Game:

Versailles 1685 (1996)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 12:37

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69

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6iNuXuk2gdgJP6LIzIMiiBddcjwqftJU

The first of many historical adventure-games produced by Cryo Interactive. These games were despised or loved. Described as boring or edutaining, depending on your own patience and love for history. I always liked it to relive moments in history and long before the first Assassin's Creed it was the best way to immerge yourself in the past. Back in 1996, Versailles was the first game using Cryo's Omni3D-engine. The pre-rendered cutscenes and graphics were thought of being quite impressive back then. Although I can hardly imagine audiences were equally impressed by the characters, because we enter uncanny-valley territory here. The whodunnit-story is simple, but amusing with its sometimes sly humor. Music is really good and gives 'grandeur' to the game, IF you like classical music.
As an (early) Cryo-title, its game-design is problematic. Too often you are searching for items you didn't know you were looking for, and if so, WHERE to look for them. Also, I don't know if it's Cryo sense of humor, but the fact that they put the plan of a maze right in the middle of that very same maze, fails to amuse me. Luckily, Cryo got better at designing these historical adventure-games, as can be seen in later titles.

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TECHNICAL NOTES

- A Windows 95-version was made, but the installer failed to start on my 64-bit system.
- So I installed it in 'VirtualBox' with Windows XP on it, but cinematics used a lower framerate than the DOS-version, while characters moved like nervous lunatics. Speed-issues were difficult to control in this environment.
- Finally, I played the DOS-version on a Windows 10-system with Dosbox (SVN Daum Build) installed on it.
- Changed the cycles to '36000' in the config-file of Dosbox to slow down the character-animation to a more satisfactory speed. Cycles higher then 48000 created hiccups in the audio for me.
- Used the Gravis Ultrasound as sound-device in Dosbox. Soundblaster 16 created lots of small hiccups in the audio.


© Cryo Interactive Entertainment

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