity. Some unknown malevolent power has mutated the peoples of the Ancient Realm into hideous beasts. These beasts are roaming the land, slaying and despoiling all in their path, and nothing seems capable of stopping their wanton destruction.
Well, there is something, or rather someone, who is able to restore peace and order in the land of Trazere. It is you, the controller of the party of four and the mastermind behind the great heroes, who will rid the land of this wretched pestilence.
The game itself appears to be yet another typical RPG where you control a party of heroes and need to complete different quests in order to win, but there are some interesting things that set it apart from the rest of otherwise similar RPG games.
There is a map with the land of Trazere and you need to move around it, from city to city, from village to village and from a hold to a hold. On the way you can meet different groups of people (and non-people) roaming the land. Some are friendly some are not. Naturally in such cases a fight will occur and you need to win (if possible). Note that during the fights on the open terrain you will not be able to retrieve items if you leave them behind.
The combats aren’t all that special, and they are simple enough to negotiate, but you might also try and avoid them (especially if the enemy is too strong for your own good) and you need to pass them to get to a certain place on the map.
Once you reach a settlement the real game begins. Here is where you get to collect information and equip your party. Also every real RPG adventure requires dungeons or in this case only cellars (but don’t let that fool you, they’re the places that represent the real challenge).
You need to solve several puzzles in order to progress and these can be either answer, object or spell based. OK, so you might need a clue to get the correct answer, or a certain object in order to pass, but it’s the spell based puzzles that set this game aside from the pack. You actually need to make your own magic spells! That’s right, you need to combine the runes (which some say are really the magical alphabet) and form magic spells from them (off course you need to get the appropriate runes to begin with).
The sounds are somewhat of a let-down, but the graphics look good enough. The controls are simple enough to manage, but you might wanna check out the manual to really understand which icon does what, and also to know, how to create your own spells!
So if you want to embark on yet another heroic quest, which will apart from bravery also require creative thinking (well, maybe just a little bit of it anyway), I would strongly suggest The Four Crystals Of Trazere, as it is a very solid and often overlooked game.
Reviewed by: Sebatianos
