In the Playstation's early
days, the software library resembled a PC. Especially with monosyllabic PC classics like
Doom, Myst and Worms available. No King's Quest or Lucasarts games, however. The
replacement was Discworld, a sometimes brilliant, sometimes insane, always slooooow point
and click adventure. You play as Rincewind (voiced by Eric Idle), the worst wizard that ever attended a school of Wizardry. A giant dragon has been terrorizing a nearby town. Or at least that's what the nearby town thinks. As the Dean tells you, there's obviously no such thing as dragons. Get it? It's a game about wizards and he says there's no....har har British humor har har... this is the kind of stuff I ate up in middle school when Monty Python was a new thing to me. Anyway, your mission is to convince the townspeople that your magic powers have driven the dragon away, and therefore bring prestige to the school you go to.
Sounds fun, eh? Do you have absolutely any idea how you are going to accomplish that? Well, that's one of this game's biggest problems. For a point and click game to be entertaining, at least to me, the puzzles have to make SENSE. Some do, yes, but others will send you searching for an FAQ, reading the solution, and uttering a loud "What the HELL?" This may be a welcome change of pace for obsessed fans of the genre, but definitely not for newbies.
That's not the biggest problem, though. This game takes patience. If you're a twitch gamer at all, prepare to wonder why the game loads so much. Pretty much every time the game loads a sound effect it will pause briefly. This also puts an accent on how damn slow Rincewind moves in the first place. When you're talking to people for clues, there are always at least 4 options just for talking, most of which involve a few lines of lame jokes. If you're anything like me, this game will take a loooong time to beat, because I can only take it in small doses.
But on the upside, sometimes the game actually is funny, and the atmosphere is great. It's nicely animated and colorful and probably the prettiest of first-generation Playstation titles. The music is very nice too, and sets the mood quite well. It makes me want to really like this game, but for this genre... I'd take King's Quest V on the NES over this. This game's atmosphere and quirkiness may be enough for some players, but not me.
