Man, I was really excited
about this game. It’s always nice to welcome something different
these days. Different in terms of ideas: and trust me — there hasn’t
been an adventure game with the premise of Zelenhgorm
before. The setting, the characters, the huge story about prophecies,
faraway lands, legendary civilizations and mythical mumbo-jumbo —
everything is very original.

Also, this is the first
attempt ever to release an adventure in episodes. I mean, of course,
planned episodic releases, as there have been long sagas of adventure
games before this. In Zelenhgorm, Moloto has deliberately divided
the story into at least 12 episodes (though this number has yet to
be officially confirmed). One may wonder about the convenience of
this format.

But let’s start right
from the beginning.

“Please, for its safety, lock your brain inside a box
before playing”

Or else it might get hurt.

After
watching the introduction sequence, I told myself, “this seems
truly interesting”. We play the role of Arrikk Vaheirr, a villager
on the small island of Seneva. He is a tall guy, with long blond hair
who dresses like a peasant and has fluffy eyebrows. You probably never
played a character like him before. One interesting thing about Arrikk
is that he is left-handed. This information might seem useless, but
you’ll soon see why I mentioned it.

The game starts with a
dream of Arrikk’s about a ship, apparently sent by the gods,
traveling a long way through immense seas and encountering people
wearing funny foam-rubber dresses (yes, foam-rubber dresses) who break
vases. It appears as if these people are attacking a civilization
and destroying their possessions. During these flashbacks, a woman
(or goddess?) tells Arrikk in a cryptic message that he “must
follow the path of the water”. Then he awakens and realizes
that the ship he just dreamed of has landed next to his house. That’s
what I call a nice way of starting an adventure game. It’s weird
but it catches your attention.

Arrikk
seems to be quite a creative person since his home is filled with
all kinds of gizmos that we’ll need to make use of during the
game. This is one of the reasons that the rest of the villagers don’t
like him. Encounters around the neighborhood will reveal hostile feelings
towards Arrikk. It turns out that the villagers are very superstitious
and eventually accuse him of “left-handed witchcraft”.
He will be suspected through the entire game.

It’s apparent that
Arrikk is very different from the rest of the villagers. He seems
much more intelligent than most of them. Actually, he doesn’t
look like them either; while they look definitely Oriental, Arrikk’s
facial features are somewhat Scandinavian. This adds even more to
the mysterious atmosphere that surrounds the story.

FMV, remember that?

Technically speaking, Zelenhgorm
is, to say the least, just fine. It doesn’t stand out in any
particular area but, as a whole, it gets the job done well.

The
graphics are good although there are some very pixelated scenes at
points in the game; it doesn’t look awful but it’s just
as if some sections were in VGA. This isn’t so bad but it gives
the game a dated look.

Animations are very nice.
You get to see a nice cutscene (luckily, skippable) each time you
walk. Also, the interactions with many objects are nicely animated.

Music is sparse but effective;
you get a nice orchestrated tune here and there but mostly only in
situations of danger. The music in the introductory sequence is marvelous
– it sounds inspired and truly epic; it makes you feel that
something big is coming.

FMV hasn’t been too
successful with adventures and it’s nice to see a game that
does it right. The real actors are the best part of the technical
area. They’re perfectly integrated within the gameworld and
the videos have a good quality. Thankfully, they’re not overused
and there’s actually gameplay. The acting is a tad corny in
many cases but it’s bearable because all the characters are
interesting except for Arrikk, who has very little personality. When
he speaks, his lines are given in a monotone. This is not good in
the main character, but possibly there’s a reason for his acting
and talking this way.

One thing of interest is
that several of the actors worked in the Star Wars series. None of
them appear in the first episode, however, so don’t expect to
recognize anyone yet.

I
had mixed feelings regarding the interface. The game is presented
in a 360° panoramic view similar to that used in Cryo games like
Atlantis.
The only difference is that there isn’t a fixed cursor, that
is, the cursor appears on screen only if you’re looking at an
object of interest. It takes a little while getting used to this but
it’s nothing serious.

There is a downside of
the technical aspect, though: there’s a lot of disc swapping,
although it’s avoidable by doing a full install of the game
(less than 2 gigs).. This is a critical issue since there’s
an important amount of roaming around through the village

All in all, the game flow
is excellent (provided you do a full install) and gives you the feeling
of actually being in Zelenhgorm.

Hey that does sound nice! So what’s there to do in Zelenhgorm?

Sadly, not much. The game
does give the feeling of being big: there’s a large market where
you can buy a lot of stuff, you can skin dive in the sea for pearls
(the currency used in the village) and there are plenty of interesting
characters to meet. You will pass the night in the stocks if you pester
the guards or the townsfolk, and you may even die if you push things
too far.

So,
while there’s plenty to do, the problem is that there aren’t
many puzzles. This reminds me of games like BAT II or Dreamweb where
you had an expansive world with many things to try but actually not
many important things to do. However, Zelenhgorm isn’t even
very big. While it’s not linear, and several tasks can be completed
in no special order, one of the biggest frustrations in the game is
that, when you reach an important point in the story, there’s
actually nothing to do there!

All of this makes the game
terribly short; once you know what to do, it can be solved in less
than half an hour. It’s really that short.
There are some tricky puzzles but they’re not “honest”.
You can miss important items because they’re not a hotspot.
For example, at a given point, I knew I had to do something that was
fairly obvious but I didn’t even try it because the object of
interest wasn’t “hotspotted”.

Final comments

The idea of an episodic
game is very attractive but it makes me sad to say that, as a standalone
product, Zelenhgorm: The Great Ship is seriously lacking.
Maybe if Moloto would’ve shortened the number of episodes so
they could put more content in each one, it would’ve been a
more satisfying experience. After all, there have been games over
6 discs long and, provided that each episode takes 3 discs, Zelenhgorm
could easily have been twice as long by having the content of two
episodes shipped in 6 discs.

By the end of the game,
I’d met Arrikk, explored his native village, learned a bit of
history about his family and had gotten just a glimpse of his destiny.
That’s when I realized that nothing actually happened!

Now, this may work in a
TV show where the first episode sets up the mood and introduces the
characters, but it doesn’t in a game where you are supposed
to want to buy each episode. I do want to know how the story continues
— I really liked it — but, frankly, if each installment of Zelenhgorm
has this content, I’m not sure if I want to go further into
the storyline. This is sad because the initial premise was great and
I really liked the overall idea but I cannot say that Zelenhgorm:
The Great Ship is a great game. It’s lacking too much and
my final impression was that it is quite a letdown.

Final Grade: C+

System Requirements:

• Pentium II 266MHz processor
• Windows 95, 98, 98
  SE, 98 ME
• 64MB RAM
• 650MB free hard disk
  space
• DirectX 7.0 compatible
  3D graphics card with 8MB VRAM
• DirectX 7.0 compatible
  16-bit sound card
• 16X CD ROM Drive