Perihelion

Title		Perihelion
Game Type	RPG
Publisher	Psygnosis/Morbid Visions
Players		1
Compatibility	OCS and AGA
HD Installable	Yes
Submission	Karl Anders Rostrup

Review
Perihelion is a role-playing game with a 3D view in the tradition of Eye
of the Beholder, but sports a lot of atmosphere in the bargain.

The futuristic world of Perihelion is a world in crisis. Weird occurences
have caused the environment to degenerate at a dramatic rate, while strange
new diseases and defects erupt where there were none before. Most attempts
to find out just what has gone wrong have failed... the psionicists
trying to discover information have either gone irrevocably mad or died
outright before discovering anything of relevance... some ranted and
shouted about an entity called the Unborn. Armed with this information,
the historians looked into an ancient prophecy, and found out that things
were only going to get worse. Learning of Project Perihelion, they discover
the resting place of heroes placed in stasis, held in reserve to fight the
shadowy enemy - the Unborn. The Unborn is a super-entity, slowly but surely
crossing the dimensions barring its way to this universe, and its power
increases with each passing second - and so does the effect on the planet.
Having been freed of the time-stopping effect of stasis, you arm yourselves
and leave the Citadel, and the Citadel crumbles behind your backs... the
Unborn knows of the threat you and your party presents. And this is where
the game begins...

One of the first things that struck me about Perihelion was the atmosphere.
Short of Warhead, I have never played a game with more atmosphere to suit
the theme. The dark future-setting of Perihelion is unusual for Amiga
games, and is very successfully done. Sounds and graphics are both very
well done, adding to the appearance. The interface takes a little while
to get used to, but is generally okay and not a hindrance. What does
subtract some to the general rating is the combat system. Done in the
2D style like SSI's GoldBox games, the combat system could use some work
to smooth over rough edges in the code. The faults I found are not in the
appearance, but in the system itself, which allows some of your enemies
to attack you hand-to-hand and denies you the same opportunity for some
reason, making the game harder than it should be. If you bear with these
faults, the combat can be challenging. There are no 'random encounters'
in the game - all combat scenes are planned and part of the rather tense
plot. Actually, the encounters get easier as the game progresses, as your
characters gain experience and ability increases. Better equipment is
found too, giving you a fighting chance against the various and rather
lethal enemies.

Creating your characters is a simple task, and Perihelion gives you many
character races and classes to choose from. Perihelion also offers a
system for psionics (magic), allowing you to piece together symbols
to get the effect you want, if your character is of the right class to
have psionics available to him/her. Perihelion doesn't offer you the
standard human/elf/dwarf package for character races... you do, on the
other hand, have access to such races as plain humans, bionecrons, cyberns,
symbions and more. All made possible because of the futuristic setting of
the game.

To sum it up: Perihelion offers oodles of atmosphere, and is generally a
well-written RPG too, if you can forgive the occasional faults of the
combat system. If you like RPGs, this is one for you.

Alphabetical list.