A fantastic story with rich world building. The game is based on the Riftwar novels by Raymond E. Feist and is beautifully written. There's lots of interesting characters and twists that keep it interesting all the way through. Even as someone that hasn't read any of the books, I was still able to follow along and understand the characters' motivations. There are a few things that alluded me due to not having read the books and probably not paying close enough attention at times which is my fault, but otherwise I was fully invested in this story and world by chapter 2. It got its hooks in me by then and did not let go until the end. This is possibly one of the best stories in any RPG that I've played. That's without having even read the books, which is more than I can say about some games based on books (cough The Witcher cough).

World exploration is really good for its time. The map is huge with many different cities, towns, some dungeons, traps, hidden chests, and interesting NPCs to meet. The environmental graphics may be a bit rough these days, but the design of the world is still solid. It's one of those games where you have to use your imagination to really see what they were trying to create. The dungeons however, while simple, look much nicer and are more readable. When you enter a city or certain buildings, you are treated with beautifully hand painted backgrounds that use a click based interface to explore. Also, the NPCs are all renders of real people in costumes as well as the cutscenes being FMVs with real actors. The production quality is pretty low and the cutscenes are very brief, not even close to the production quality of some other games with FMV cutscenes like say, Dark Forces 2. They still manage to fit with the world nicely and give the game a bit of a campy sword and sorcery feel to it. The game also has a very helpful map that shows your exact location and the location of all towns and cities. This helps immensely with navigating the huge world of Krondor. You can also teleport from and to temples for an admitedly high price. If you do ever find yourself lost in this massive game, I highly recommend checking out the incredibly well detailed and written Betrayal at Krondor Help Web.

Another important thing of note about the world design, are the Mordhel riddle chests. You may have noticed these curious little chests around the environment. They can offer some useful items if you can solve their devious riddle. I found that these are an excellent way of providing more resources and treasure for the player to find, without requiring a skill check, but still be a challenge to unlock. It's not some lame lockopicking minigame either. It is a unique and some times very ambiguous riddle to find out instead. The system feels a bit like a call back to point and click adventure games that Sierra were known for, and also similar to Myst which came out that same year. These riddle chests are really neat additions and are something that you don't see many other RPGs do.

The progression system utilizes a skill system that increases as you use those skills. Similar to Wizardry or Elder Scrolls. You have the option to tag certain skills which will cause those skills will increase faster. I believe the way it works is: the more skills tagged, the less the bonus is so it's better to have just one to three skills tagged at once. The system is similar to Fallout except you can tag and un-tag skills whenever you want throughout the game. I enjoy this style of progression and it fits well with this type of game. It immerses you more in the world and the characters and makes their gradual increase in skill through the game feel more realistic. Then there are the attributes: health, stamina, speed, and strength. Health and stamina increases every 30 in game days and is very important to manage. Speed doesn't change and is set for each character. Strength increases either after killing enough enemies or surviving enough enemy encounters, not entirely sure which one. I believe it's the former. Strength determines how much damage you do with melee weapons. The progression is pretty simple and easy to understand. It's not based on any complex rule-set and fits well with the game.

The stats of my end game Gorath. His strength was artificially inflated a bit because a very easy strength increase exploit in the elven village of Elvandar.

The combat is simple but still tactical and fun. It is turn-based and viewed at a slightly angled top down view. Not quite isometric but it's unique and works. Melee fighters have a swing attack and a slash attack. You can swing for less damage but higher percentage to hit or slash for the opposite effect. There's ranged attacks with crossbows and various bolt types. Then you have the spellcasters (or mages) which cast spells using their stamina and health. When they take damage or when mages cast spells it uses stamina first and when their stamina drains, it uses health. As your character's health drains, their skills get worse. So this can be a real problem as your fighters will barely be able to hit anything and your mages while still can cast spells, their spell effect chance lowers and eventually they can kill themselves if they are down to low enough health. Managing health and stamina is very important in this game as you can imagine. Combat in general feels pretty balanced, aside from a few encounters. The main enemy types to worry about are mages because they can immobilize or kill your party pretty quickly if you're not careful. One more thing to note about the combat is that if an enemy is next to your mage, they can't cast any spells. This does work both ways but it can lead to a lot of frustration. Often what happens is enemies surround my mage before they get a chance to cast anything and it's almost impossible to run away from enemies because they will just follow you until you or they are dead. So you're forced to just have your mage defend until the combat is over or nearly over and they never get a chance to do anything. This can make many combat encounters way harder than they need to be because you're basically down to one or two fighters and no mage to help you. I wish there was a way to roll a concentration check each turn to give you a chance to still cast a spell like in D&D but unfortunately that's not an option. You just have to sit there and defend the whole time, or if your lucky, you can get your mage in a safe location to cast, but it doesn't always work out that way. A minor complaint but it doesn't ruin the game.

Combat against Wyverns in Elvendar.

In the end, Betrayal at Krondor is a fantastic RPG that is pretty easy to get into compared to its contemporaries. The progression is easy to understand, UI is easy to use and has descriptions for all of the buttons and items in game, and the writing is top notch. Unfortunately Betrayal at Krondor never got a proper sequel. Sierra sold the rights after it initially released due not having much faith in the product and initial sales being poor. Then another company swept in and bought the IP. However when the CD version of Krondor was released, it sold much better and was a big hit. So since Sierra already sold the rights, they tried to make a successor without the story or world of the original game, and we got Betrayal in Antaria. This game was not nearly as loved or as well received as Krondor. There was another Krondor game made, however, called Return to Krondor, and was developed by 7th Level and was published by Sierra later in development when Sierra bought the rights to Krondor back. While very different from the first game, it is generally well received, so I plan on taking a chance on Return to Krondor in the future when I'm ready to step back into the world of Midkemia.