Exile

~ EXILE ~

Renovation / Telenet / Working Designs (US)

CD-ROM

1992 (JPN: 1991)

Exile is a decent action-RPG; it might even look like a good one from afar. After all, it does feature a badass protagonist in the callous assassin Sadler...

...and many of the monsters he slays during the game's sidescrolling action sequences look pretty darn cool.

The music is very good, and the story is fairly interesting, so even the overhead-view "talk to people" scenes are often entertaining.

Unfortunately, the game is extremely short and ridiculously easy. None of the bosses came even remotely close to doing significant damage to me. I never used any items, nor did I cast any spells except for Warp to save myself some travel time (in the Japanese version, that is; Working Designs chose to leave that particular incantation out of the US game). In light of the lack of challenge, I guess it's a blessing that the journey is a brief one; during the final stretch, I just wanted the whole thing to end. Since I knew I wasn't going to face any sort of challenge and the designers didn't provide anything particularly interesting in the way of level designs or puzzles, it all started to seem rather pointless. Vic Ireland and company did buff up the monsters for the US release, but not to the absurd Wicked Phenomenon extent, and the poor creatures still can't put up much of a fight.

The only real difference WD's "efforts" made is that some of the still-easy bosses take a lot longer to kill (especially the last fool).

If you don't think you'll mind the ridiculously low level of difficulty, then you'll likely find that Exile plays well enough, but it's certainly not in the same league as some other titles that take similar approaches, like The Legend of Xanadu and Blood Gear.

Exile

Telenet/Working Designs - 1992 - U.S.A.

CD-ROM

Hit and miss effort from the venerable Telenet, localized for the US by Working Designs. Exile is an adventure RPG where most of the game is played out in sidescrolling action areas that are linked together by world/town maps. The game has nice, bright, well-shaded graphics, some parallax where it counts, good to great music and an easy to navigate and use menu system.

This guy offers lots of helpful commentary throughout your journey. Pay very close attention to his words.

You can't help but ponder the thought process that led up to this comment.

The game falters in the one area that really counts, though-- the gameplay. I played through this game for the first time in about 4 hours and never once really felt challenged. Some of the level designs are kind of nice and maze-like (I liked that aspect), but on the whole the game felt very short and perhaps somewhat rushed during the design and planning phase (although what IS there, looks nice and polished). Leveling up is pretty quick and painless, and you are usually always strong enough to defeat your foes without much effort whatsoever. After such epic adventures like Anearth Fantasy Stories and The Legend of Xanadu, this game almost feels like a joke, but at least the superficials keep it a bearable one.

Exile isn't a total disaster. It's a mildly fun game capable of providing a nice diversion for a lazy Sunday afternoon. But it's hard to get really excited about a game like this when the vast Duo library, rich in RPGs, has so many other fantastic adventures awaiting your attention.