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Fate:Gates of DawnreLINE Software, 1991Amiga and Atari STFate: Gates of Dawn is an obscure, superlativeGerman game. It’s a first person turn-basedblobber with quite a few interesting features.You are able to control as many as 4 different partieswith up to 7 party members each – one of your partiescan crawl through a dungeon level while another is inthe city collecting rumours and a third one is out inthe wild exploring the gigantic world.It’s also worth mentioning how you gather yourparty: You’re able to recruit almost every (friendly)NPC you meet. Encounters usually work like this:You encounter one or more NPCs and either theyare hostile, which still gives you options like bribingthem or fleeing, or they are neutral, which is whenthe interesting part sets in. Every encounter lets youchoose from several menus – chatting, charming,joking, bragging, etc. Depending on several (mayberandom?) factors the NPCs react differently to you,from being upset and leaving without a word, togetting angered and attacking, or to starting to likeyou and wanting to join your quest, which is usuallywhat you want if you aren’t looking for information.Combat encounters are done by menus too, andfeel incredibly satisfying. The mix of 11 races and 31classes available to the player makes up for interestingparty composition – you really have to think aboutit and have several parties to be able to prevail in thesometimes hard as hell combat situations. There is atotal of over 150 spells to choose from, with charactersbeing able to learn spells from different classes tosatisfy all your character-building needs.Perhaps due German humour, there’s also someodd options, such as closing your eyes during combat,groping, mocking and laughing at enemies, or evenasking party members to kiss. The game also featurednudity, that was censored in the english release.The world itself is one of the largest in old-schoolgames, brought to life by wandering NPCs and day& night cycles, with things to discover behind everycorner. Be it a magic well that replenishes your magicpoints, a hole in which you find an NPC that mightjoin your party, or an incredible item – it’s all there foryou to discover. The continent contains nine towns,and there are a few islands to explore if you manage toget your hands on a ship.Then there’s the dungeons, which are enormoustoo. There are several carefully crafted lairs, crypts andcastles, riddled with maddeningly complex puzzles,deadly traps that will make you curse at the screenand combat encounters that feel like the developeris personally taunting you. As hard as the dungeonsare, they feel very rewarding once you find your goaland can finally leave the place for good, though everydungeon usually needs several visits.I cannot enforce enough how large the game is;even playing it with a guide would still easily requireover 100 hours. If you enjoy large and complex RPGs,you should definitely play Fate. But I advise makinggood use of the 8 save slots – there are multiple waysto completely screw up your game. SRFate’s englishretail release isextremely rare,only a dozen ofcopies were evermade. However,the game hasbeen releasedas freeware, andcan be legalydownloaded.Olaf Patzenhauer,Fate’s creator,died in 2011while working onFate 2. Fans havesince taken overthe project. Oddly,it features aJapanese artstyle.Puzzles require alot of thought andsometimes haveodd solutions.51