Erben der Erde (aka Inherit the Earth)


Title		Erben der Erde (aka Inherit the Earth)
Game Type	Adventure
Company		New World Computing
Players		1
Compatibility	CD32, Amiga+CD
Submission	arthur@focus.ruhr.de

Review
I am reviewing the German CD version of this game.
I do not know if there was a English version of this game at all, so
naturally I cannot comment on possible differences.

"Erben der Erde" is a fantasy adventure which is set up in a far away
future. Mankind has vanished (due to reasons which become more obvious the
more you proceed in the game) and talking animals rule the world.
As the humans taught them how to speak and use their intelligence just
before they disappeared, the animals look up to the humans as kind of
gods, believing that the humans still are watching their actions and
efforts from the sky and that the will return back to earth when the
animals haven proven themselves worthy.

Amongst the remnants the humans left behind are some talking orbs which
tell the animals how to build things, when to do their harvests and so on.
During the annual carnival one of these orbs is stolen, and this is where
the player drops into the story.
Riff, the clever fox, is accused of being the thief by the other tribes and
it is up to him (the player) to prove them all wrong by finding out who
really stole the orb.
So he and two guards (Eeah, the elk and Okk, the hog) who are accompanying
him because of the distrust all the animal tribes bring up towards each
other tribe, set off to search for the orb.
There are many encounters to be made, many riddles to solve and many places
to visit until the quest comes to an end.
The control is the "standard point and click one": On the bottom on the
screen, there is a list of nine verbs to click on and a list of all items
you carry. To move around the screen, you simply click on "Go to" and then
on the location you want your alter ego to go to.
Pretty much like in most other adventure games for the Amiga.

The overall difficulty of the the riddles is not too hard, an experienced
player should have no hassle at all at finishing the game.


So on to the technical aspects:
Most locations are displayed in the common "static picture" style, while
the bigger locations (like the ratsī dwellings and the main map) are
isometric scrolling mazes.
The scrolling is very smooth, providing you have at least a 68030-equipped
Amiga.
The quality of the graphics is what I would call solid standard. They are,
regarding colorfulness and details, not as polished as in games like Monkey
Island II, but definitively much better than, letīs say, those in Indy 4.
Please note that the quality of course also depends on your Amigas chipset.
The ECS version looks quite pale and colorless compared to the AGA
version.
A few words about the music: While the tunes are well composed and always
fit the situation they are played in, I think most of them are way too
short, so they get on your nerves after a short while.
But you can turn the music off anytime, so this is no big hassle.
You could, of course, also turn down the volume on your monitor, but then
you would miss one of the most interesting things about the game, namely
the 200MB of sampled speech. Everything any character in the game says, is
really literally SAID. This adds much to the overall atmosphere of the
game.
For all those who do not like "speaking games", there is also the option to
turn the speech off and to fall back to the traditionial text output.

Another outstanding feature of the game is its system friendliness: It
multitasks and you also can choose the desired monitor (PAL, NTSC or VGA),
so that you can play the game even if you only have a standard VGA-monitor
which normally are not capable of displaying the screen modes used in Amiga
games. Unfortunately, graphics cards are not supported by Erben der Erde.

There also is a disk version of the game, but if you have a CD-ROM, you
really should go for the CD version. It features custom versions for ECS,
AGA and the CD32, is directly playable without the need to install
anything (apart from the saved games, of course) and even has some nice
bonus files (some pictures, all the tunes in mod-format and a demo version
which you can give away to other people).

Summary:
If you like adventure games and do not mind fantasy stories, then this is
definitively a "must-have". The sampled speech alone is worth the money,
there really are not that many games for the Amiga which feature full
sampled speech.
The story is interesting and entertaining, the graphics are adequate, only
the music falls back a bit.

But there are is a turnoff in this game: Sometimes you have to find your
way through big mazes where nothing much is happening. This really is a bit
dull and boring, especially when you have to click your way through the
same maze half a dozens time (like in the ratsī cave).
If you can accept this, you really should go for this game. It is one of
the best adventure games ever designed for the Amiga, especially when you
take into account that there currently are only three Amiga adventures
which feature sampled speech at all.


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