There is so much to like in the 1995 Discworld adventure game. So much to like, but I assume you already guessed that there is a but. So much to like, but...
Rincewind, nicely voiced by one Eric Idle, wakes up to a new day at the Unseen University. Little he knows, that during his slumber, a fire breathing dragon has been summoned by a sinister brotherhood. As Rincewind stumbles to the dean, he is tasked to collect an assessment of magical doodahs, which will help in getting the gold... no, not gold, but rid of the dragon.
So that's what Rincewind has to do as his first task, collect junk, including dragons breath and so worth. After doing all the running, the dean then quickly fixes up a detector, which Rincewind then uses to find the dragon, which in turn leads into some more running around in the form of locating golden trinkets each member of the brotherhood has and which he needs to break the bond between them and the dragon.
In Act 2, Rincewind has to find a way to the past, which happens by using the L-Space in the University library. That way he can eavesdrop on the brotherhood and identify them in the future and so steal their stuff. But, alas, after gathering the stuff and getting them to the dragon, he finds out, that his vengeance is not only upon the brotherhood but Rincewind as well.
What makes a hero? That is the question on Rincewind's mind, as you need one to defeat the dragon. Luckily enough, Nobby of the city watch knows all about the odds each hero trait gives for Rincewind to win, so after asking around and referring to Nobby about the odds, he finally figures out the "million to 1" odds he supposedly needs to win.
Finding all the gimmicks needed is what the 3rd act consists of. Rincewind needs things like a magical sword, a birthmark or a tattoo, moustache and so on. So a bit more running around and rummaging the Discworld for the items later, he is ready to confront the dragon.
As luck has it, the good folk of Ankh-Morpork have found themselves a virgin to be tied on a rock as a sacrifice for the dragon. Rincewind on his heroic mode won't swallow that pill easily and he proceeds to use the short 4th Act in finding the weapon against the dragon, because as you might have guessed it, all the work done in the 3rd act was for nought.
What really works in Discworld are the graphics. The game looks, simply, stunning with its cartoonish hand-painted backdrops. The character design is good as well, though the animation does leave some room for improvement. It's still among the best-animated adventures of the era. The music and the voice acting is, overall, good as well. The game is very talkative, and while the characters are voiced by a relatively small cast, the variation is nonetheless excellent. The script is funny as well, so at least I laughed a lot as well.
The thing is though, the game really is overly talkative. Every character you meet has a lot to say and most of it is filler. That's all fine if the voice works and the dialogue is funny, but as the voice pool is rather limited, some characters have been a bit overdone. Especially the old geezers at the square and most of the troll characters suffer from slow and over caricatured delivery. In the end, it's just easier for the ears to skip some of the conversations altogether.
But the biggest problem of the game really is the insane difficulty level. Even with all the talking, the game gives very few hints on what you should be doing and most of the puzzles rely so heavily on out of the box logic, that they haven't even seen a box nor do they know what it is. In a word, Discworld is one of the worst moonlogic adventure games I've ever played, even in comparison to Sierra games which were at times pretty bad with that.
The puzzle difficulty isn't even uneven, it is through and through difficult. You could perhaps claim that it was designed from the get-go to the super adventure gamers who found the infamous gnome puzzles of King's Quest 1 as easy. You could even claim, that the difficulty is just a figment of modern lazy gamers, who don't want to put in the effort. You could claim all kinds of things, but Discworld was seen, by many reviewers and players alike, as a difficult game even back in 1995. Some reviewers even recommended it but only with a walkthrough in hand.
The way I see it, a sign of an unfair puzzle is, that when you look at the solution from a walkthrough your first thought is "how the hell was I supposed to come into that conclusion" instead of "I should have known that". That really is the biggest failing of the game.
Discworld has always been an adventure game I've wanted to like more than I do. Every time I've installed it again, it works with ScummVM on modern OS's, I've been happy with the first hour or so. But after that, it always hits me how little sense the puzzles make. Obviously, you should expect a degree of absurdity, this is a Discworld game, after all. But there's absurd and then there's illogical, and sadly enough, this game is the latter.
As with many licensed games, Discworld is not currently sold on any platform. The game was originally released for DOS, Playstation, SEGA Saturn and Macintosh. Out of the released versions, Mac and DOS versions are apparently the best, PS and SEGA versions were criticised because of technical issues.
The technical issues are the least of the problem of the game though, those lie in the core design. And that is just a shame, as there was so much promise about it.
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