Salammbo: Battle for Carthage

“The developers went for a certain aesthetic, but they overdid it in my opinion.”

“This does not work on modern computer hardware without third-party software to disable graphics features, significant settings and config editing, etc. This is just to get the game to load up.”

“I'm not recommending it because of the dark visuals and weird art style (pretty much every human and animal looks like various demons and monsters) and the aged gameplay style.”

“Alas, as a game, Salammbo suffers from dozens of little flaws that make its gameplay painfully frustrating in the modern era.”

“The inability to easily see which direction one can move is a critical downfall of the game, detracting so much from gameplay that I regret having played.”

“On the other hand, the gameplay often cannot correspond to them, so if you seek a really good quest that you can play comfortably without a walkthrough, you need to seek further: technically, Salammbo is a generic first-person point-and-click quest that is similar to other generic quests of that genre from the 2000s.”

“Right from the menu it feels alien then continues to do so with such a bizarre mix in almost every corner of the design with its design of the characters, the architecture and the very dramatic orchestral music.”

“The classical music score is both well-implemented but also sometimes jarring and out of context.”

“The music is decent but it's inaccurate whenever the game plays it.”

“Now with that out of the way, I'll start by saying for a 12-year-old game, it's got a weird and gorgeous art style. It's just a unique piece of animation done well. The voice acting is very good, but the humans look like aliens and demons. The atmosphere has that science fiction (or fantasy, I don't know what Cryo was targeting) heavy metal type style you would see on music albums like Mastodon or GWAR, for example. Overall, I would just wait for the game to go on sale since the game was only an average experience.”

“It has a strange dark fantasy look and the character designs are ugly, in my opinion.”

“The grinding in this game feels endless and tedious, making progress feel more like a chore than an achievement.”

“I found myself repeating the same tasks over and over, which quickly became frustrating and unfulfilling.”

“The amount of grinding required to level up is excessive, turning what could be an enjoyable experience into a monotonous slog.”

“The game requires extensive tweaks just to run properly on modern systems, including setting the executable to 'Windows XP Service Pack 3', enabling 'reduced color mode (select 8-bit (256) color)', disabling fullscreen optimizations, and running the program as an administrator.”

“To get the game to function correctly, I had to adjust the executable settings to 'Windows XP Service Pack 3', check 'reduced color mode (select 8-bit (256) color)', disable fullscreen optimizations, and run it as an administrator.”

“The optimization process is a hassle, involving multiple steps like setting the exe file to 'Windows XP Service Pack 3', enabling 'reduced color mode (select 8-bit (256) color)', and disabling fullscreen optimizations.”