No more heroes
I like how its a satire on "EPIC" plots in general not just games.
But I still consider Killer7 as a better game despite the change from its original script . Cant wait for
Flower, Sun and Rain in October so I can get some sort of understanding of his Kill the Past series.
Played through Black Crypt and ShadowCaster, first time beating either (though I'd played some of ShadowCaster before). As a big fan of the Heretic and Hexen series this was kind of a pilgrimage type thing for me.
Black Crypt was pretty good for what it was (a Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder follower) and most of the annoyances in it were par for the course for that type of game (inventory management juggling and the like). I do have to give it points off for having one place where you can fuck over the triggers and make a section unwinnable, which necessitated going back to an old save and redoing some stuff. Aside from that, pretty cool creature/environment/lore designs. As an Amiga game it might be a bit of a pain in the ass to emulate, your best bet is probably to grab TheCompany's repack for painless running, if you're on Windows.
ShadowCaster on the other hand had great concepts, like being able to shapeshift into various cool creatures as you progress, but felt like a showcase in game engine growing pains. Part of it tries to be like Wolf 3-D and the other part tries to be like the earlier dungeon crawlers and it results in this clunky hybrid that's not great at either, with dull combat, annoying inventory management, and even more annoying regen mechanics (the official hint book even suggests parking yourself somewhere safe and going AFK to regenerate as a legitimate strategy, FFS). It's also kind of a letdown that despite having a fully functional hub system (that remembers things that changed around the map, unlike the one in the Catacomb games that reset on every visit) they didn't implement more Metroidvania style stuff. Would have been cool if you could, for instance, go back and explore the lake in the early levels once you had the Kahpa form to swim around in. The CD version does add a couple levels that put some of the niche powers to more use, but at the tradeoff of switching the nicely illustrated intro/ending animations for awkward 3D rendered ones. The CD version also has, through no fault of its own, an issue running in DOSBox because the dumbshit DOSBox devs broke it and then never fixed it so you have to use v0.73 of DOSBox instead. The end boss is also a joke, even more than Korax from Hexen is, just turn into the Grost and punch the living fuck out of him. You'll take damage sure but at full health and with the protection amulet he'll die before you do. I usually sneer at game reboots, but this is one that I think could actually benefit from a do-over.