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
(find out more about our
grading system)

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