Ishar
Legend of the Fortress is a good Golden Box RPG
The first game in the Ishar series to be build in the Golden Box engine, Legend of the Fortress is also among the first ones to feature large outside spaces. The Golden Box engine was initially meant to recreate smaller, wall based areas, dungeons, but, nevertheless LotF managed to expand its usability. The game, just like its subsequent brethren, allows you to form a band of up to 5 companions and drops you on the island of Kendoria. You will play as Aramir, and will look to defeat Krogh, the evil sorcerer. Another cool aspect of gameplay was the development of relationships between party members, as each one would have his favorites or his/her less favorites. Furthermore, you can't add a new member to your party unless your party votes for him or her. This was partly a trick to get you to build an equilibrated party, with healers, archers and melee fighters as well, but sometime you were forced to give up taking up a new character unless you dropped others. Still, it had little impact on the story of the game since on most occasions, other than fights, the companions were silent. Unless for the stiff, engine based limitations, especially when trying to quickly navigate around, the game was and remains playable. It's a good combination of fighting and a story which, while unoriginal, is still not half bad.
First person RPG, classic one
Ishar is a first-person perspective role-playing game and the first entry in the Ishar series. It seems that back in the '90s, first-person RPGs were like a standard. It was a rare thing seeing an RPG game like today. It seems that, like many others, Ishar took some elements from the Might and Magic series and implemented them, however, I have seen some things to prevent this game to be labelled as a rip-off. The backstory of the first game is that a lord named Jarel is killed by a sorcered named Krogh and it is the job of Aramir, the protagonist of game who you control and no, he has nothing to do with the two Tolkien characters from LOTR to venture out in the world of Kendoria and defeat Krogh. There are also other characters to meet and control along the way, so don't be scared is you think you gonna play with one character. The gameplay is similar, as I said, to that of Might and Magic, but with some differences. For example, each party member has an "Action" and a "Attack" buttons. It seems that they wanted to make combat a bit easier, which is a good thought, but it would have worked better if combat was turn-based. The directional buttons aren't shaped too well and unless you've played the game before, you might get confused for a couple of minutes. Other than that, the game is pretty much solid and I have found it to be enjoyable. In conclusion, Ishar isn't a bad game at all, but it has some elements that wanted to make the game original, but they aren't executed too well and that is most unfortunate because the game had the promise to be a great game.
