Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Hillsfar

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Hillsfar is one of the more unusual AD&D games to appear on the NES. Set in the Forgotten Realms, it puts you in the role of a lone adventurer arriving in the city of Hillsfar, where quests, guilds, taverns, dangerous ruins, and plenty of trouble are waiting. The NES version was released in North America in February 1993, with FCI handling the publication and Westwood Associates developing the game.

Hillsfar is quite different from a traditional console RPG. Instead of controlling a large party and spending most of your time in turn-based battles, you create a single character and choose between four classes: fighter, thief, cleric, or magic-user. Your character's specialty affects the quests and activities available during the adventure. You can also import characters from Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, which was a nice feature for players already invested in the Forgotten Realms games.

A large part of the fun comes from the variety of activities. You might fight opponents in the arena, practice archery, explore maze-like locations, pick locks, search for treasure, or ride a horse while traveling between areas. The different gameplay styles make Hillsfar feel more like a collection of small adventures connected by a larger RPG framework.

The game also changes its perspective depending on what you are doing. Town exploration uses a top-down view, caves and some locations use a first-person perspective, while horseback travel and arena combat shift into action-oriented sequences.

Hillsfar may not play like the AD&D RPGs many players expect, but that unusual mixture is exactly what gives it character. It is an interesting Forgotten Realms adventure for NES players who enjoy exploration, different gameplay challenges, and a fantasy world that feels a little less predictable than the average console RPG.