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Halls of The Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II (PC)

Reviewed by: bill GameTZ Gold Subscriber GameTZ Full Moderator 600 Trade Quintuple Gold Good Trader Has Written 28 Reviews
Reviewed on: 21-Feb-2005

Description

Faery Tale Adventure II: Halls of the Dead is the long awaited sequel to the legendary Faery Tale Adventure. It offers a great deal of freedom, freedom that is rarely found in today's games. The only game I can think of that offers the same level of freedom is Ultima VII: The Black Gate (which is well known for its free style play). You can walk around the vast world; do whatever you like in no particular order. You have your map and your sextant. There is absolutely no time limit. You just go wherever you please.

There are a lot of interesting books to read, a few side quests you can accomplish, secret places to find and lots of spells to learn and practice. Four different endings will always give you something new to see in the land of Farr after finishing the game.

The plot is nice, and the game itself is long. It should take a week or two of good fun to finish the game. Good illustrated graphics that shows items in fine detail. There is good music and nice sound effects.

That was the good stuff smile The bad things, well the game isn't a bad one, its just not finished.

The developer, Dreamer's Guild, were in a hurry when they released the game. They were on the verge of a breakdown, and went out of business a short time after the game was released. The game was simply not supposed to be released at the time, and a lot of things were left unfinished and half done.

The dialog in the game (the game includes full talkie speech) is useless and meaningless. After a while, you realize that most people repeat the same things. Almost nothing important can be learned from them, and you start ignoring them completely.

The side quests were never finished. You can find a lot of side quests items all over the world, items with no apparent use because the quests never got finished. In fact, entire parts of the map were removed due to lack of time. For example, there is no Northeast Island. You can read about it in various in-game books, but it's not there. It's the island where the third key was suppose to be found.

So what is left after all the unfortunate cut-downs? It is a good game nonetheless. It is as fun as they get, with an interesting story, long gameplay, and lots of freedom. But I'll always wonder, what could and should have been.