Paladin

When a new unit appears on Paladin's map, it's not joy. It's a warning. This combination of strategy and RPG from 1988 plays mercilessly — the turn rotation is like roulette where things aren't planned, just survived.

You're the leader of a group of units and your goal is simple: destroy the enemy and his castle. Terrain matters, different units have different abilities and strength. Smart if you injure your strongest paladin and he won't recover — you have to manage without him. Inventory, character development, positioning tactics, it's all here. But it's not quite a classic like Ultima or Wizardry, Paladin is somewhere in between — not simple enough to be fascinating, not deep enough to be a strategic check.

Controls are fussy and unnecessarily slow. Marking a field, choosing a unit, checking if you can go there — everything wants fingers on keys. Graphics only show dull monochromatic landscapes and units that look like blurred figurines. Sound? Piercing beeping when something happens and restrained sound effects. Waiting between turns weighs like a long bus ride.

Paladin had ambitions but didn't know how to use them. In the nineties it appeared here and there as curiosity for those who wanted something between classic RPGs and something more strategy-oriented. But neither here nor there did many players miss it. The memory of it is more vague — like a game you watched at a friend's and didn't know if they enjoyed it or were bored.

Today Paladin is primarily an archive. If you're interested in what ambitions developers had in the late eighties, trying it in an emulator makes sense. The game isn't evil — it's just outdated and unconvincing. But that's exactly why it has a certain charm: it remembers a time when games were still searching between genres, and not all searches had happy endings.