Sunday 16 February 2020

Seal of Evil First Impressions

I'm 5 hours into Seal of Evil. The game doesn't explain any of its mechanics in-game so you have to read the help menu/manual and kind of figure it out as you go.

Essentially, everything from attack to defence to individual enemies comes down to being one of five elemental types: Metal, Wood, Earth, Water and Fire, with each element being stronger than the element after it and weaker than the element before it. Mixing and matching equipment and skills/spells helps you take on different enemies in each area.

I'll be honest, I was fumbling at the start; combat felt boring and slow initially and it was the artwork, music and wuxia setting that kept me going. Then I had to fight two giant spider bosses with two health bars each, who spawned smaller enemies in an enclosed, blocked space and found myself woefully unprepared.

I did a little bit of levelling and looked into the crafting screen, which is just labelled "Creation". By mixing and matching different items you find in each area or pick up from enemies, you can craft some excellent armour and weapons. I also started to get used to swapping between my party members, casting various buffs, summon spells and the like. An hour later I went back to the spider bosses and mopped the floor with them.

The voice acting is terrible, almost Chaos Wars bad and the translation isn't great either, but games in this setting, in English no less, are quite rare and I'm enjoying the change, especially now that I'm feeling the combat.

The music is really, really good.

Saturday 15 February 2020

Seal of Evil on Windows 10

Getting this running was a little bit of work but it's not impossible.

Firstly, you may need to temporarily disable Windows Security's real time protection to get the installer to run. If you don't, you may get corruption issues.

Once the game is installed you may as well grab the NOCD. It's probably not essential but it does make things easier.

Next, you need to add the game's exe file as an exception in DEP (Data Execution Protection). DEP can be accessed via Control Panel > System > Advanced System Protection > Advanced > Settings button in the Performance box > Data Execution Protection tab. From there add the game's exe file. If you don't do this then Windows 10 will stop the game from even running.

Then you need to add three .dll files to the game's root directory which can all be found in 'WineD3D For Windows'. The three files you need are d3d8.dll, libwine.dll and wined3d.dll. If you don't add these three files, the game will complain that you don't have a 3d accelerator card and exit.

Finally, you need to set compatibility to Windows XP Service Pack 2 and set the game to run as administrator. If you don’t do this, the game will crash after the two intro movies play. Also, I say play, but they were just black screens for me, after that the game crashed.

Anyway, doing all of the above got the game working for me so on the off chance you've stumbled upon this post after trying to get the game working in Windows 10, I hope this helps!

The voice acting is aweful but its a gorgeous game with really nice music. The gameplay's pretty good too! I just wish we got more of these Wuxia style RPGs in English.