Introduction

Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic is a sci-fi role-playing game released by Electronic Arts in 1988, back when the grass was greener and cRPGs were thriving. Sentinel Worlds is a real-time game, with space and ground (party-based) combat. In ground combat, you only control the party's current leader, with the rest of your party being handled by the game's (not so good) AI. Sentinel Worlds is a combat-heavy game but, truth be told, the combat is quite simplistic and sometimes downright tedious, so a screenshot LP is probably best suited for it. What it excels in, is its atmosphere, dialogues (to some extent), and a sense of exploration and freedom, however fake that freedom might actually be. The character system is skill- and stat-based, being in a sense, though not quite, your typical RPG fare. As you can tell from its title, Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic was released with a sequel in mind, which unfortunately never saw the light of day. Still, the man behind the game, Karl Buiter, soon developed another EA-published title, Hard Nova (1990), considered a spiritual successor to Sentinel Worlds and sharing many of its gameplay mechanics.

Why LP this game?
Well, first off, to let everyone know it exists. Unfortunately, despite being a cult classic, Sentinel Worlds isn't as widely known as it (probably) should be. And following an LP is a nice and easy way of getting to know a game - without going through the trouble of actually playing it, you know. Plus, Sentinel Worlds is, plain and simple, a fun game, despite its shortcomings (such as being real-time and hack'n'slashy, not turn-based and tactical, as I would really like it to be). It is atmospheric and in many aspects well-designed, making it, to me, a pleasure to be messing around with.

What kind of LP will this be?
The game was released for DOS and Commodore 64; it is the EGA DOS version I'll be LPing. This will be a screenshot LP. Sentinel Worlds' combat is tedious and videos would get boring fast. Doing a screenshot LP, on the other hand, will (hopefully) allow me to keep things concise and reader-friendly. This won't be a 100% completionist run, because I only played the game once and haven't discovered all the content it has to offer. There will be a lot of quoting the manual since, as befits an oldschool cRPG, things like "Read paragraph 37" tend to pop up quite frequently in Sentinel Worlds.

The Let's Play Archive

Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic

by CrookedB

Introduction

Table of Contents