Betrayal in Antara - Reception

Reception

Betrayal in Antara was poorly received by fans of Betrayal at Krondor for a variety of reasons. Without Feist's existing universe, Betrayal in Antara suffered from a weak and complicated plot due to the lack of background information about the world of Ramar. Many of the quests in the game were also considered trivial and silly. For example, one main quest involves significant traveling to find tea for a mage who refuses to train Aren without it. The game was not written for Windows 95 but for Windows 3.1, an operating system with little support for games. As a result, it suffered from both substandard graphics for its time and poor performance. The 3-D world had very few polygons: "forests" in the game were not recognizable as such, as they consisted of flat walls with a forest-camouflage texture. Many of the scenes (and all of the dialogue) consist of static comic-book-like drawings of characters. The game only supported 8-bit color so under 16-bit color or 32-bit color resolutions, darkness (such as nighttime or a cavern) would appear bright purple. As the world map was loaded in sections, occasionally a section would not load properly, requiring the player to backtrack and re-enter in order to move to the next area of the map. The game was also much more limited, including restrictions on travel (many parts of Ramar are only accessible in one chapter) and player development (each chapter had a limit on maximum character stats). The computer AI was also poor, as enemies had a tendency to run away in battle, even while having full health and being uninjured.

GameSpot gave Betrayal in Antara a score of 6.6/10, commenting that despite being "one of the first RPGs to utilize high-resolution SVGA graphics, the graphics are, frankly, as ugly as an orc." Although the story was well-developed, it was "perhaps one of the most linear RPGs ever made" with the gameplay "more than a little frustrating." However, they praised the interface and skill systems as being "topnotch."