Review: Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey
Score:
79%
Version Reviewed: 1.00
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Epic time-consumers (wasters?) are something that have been missing from the N-Gage, until now. Shadowkey is a First Person RPG, in the spirit of such games as Ultima Underworld, Daggerfall and Morrowind (the two latter games being part of the Elder Scrolls series)... and you'll have to pardon my Ultima Underworld references, but Ultima Underworld is something that I hold in very high regard as far as First Person RPG's go. I have now put some 10 hours into Shadowkey and barely gotten into the main plot of it, so the game is definitely more time consuming than the average n-gage title. The plot is centred on a war and a threat that rises from the shadows in midst of it, and it's up to you to save the world. Why Shadowkey? Because there are 'shadowkeys' and doors in just about every dungeon and they also play a part in the main plot due to their mysterious powers.
Meet Your Characters
When you create your character you can choose from a number of different classes (Assassin, Barbarian, Battlemage, Knight, Nightblade, Rogue, Spellsword, Sorcerer or Thief) and from a bunch of different races (Argonian, Breton, Dark Elf, High Elf, Khajiit, Nord, Redguard or Wood Elf) for your character. Each of these has their own strengths and weaknesses in certain sections of the game, but no matter your choice it should be possible to finish the game. If you make sure to choose according to your own abilities, you should have a rewarding game, Gender is choosable as well, but so far I have failed to see if it makes any difference in the game.
Your adventure starts out in a small village which is being raided by some bandits from a nearby camp. Thus you start on your journey to rescue the captured townsfolk. Most of your adventure will be based around using your weapons and spells to whack some sense into the bandits. The gameplay in general is pretty much oriented around fighting, a strong figher has things easier for him (magical spells are also used mainly as weapons). There's a certain sense of freedom in the game, as you're free to wander anywhere in the world, right from the beginning, even if your character will be too weak to get anything done in those areas. The main plot is centered around the quests that you need to complete. Side quests to allow you to beef up your character as well as allowing you to get lost in the world of Shadowkey. The quests are mainly from two categories, fetch some missing item or butcher some enemies (or a mixture of both).
The world is structured into outdoor areas, that allow access to other outdoor areas and dungeons. To help you find your way there's an automap (another reminder of Ultima Underworld) which unfortunatly you cannot make notes on. This is a serious shortcoming as some places are hard to remember where they were, especially couple of days later. The game has its own quest log to remind you what you were supposed to do, but the quest descriptions are quite vague and tend to offer little more than a short reminder of what you were up to, so additional game notes may sometimes be needed.
Graphics and sound are good, if not PC quality. Almost everything is full 3d, no texture warping to be seen. The engine doesn't seem to allow bridges or walkways over on walkways. There's some little nuisances though, like the camera being too high for my tastes as now you can't see where your feet are without tilting the view down, meaning that everytime you need a carefully timed jump you need to look down as it's otherwise extremely hard to jump from the right place.
Another nuisance is the short view depth, as it can make sometimes finding some people or place a bit hard when all you have is a vague descriptions such as "east of here." The sounds are good, but repetitive and as such get boring quite fast. Frame rate is good for most of the time, but there seems to be some semi-random seeming stuttering.
Controls are important in game of this type. The mouse plays an important part on PC and Console RPG games, and obviously the N-Gage is lacking in this. Shadowkey offers configurable controls to make sure you get something that suits yourself, so you can assign the buttons as you wish. I prefer to play with the pad controlling tilting and turning the view and 4/6 for strafe with 2/6 for forward backward. Some jumps are hard to do but that's the only annoying part about controls and even that is partially because of the view being so high from ground. I would have preferred for the field-of-view to be wider, too, to help wandering around. Fighting is done ordinarily, you press a button and the character whacks with axe, swings with the sword or casts a spell, depending on what you had chosen. Consumables such as health potions are used with another action button so you can use them seamlessly while fighting. Ranged weapons such as crossbows or bows exist, in what has been a simplification of the gameplay they have endless ammunition so they're quite usable as the main weapon as well.
Summary
If you're looking for something to play for 5 minutes on the bus, then this might not be for you. But if you're wondering how to pass time while having to sit in a car or a train for 10 hours (and a boring conference plus the trip back), then Shadowkey is something not to miss. If the quests had more variety I'd give it even higher score - and would be late with this review because not being able to resist playing it.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence, Chris Rydberg at