Review The Fifth Disciple Developer: Napoleon Games Publisher: Cenega Genre: Adventure Release Date: Q2 2004 Platform: Review by Alexander Tait December 16, 2004		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

The Fifth Disciple is a little-known adventure-ish title from Napoleon Games and published by Cenega, publishers of the more widely known Gooka. Cenega was kind enough to send me a copy of this and the more recent and more action-like Shade: Wrath of Angels to peruse and review. In a recent discussion with Robert Washburne, I told him that I have a pretty optimistic view about adventure games. I enjoy most of them: I am happy to overlook elements of action, bad acting, not-quite-up-to-this-decade graphics, and other gripes if the story catches my attention and I am filled with an overarching sense of fun when I play the game.

Yes, sports fans, this up-and-coming (read “hack”) journalist’s (read “game reviewer’s”) main, and sometimes only, criterion about how good a game is, is how much fun he has playing it. So, all of you who have been studying my writing and attempting to discover the mystical formula that results in a good game, put away your scientific calculators and consider how much you are enjoying the game you are playing. It’s an incalculable combination of the sound, writing, graphics, gameplay, and other factors.

So, how does The Fifth Disciple rate on Alex’s “Fun-o-Meter”™? Sorry, you’ll have to read on to discover this…

The story is fairly standard for a fantasy adventure or role-playing game. Much time has passed since events that set the world on the verge of destruction took place in the Skeldal Tower on the Island kingdom of Rovenland. Only by the success of six adventurers was this disaster averted, thereby preventing demons from entering the world from another dimension. One of the six, Wahargem, returned to Rovenland, hailed as a hero. However, the twist is that this hero soon showed other colors: he could also be a villain. Now, it is up to you, Engeor, a wizard-in-training, son of one of the six heroes to save the kingdom from Wahargem’s treachery.

The Fifth Disciple was created in the Czech Republic so be prepared for some unusual translations in the game. There is full speech throughout and most of it is performed by better than your run-of-the-mill type actors. They certainly perform rather than read their lines. It is evident that English is not their first language but it is better than much of the acting I’ve heard in games developed in the United States.

One small quirk I found in the game was that the spoken words often don’t match the subtitles in more than meaning. Certainly, a hearing-impaired player would be no less in the dark during the game than their able peers but for those of us who are fortunate to possess both these senses, there is an odd feeling bordering on confusion when the two don’t quite gel. It is perhaps akin to the strange sensation that sometimes occurs when the two images you see through each of your eyes are different because of the placement of your pillow when you are lying down. Quite odd…

As is the case with many games, there are no subtitles for the cutscenes. It seems a strange oversight to leave out subtitles in my opinion, considering how much text exists in the game alongside the spoken dialog. Hearing impaired players will likely be uncertain about the “bigger picture” or theme in the game because of this.

I feel obliged to document a language warning. This game may not have obscenity/profanity in the same league as The Longest Journey, but sensitive players may want to give this game a miss. There is a lot of dialog in this game and only very few instances of offensive language but it was a short, sharp shock when it occurred. One other minor annoyance was that the player is forced to listen to some conversations over and over again, such as is the case when buying more than one item from a merchant. Instead of having the option of purchasing several items, the player has to go through the “I’d like to make a purchase” dialog repeatedly until they have enough supplies. It took a lot of patience to purchase ten health potions!

In the same vein, there are several adult themes in this game touched on superficially that may cause concern to some people. Drug use and prostitution are discussed in no more detail than in a many mainstream movies so are not likely to disturb an open-minded adult player.

Graphics are old-fashioned hand-painted backgrounds, which have a similar appearance to the ray-traced graphics of classic Legend games like Death Gate and Shannara. They look more like graphics from 1995 than 2003. But this is not a criticism. Many adventurers will play this game with a sense of nostalgia, because it does truly hark back to a brighter age for adventure games. Backgrounds are colorful but muted and characters have a cartoonish feel. Backgrounds are layered like those in the Broken Sword series, giving a panoramic feeling as the screen scrolls as Engeor walks across the screen, which was a great touch. There are simple shadows in the game, which obviously would not be found in games from 1995. Cutscenes are quite different as they are presented as a series of still images hand drawn in off-white, brown, and black tones. Again, simple but effective.

The creators of the game describe The Fifth Disciple as a “synthesis” of point-and-click adventure and fantasy RPG. What this means is that this is not a pure interactive adventure. There is combat but it is not a click-fest but rather a turn-based system that could be viewed as a puzzle of sorts. Players must decide which enemy to engage and have to balance mana, for use with the spells Engeor casts. Pure adventure gamers need not fear combat in this game at all. Again, I found it similar to the combat in Shannara, a game which is unfairly often called a role-playing game. Be warned, though, that it is easy to die in combat if the player doesn’t think carefully about their decisions in combat. Fortunately, the learning curve is not very steep, so the player is eased into the concepts of combat.

In The Fifth Disciple, role-playing elements exist in a very simple form. As Engeor defeats more enemies, he gains experience points that he can spend on acquiring new spells and increasing the potency of the spells he already has. Intriguingly to me, Engeor does not fight with a weapon at all-every battle involves choosing the spells that will defeat the enemy and protect Engeor. Although the game is intrinsically linear, the player can choose which spells they want to acquire and make stronger, resulting in a different experience for every player. This is an excellent idea in my opinion. Or in theory, it would be. In two instances in my game, because of the choices I’d made, I was not able to progress further. In one case I resorted to reloading an old game and used my experience points to develop the spell I needed later in the game-no problem. In the second instance, I got to within sight of the end of the game and same thing happened. This time, though I wasn’t able to reload a game because I had since saved over the top of it. This prevented me from finishing the game so I can’t report what the ending was like.

I did not receive the full version of this game so I can’t comment about documentation with the game. Perhaps the manual explains the spells in the game. I was not privy to any of this information and found spell choice difficult. Spells are organized into five main unnamed categories, which at face value have no common theme. Hovering the cursor above the particular spell in the spell inventory doesn’t give a pop-up description of the spell. The only was to find out about this is to exit the combat screen. This was a very awkward and unwieldy during combat. It’s hoped that in future the developers will adopt some of the user-friendly characteristics of role-playing games when they incorporate simple RPG elements in adventure games.

Although players need to manage their health and mana in the combat sequences, both return to normal full levels at the end of combat. Although this is unrealistic, I thanked my lucky stars several times during the game when I had only just squeezed through some challenging melee. I recognize that the combat was important to the structure of the game and enjoyable for about the first two-thirds. After this point, combat became more frequent and even boring for a short time. It’s fortunate that the adventure elements came to the fore again after their short absence. Certainly, those players more interested in combat will be rewarded in the second half of the game.

There are other quirks in the game that detract only a little from the enjoyment. It took me a way to work out how to use potions. Perhaps the documentation hat comes with the full game explains this but I did not find the interface intuitive. It was easy enough to use potions once I worked it out but it took a little experimentation to get there. The map that is used to send Engeor from one place to another sends him on a roundabout path when most of us would expect him to take the direct route. The map has random monster encounters on it, which allows for a more- or less- combat heavy experience. Players need to monitor how the Engeor figure progresses on the screen or he will likely have more combat encounters than the average adventurer would prefer.

But these gripes are minor and relative. My Fun-o-Meter™ was surging well into the red with this title. I normally play three games at once and this title easily dominated the time I allocated to gaming. I enjoyed the combat in this game almost as much I enjoyed it in Shannara. The graphics were enjoyable and the voice acting was above average. The interface was a little clumsy but this could be overcome by some clear instructions. This is a solid adventure game with some other elements from the RPG genre, which will be embraced by all but the most traditional adventurer. Cenega has impressed me as a publisher and I hope they will continued seek out worthwhile titles like this. This game deserves an A.

Final Grade: A
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System Requirements:

• Operating system: Windows 9x, 2000, XP
• Processor: Pentium 350 MHz
• Memory: 64MB RAM
• Hard disc: 30MB free hard drive space
• Other: DirectX 8.1