Death Gate
Legend Entertainment
1995/96
Mouse Controlled Adventure
DOS but ran fine under W98 Shortcut
Story
Two thousand years ago your ancestors (the Patryn) were in a war with the
Sartan. They were winning and it was only a matter of time before they
defeated the evil Sartan sorcerers and took their rightful place as
leaders of the world. But Samah the most powerful Sartan sorcerer broke
the world into 5 realms. Four of the realms would be home to the mench
races: the dwarves, humans and elves. The realms were called: Arianus
(Air), Pyran (Fire), Abarrach (Stone) and Chelestra (Water). The 5th realm
was called The Labyrinth and that is where your people were imprisoned.
The Sartans created a magic artifact called the World Seal. A piece of
each seal went into the realm it was named for.
You (Haplo) have just escaped from The Labyrinth with the help of Lord Xar
who's one and only thought is to avenge the Patryns and destroy the Sartan.
Xar needs you to help him reform the world. To do that he needs all the
world pieces and so he needs you to visit each realm and find the seal
piece and bring back to him. The only way of traveling to the other realms
is through the Death Gate - a portal in space - and to do that you need a
ship that flies - which Xar has. On top of that you need a steering stone
with the rune names of the realms etched on it. Xar can only find one rune
name - Arianus - so that is where you are to go first. Xar hopes that the
other naming runes can be found in Arianus. After teaching you a couple of
new spells - he sends you off with orders to report back with the seal
piece and any information pertaining to the Sartan.
The realms themselves are all unique and were designed to each serve a
different function:
Airanus is made up of continents that float in the air and are plagued by
electrical storms.
Pryan contained four suns on the outside of the realm - all the
inhabitants lived on the inside in what amounted to one big huge forest.
Abbrach was a rock hanging in space. Full of warrens, tunnels, lava tubes
etc. There were bunches of dead corpses walking around and very little
else.
Chelestra was the land of the water - it was the most beautiful of all the
realms. That is where the Sartan built cities and planned to live.
Each realm is it's own little puzzle. You have to complete everything
before you can move on. There is a lot of talking and reading in this
game. There are journals and history books that must be read for clues -
none are very long but you need to skim through them. Plus you need to
talk to everyone you can and some of the conversations are rather lengthy.
But you can turn the speech option off and just read the dialogue if you
want.
And you get to cast spells - very easy to do - as you go along you learn
new spells either by watching someone cast one or reading about it in one
of the journals. Then it automatically appears on your spell list - you
just click the "magic" icon, click on what you want to cast a spell on and
then find the correct spell.
The puzzles are for the most part logical - some easier than others. I got
royally stuck a few times but mainly it was because I forgot something I
had previously read or forgot I could cast a spell.
You can die so save often. There are also a couple of timed sequences
especially at the end - but if you remember to save it's not that bad.
There also were no bugs at all - the game played flawlessly on my 450 with
W98.
All in all this is one terrific game - I'd give it a 9 out of 10.
copyright © 2002
GameBoomers
