Sryth

Game: Sryth

Ted Puffer's characters: Sandow, Suggoth

Short review: Excellent online game, with a catch. To experience the majority of content, there is a fee.

Long review: I'm going to repeat another online reviewer about this game. Sryth is more fun than it has any right to be. It's a text based game modeled in a D&D setting. If you've ever played a tabletop D&D game before, then you know the drill. You are presented verbally with a description of your character and the settings he or she finds themselves. You tell the GM what you want to happen, and roll dice when significant events happen. Sryth does this in phenomenally entertaining fashion.
     First off, it's text based. You start the game by rolling a character and I don't mind saying that the first time I saw the character creation sheets I flashed back to the mid 80's so hard that I was seeing day-glo leg warmers and humming Michael Jackson before I knew it. There are plenty of stats to roll, and the virtual dice rolls make creating a character a snap. It's a good thing too, because the random dice rolls will likely make your first few characters poor choices for hacking things to death. You want something with enough magic to whip out DPS, but also some brawn to back it up. This becomes very important when that oh-so-awesome spell fails and leaves you stunned for a few combat turns.
     When the character is finally rolled, you're dropped down on a forest road and thrust into combat. Now when I say 'dropped on a road', I mean to say the text on the screen tells you that you're on a road. You read that. And you better like it because there is a boat load of reading in this game and every description may or may not be important. If you're used to MMORPGs that give you a few paragraphs of quest text, with the last line being something like "...therefore brave adventurer, bring back 10 dragon scales to complete this quest." get ready for a rude shock. This game isn't about playing an errand boy. This game is about story telling, the old school D&D way.
     What saves this game is that the text is a delight. It's well written, engaging and active. There is humor in the right spots, lots of mystery behind every word and plenty of descriptions of heads rolling and limbs flying off baddies. I love it. From what I can tell, there is no turn limits either. If you have a day to kill, you can start questing in the morning and still be going strong by midnight. And it's a good thing too because Sryth has an addictive streak which brings about that euphoric 'one more turn' feeling that games strive for but rarely achieve.
     My grudging complaint is the limits on free play. As a free character you might wander into town and be told that 5 quest storylines can start there. Every storyline is fully realized and doubtlessly full of heroic deeds and breathless escapes. But only one storyline is available to free accounts. For a charge, you can upgrade your account and gain access to the other storylines as well as some equipment perks. This is a small complaint because the charge for an account upgrade is small and if ever there was a game that deserves support from an online community this would be it. But there is no shortage of free MMORPGs out there, so eventually it's your call.