So is the gameplay.
Crusaders of Might and Magic is a port of a PC game that wasn’t so hot to begin with, and although the PlayStation game is marginally more fun than the computer version, it’s still a pretty big stinker.
To begin with, combat has somewhat improved. There is a minimally-working targeting system, a la Zelda, although it turns off while you’re moving. (Eh? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?) It is somewhat useful for chucking fireballs across a room, however. The combat itself is the same click-and-kill that the first Crusaders sported, and it’s still not much fun.
The PlayStation version of Crusaders doesn’t unfold quite the same way as the computer version did -- which is good, but it still has the absolutely pointless wide open spaces -- which is bad. I wanted to throw the disc out of the window after wandering around in the floating Citadel for about 20 minutes, running back and forth between guards that were at least three man-miles apart on some stupid fetch quest. And in the forest (which is painfully linear, by the way), if you jump high enough, you can see the rest of the forest. Sheesh.
One of the things that shows that this game was not quite ready to come out (well, besides the Magical Tracking Doors(tm)) is character placement. Every time that you get on a lift that goes down from Citadel, the other character spawns in the next level slightly above the lift, and ends up falling. Why? Is it for humorous effect? If so, it failed.
The game was entertaining... for a little while. I liked the little halos that surrounded the enemies’ feet when you targeted them, showing you how much health they had left. But otherwise, this game bites pretty hard.