[PvK]

Dominions is the best, or only game at doing what it does best. It offers extremely rich gameplay if you are interested in a huge variety of pseudo-historical nations, units, spells, magic items, etc., with interesting game balance, well-crafted cause & effect, varied and imaginitive situations, detail down to individual unit experience and specific Lasting battle wounds, large-scale battles resovled down to the individual man or monster, etc.

Many of the players who enjoy those things, don't particularly care about the graphics, or consider them secondary. The Doms II graphics are more than sufficient - my imagination far surpasses the latest multi-million-dollar graphics showcase game. Doms II is almost the only current computer game I have any real interest in buying.

For players who appreciate Doms II, they will be paying far less per hour of play than they would paying even $5 for a graphics masterpiece with no replay value.

I'm not sure how Shapnel figures its prices (something to do with the manual in this case?), but I just bought Doms I a couple of months ago, and even so I consider Doms II very reasonably priced considering the play value it has for me.

I don't even buy pretty-but-crappy games once they hit the $5 bargain bins. Ten such lemons would be a worse buy than one actually good and interesting game, to me anyway.

Also, the economy of producing and selling such games is entirely different comparing Illwinter/Shrapnel to mass-market games.

As for a lack of tutorial, I expect the fans would be happy to supply plenty of tips. A tutorial might help players figure out the game, but with the existing developers who have been doing this for years, they might not be the best ones to be spending their time guessing what new players won't understand.

PvK

[ October 30, 2003, 20:35: Message edited by: PvK ]