Let me say up front that I like this game. Liked it well enough to write a Walkthrough. Curiously, however, it doesn't appear to have anything at all to do with Atlantis - at least what we have come to think of as Atlantis. I picture a smallish island-nation, idyllic in nature, with serene people wandering around in white robes, doves flitting about, and eventually meeting some kind of disastrous end; probably volcanic in nature. Not so in this game. We do however, feel connected to the first two games by the presence of those wonderful Atlantean flying boats.

This adventure starts out in present-day northwest Africa, in an inhospitable area known as the Hoggar. Situated in the south-central region of the Sahara desert, this hilly territory looks unnervingly like northern Afghanistan, though it's thousands of miles from there. The premise is acceptable enough: archeologists have found connections to Egyptian culture; and the fact that the Hoggar is a great distance from Egypt, and nearly impossible to reach by any means; the idea that some magical artifacts were stolen a very long time ago and cleverly hidden to keep them out of the wrong hands, works just fine. You play the part of a female archeologist, who arrives at the Hoggar just a shade too late, for another archeologist has opened things up ahead of you. (He's the bad guy.) Unfortunately for him, he can't figure out how to make any progress - his way is blocked by a magical portal. It turns out you can figure out how to get in, thus the adventure begins.

Continuing the tradition of the Atlantis adventures, you travel to other domains. You get to an Egyptian area, complete with temples and puzzles. You get to the Stone Age, complete with animals (a Woolly Mammoth, wolves, a bear, a sabre-toothed Tiger) and puzzles. You get to Baghdad in the time of the 1001 knights, and get to switch characters. Now you are an Arabian thief, in search of the perfect gift for the perfect girl of your dreams. You get to solve several logical puzzles, and along the way, meet some of the most charming monsters (the three guards and the gargoyle) I have seen in a long time.

There is a magic crystal skull that you "enter" and find yourself negotiating what looks like a central nervous system, or something. Interconnected pathways, that branch and travel over and under each other, fiendishly designed to lead the player astray. It's not exactly a maze, but might as well be. Floating in the medium (I think we're in liquid) are these bubbles that can either return you to where you came from, or into a set of corridors that are another navigation puzzle of their own. Clues to that one have to be collected throuout the game.

Some people object to a scenario where you have to spear animals. It's Neolithic cave-art that comes to life, actually; and while part of the objection may arise because of the violence and part from the difficulty, it's not at all gory, nor is it hard to do. The game's dirty trick, is that the spearing is not even possible until other tasks have been accomplished, but the player has no way of knowing this and can spend hours throwing spears at targets that simply can't be hit.

The graphics are wonderful, even at the lowest-quality setting. At the highest level, my computer gets bogged down. (it's *only* a 400 mHz) The music is a little shallow, but music has never been as strong a feature of the Atlantis series as it is in many other games. The sound track in general is excellent. I have both the CD and DVD versions, and have played them both through. The CD ran flawlessly, and I have the HIGHEST PRAISE for the way the developers organized the material so as to minimize the number of times the player must swap disks; and to place the swaps in such a way that the distraction is negligible. The DVD movie sections have a problem of doubling, stuttering and poor synchronization with the video. We haven't yet figured out whether it is a DirectX issue or disk drivers, or what.

So I give this game a thumbs-up. Here ya go: [img]http://home.rochester.rr.com/ramahelp/bigok[1].gif[/img]
I can recommend all three Atlantis games, but it is not at all necessary to play any of the others to fully enjoy each one on its own. They don't form a tightly-knit series as the Journeyman Project games do, but they do relate to one another enough to be considered connected.

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Tally Ho

"The difficult we do right away; the impossible just takes a little longer." John Brunner

[This message has been edited by Tally Ho (edited 11-16-2001).]

Doug: Good job with the review. Makes me wanna go play the game and give up on Reah for awhile. But, that's not gonna happen.

Marian: Here are the minimum system requirements for Atlantis. Hope this helps.

Windows 98/ME/XP
Pentium II 333MHz (Pentium II 450 MHz Recommended)
32 MB RAM (64 MB RAM Recommended)
8X CD-ROM Drive
DirectX Compatible Sound Card and Video Card

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April Ryan: "A labyrinth. Great. I SO love these things."

April: "I'm off to save the world........WORLDS!"

From April's Diary: "The next time someone says the word 'Destiny'......run like hell."

April Ryan: "I shifted in my underwear!"

Thank you for the interesting review. I found the music very dull and annoying at places, I fell in love with the guards too.

I have the DVD version, you have to play it in 16 bit, than all the speech impediments are gone. Kathy

Kathy - thanks for the suggestion - I'll try it just as soon as I'm done 'saving the world' (again!)

I came here to read about Beyond Atlantis II because of the stuttering which is ruining the game for me because it takes so long to finish. I am not using DVD and the problem is awful so I think it must be a directx problem which Dreamcatchers techs have not solved for me. Anyone solve it yet? Thanks

To follow up on my stuttering disk, I retried every setting I could think of, and nothing helped. By the way, the doubling only happens in the cutscenes, not the routine gameplay. Also, I have both the CD and DVD versions, and the doubling only happens with the DVD; the CD runs fine. My suspicion is that it could be the software driver for my DVD drive, but I have updated that very recently.

Hi Tally Ho, I have downloaded the latest directx and it got rid of all the double talk.

Sorry to report - it didn't help me. The CD version runs fine; the DVD doubles the sounds. I have installed DirectX 8.1, and seen no change.

I really liked this game, too. It isn't in my top ten favorites, but it was a good, entertaining game.
I thought all of the voice work was well done, except for the heroine, who sounded like she had been specifically told not to use any type of inflection. I loved the fact that you could have the printed dialogue in case you needed it, and there were a few times I did need it. I thought the graphics were just beautiful. In some games, you have to put in the first CD to start the game, then go to another CD for a saved game, but with this game you could start up with the last CD you were playing with, and I really appreciated that. I felt that it was a sign of quality and care taken with the game production. I liked the stories within the story and I thought most of the puzzles were logical for the storyline.
I did feel that the ending was abrupt and that was disappointing because the rest of the game is fairly long and detailed.
I would definitely recommend this game. I think it is a good value, even at full price.
-Beth

Overall, I thought the game was pretty good, although short and the lack of a really meaty story line was somewhat disappointing. I felt at too many times that the developers were merely trying to showcase their animation skills. And the animations were excellent. I think I enjoyed the Arabian Knights section of the game because there were more places to go and investigate. The other two worlds were too circumscribed to be really challenging.
I would give the game a C. I liked Beyond Atlantis the best for the combination of graphics and music, but Atlantis the Lost Tales had the best story and the best conclusion, even though it was practically impossible to get through.
Also, as Doug's review mentions, there is virtually no connection between this game and the other two. I was very disappointed with that.
Paul

I haven't played this game, but as for the heroine's voice and looks, I've read they belong to Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of famous actors Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve!

It's her voice you hear in the English, French and Italian versions - she's trilingual.

I've heard her dub the leading character in the excellent animated feature 'Persepolis', where she was fine, so I can hardly believe her vocal work would fall completely short here.

French announcement

Translation:
On second thoughts, watching YouTube clips, I see what you mean now. She clearly has an accent, and her English does sound not entirely natural, a bit stilted, and the intonation is rather flat.....

Chiara Mastroianni modelling for the game:

YouTube video

Rich

Thanks Rich