Menzoberranzan

About Menzoberranzan

Menzoberranzan (1994) is SSI's Forgotten Realms RPG in which two adventurers descend into the Underdark to rescue kidnapped villagers, joining forces with the drow ranger Drizzt Do'Urden.

Menzoberranzan in Depth

The only two survivors of a monster-hunting quest return to a village in Icewind Dale to celebrate, pass out after a night of heavy drinking and wake to find drow raiding the village and carrying off villagers. Sent into the Underdark to rescue them, they gather allies and eventually team up with Drizzt Do'Urden, who reveals the raid was ordered by his mother, Malice Do'Urden, to lure him back for punishment for abandoning his people. When they reach the drow city of Menzoberranzan, Drizzt is teleported away and captured, and the party must seek help from drow caught in a civil war between the two most powerful families, eventually defeating Malice, preventing Drizzt's sacrifice and freeing the villagers.

It runs on the engine of SSI's Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, mixing Ultima Underworld's 3D world and real-time action with a concept similar to Westwood's Eye of the Beholder games. The player creates two characters and can gain non-player allies later. The setting comes from the 1992 tabletop box set Menzoberranzan: The Famed City of the Drow by Ed Greenwood, R. A. Salvatore and Douglas Niles. Reviews were divided: PC Gamer US called it the best Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game ever released, and Next Generation praised its painting-like high-resolution graphics, while Scorpia found it "a disappointment" and PC Zone said it "tries to be Ultima Underworld and fails miserably".

Making Menzoberranzan

Strategic Simulations and DreamForge Intertainment created it, and SSI published it in 1994. Al Giovetti of Electronic Entertainment summarised it as "high-quality role-playing meets fast-paced first-person exploration and spectacular real-time combat", and White Wolf Inphobia recommended it as an excellent introduction to SSI's newer AD&D games. Others were harsher: Quandaryland found it slower than Ravenloft with too many empty places, and GameSpy's Allen Rausch said that without a great plot and exciting monsters it was "less impressive than it was in players' imaginations".