When I generate a list of games to play for each respective year, I use more than a few resources to determine what CRPGs were published that particular year. I had never heard of this particular game and thus was excited to see what it was all about. What I did not expect at all was that this game appears to be a total rip-off of Donald Brown’s Eamon franchise.
I was completely shocked. How did Green Valley Publishing get away with this? You can read my earlier review of Donald Brown’s Eamon: Beginner’s Cave HERE
I really enjoyed what Donald Brown was able to accomplish with his Eamon engine. There are now well over 250+ adventures that all begin and end in the adventurer’s hall. Donald Brown would later try to commercialize his Eamon series under the guise of Swordthrust. You can read my review of the first Swordthrust adventure HERE.
There is really nothing different between this current product and Brown’s previous The Beginner’s Cave other than cosmetic changes. All that Green Valley really did was change the name of attributes, many of the creatures, and location names. For example, The Hall of the Guild of Free Adventurers becomes the Guildhall of Free Adventurers. This blatant attempt to avoid copyright infringements occur throughout the entire game but did they really think it would fool anybody? Attribute names are changed, creature names are slightly altered, skills have different names, and so on.
One big cosmetic difference is once you enter Beginner’s Cave the interface changes to a split screen.
I thought I might see an improvement in gameplay with this cosmetic difference but my experience was quite the opposite. There are not as many verbs that are recognized in this version as there are in Brown’s version. There are some noticeable wrinkles as well. I feel like the combat in the original Eamon series seems to statistically work better. The biggest difference I found was that in the original game if you are close to defeating your opponent, they will often flee the location. When you move to an adjacent location your opponent will then be there creating a feeling of fluidity. In this ripoff version, I found that when your opponent flees, they are often nowhere to be found. When I was leaving the cave to go back to the hall and hit the Large Chamber location, all of my previous foes were all in this area. This is a programming flaw and not purposeful in my opinion.
The above just shows you yet another example of how Green Valley just changes some words and titles from the original Eamon game in this obvious rip-off.
The map and locations are also identical to the original game. I played through this entire version successfully and the treasures I uncovered were converted to gold so that I could purchase equipment. I was, and still am, a huge fan of the Eamon engine but this version with some lipstick on it somehow loses the magic that the original game had. The discovery of this game left such a bad taste in my mouth I could not wait to be done with it. Cave of the Mind and River Adventure were also released by Green Valley – both of them also original Eamon adventures. If there are any readers who can shed more light on this Green Valley Publishing mystery I’d love to hear from you.
Next up on the docket: I am once again going back through time to 1980 to play a game from Crystalware that I somehow missed: Beneath the Pyramids.
Until next time……….