Fair enough, but I have to admit that it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Precisely because of GameBanshee's reputation for being a fairly retro-friendly site, I didn't expect to find a discussion of KotC there which focused so heavily on the visuals (including the font) instead of on the game's core gameplay mechanics.
But the visuals are the first gatekeeper to all visual media. I can't speak for anybody but myself, but if I have to read an illegible font that can't be resized or changed on a website I'm visiting, I'll probably leave--unless I've been told on very good information that it contains content important to my life. The same applies to archived newspapers with extremely faded print, books in terrible condition, very old films that have partly decomposed and not been heavily and expensively restored. And mind you, I happen to like some very old films from the 1910's and 1920s: but the quality of the print has to be worth my leisure time.
The game in this suffered in my perspective (and that of two other GameBanshee people, one of whom was probably trolling) from the same defect. The resolution was crude, and the font was nearly unreadable. Now, if somebody I respected told me game XYZ had all the qualities I've ever stated I want in a game, despite its visuals, I might put in the effort to try it out, but nobody who knows me said anything like that about KotC. (And to be frank, it wouldn't be true, since I also cherish NPC and environment interaction, though a good, complex combat system will make up for a fair amount of that.) How could I comment on core gameplay mechanics, when I couldn't read the help file, and disliked the game's lo res a great deal on sight? Please bear in mind, I have no such problems with Darklands, so the issue wasn't retro games. It was simply that the visuals, as I perceived them, got in my way of moving beyond the beginning into the actual gameplay portion of things. And games, after all, aren't supposed to be about struggling through the interface to get to the good stuff. -I'm not suggesting that visuals rule, because that's just not the case: but if I'm supposed to try out a title, it needs to meet my current standards for something I can read quickly, without a headache. I assume this is true for everybody, though all our threshholds differ, and differ over time. My first RPG was Temple of Apshai when it first came out, and I
know I'd hate the look of that, today.
My decidedly grumpy reaction should primarily be understood as a reflection of my genuine bafflement over the sentiments expressed not only in that thread but in quite a few similar ones on other forums as well. I was trying to make a more general point while using the GameBanshee thread as just one of many examples, so if you and other longtime contributors to that site feel needlessly singled out I apologize for that.
Not a problem. There was certainly nothing personal about KotC in my remarks. I've been trying it out just a bit with the new font, in a window, and it's a good fun. No comments yet, because I haven't played it enough, but the combat engine looks pretty solid. Great to see a spell one of my people shot off actually hit another of them that was standing in the way!
)
Now...