Escstatica was a revolutionary action adventure survival horror hybrid game well ahead of its time. The game is from Psygnosis designed by Andrew Spencer, it came on a staggering 13 discs.
You start off as a weary traveller who is looking for shelter to rest. You come across the town of Tirich, shortly after entering you are attacked by a small creature. The village is plagued by monsters and demons and you soon have to start fending them off. As you progress you learn of a princess, Ecstatica who has been captured but holds the power to free the town of its unwanted guests. While this may sound generic at the time it wasn't too bad and it's more the delivery and setting that help to push the story along. The story throughout is filled with rather black humour and contain copious violence and nudity, think Resi 4 style wall adorning but with nakedness and often moving.
Graphically the game was impressive, using rendered backgrounds with character overlays, again, similar to the early Resident Evil games. However, rather using texture polygonal models the game used shaded ellipsoids. This interesting method created a distinct aesthetic.
The audio is relatively average, like most games at this time sounds cover basic movements competently and the dialogue is handled by text. The CD version does contain audio dialogue.
Controls are handled by the number pad, simple, 8,2,4,6 to move, 7 to attack with the left arm, 9 to attack with the right. The remaining keys 1 and 3 are used to pick up items with the left or right hand respectively.
Gameplay is where Ecstatica excels. Part of the genius in the game is the simplicity of the the interface; there are no health bars, you can tell how injured you are by the animation of your character. When your character is hurt they will visibly appear so and move more slowly. Only two items can be held at any time including weaps and objects. This restriction may be frustrating at time but the game is largely made to cope with this, you only really need one weapon in one hand and are not required to carry two quest items at once. The game has no inventory or list of tasks, you can figure out what to do from reading books in-game and speaking to certain characters which adds to the immersion.
Throughout the game you are stalked by two characters; a Werewolf and a Minotaur they appear often and are very deadly. At first you learn to run and hide in baskets and cupboards, wherever you can. Similar to the lockers in the Metal Gear series. As you find decent armour and better weapons you will be able to fight back. You can defeat them and they will flee, however, after a time they will come back.
The behaviour of the Werewolf and the Minotaur is fantastic. They will pounce on you, if you're complacent and just run around expect to be taken down from around a corner or when you leave a doorway. There's nowhere they wont follow you, it really is run or hide. Other interesting and dark parts of the story include being chased by a fat amorous witch and being turned into a frog, at which point the fat witch is useful. Not to mention riding a fairly unstable magic broom, sitting down for a chat with a demon and there's nothing quite like being fanned cool by a large naked man with ellipsoid genitals wearing a gimp mask, which I'm not going to link a picture of.
When you are defeated that is not the end of the story, no life system here, like I said, this game was well ahead of its time. You would find yourself a captive, listening to dialogue between your main antagonists who assumed you were unconscious.
Once they have left the room you can struggle free and get your weapons and armour from where you were slain. Of course you'd think they'd learn after this happening a few times but it works nicely to keep the game running.
There is a fair bit of puzzling to be done in this game, and a lot of exploration, trap evasion and some rather humorous situations. It really is a game that needs to be played, sadly it's not in circulation any more and the company no longer exists. Ignore the low resolution and you will find a title that is nothing but pure gameplay genius. Note, this is an 18+ game, which the images may seem incredibly unrealistic some of the imagery is unpleasant and not suitable for young'uns.
Feedback would be appreciated.
Beddo
All images used under fair use.
EDIT: Images were not appearing, some copy protection thing no doubt, so I've removed them.
