Cross of the Dutchman (PC)

Most Americans have probably never heard of Frisia, but like most places on the Old Continent, this damp spot in the northern Netherlands is rich with history, culture, and claims to uniqueness. A state of affairs known as “Frisian Freedom” meant that it was once one of the only places in Europe that owed allegiance to no lord save the distant emperor himself. This frijheid is apparently a source of pride for Frisians, and perhaps no one embodies it more than the larger-than-life local hero Pier Gerlofs Donia, locally known as Grutte Pier, a medieval freedom fighter whose story is just begging to be told, but whose nation doesn’t have the same romantic draw as the Scotland of Braveheart. So Dutch (actually, Frisian) indie studio Triangle Studios have taken up the task of bringing Grutte Pier to life.

They’ll never take our FRIJHEID!

Pier Gerlofs Donia in Cross of the Dutchman is the archetypical good-hearted giant who could crush you with his bare hands, but is known to everyone as an upright and gentle man. The real Grutte Pier was supposedly ten feet tall and would pull his own plow – not someone the Saxons would have wanted to mess with. Anyway, Cross of the Dutchman begins at Piers’s farm, where his wife Rintsje sends him to gather up some things for dinner. It’s the typical warm-up stuff to get you used to the controls and the game world. Soon, Pier is informed that the Saxons are being a bunch of jerks in Kimswerd, and Pier heads out to see what he can do. This unleashes a chain of events that culminate in a massive showdown between Pier’s rag-tag group of farmers, merchants, and drunks and the cruel mercenaries who have occupied this idyllic land and trampled upon the vaunted Frisian Freedom. Most of the game consists of traveling back and forth between the handful of different settings, talking to NPCs, killing Saxons, talking to NPCs, gathering men for the upcoming battle, killing Saxons, and talking to NPCs.

The story itself is mostly told in illustrated (but not animated) cut scenes. The dialogue is often a bit too wordy, and the characters not all that developed – but what would expect from a 3-hour game? Yes, Cross of the Dutchman is very, very short. And the best part is, it abruptly ends right where the real story begins! The real Grutte Pier formed an army of rebel pirates known as the Black Gang of Arum, who spent years harassing shipping on the Zuiderzee and terrorizing Dutch towns and villages deep inland. But that is only hinted at after you beat the game. It’s as if you only played the first world Super Mario Bros. 3, and then it ended and they said “Mario traveled to cooler places than this, like a giant world and an awesome ice world, and this place filled with lava and stuff, defeated all of Bowser’s children, and then took out Bowser himself, saving the princess and a lot of little mushroom-headed people along the way.” You’d find that frustrating, but it’s pretty much exactly what happens in Cross of the Dutchman.

Brawling, then Hacking, Maybe Slashing

For about half of the game, you beat people up, and then you get a huge sword (the real Grutte Pier supposedly wielded a seven-foot WMD of a sword), which you then use to carve through ranks and ranks of Saxons. I actually have no idea if it matters whether you punch or cut the bad guys – either way, they die easily – but they do allow you to switch back and forth. You can buy a total of three upgrades each “weapon”, though why anyone would use anything but the spin attack (the most expensive one) is beyond me.

There are no items, no alternate weapons, no potions, noting cool to collect. You can break open barrels and crates to get the sweet, sweet gold out, but the only thing you can use it on are the aforementioned six special moves and a total of four stat increases, two for each of health and stamina. Health automatically regenerates after a while, and stamina is what you use to unleash special attacks.

The combat is undoubtedly simple, though it is satisfying to watch a half-dozen Saxons go flying into the air when you lay into them. But don’t expect much more than button-mashing, and be prepared for those times where you want Pier to attack and he moves, or you want him to move, and he attacks or decides to chat with Wyerd. There’s also a “stealth system” that just seems forced into the game – at night you have to make your way past some apparently blind and deaf Saxon patrolman with lanterns, and if you get caught, the gig’s up. What makes this feel so stupid, however, is that fact that you may have literally just killed twelve Saxons in one sword blow seconds before, but if that watchman sees you, you go down without a fight. These sequences add nothing to the gameplay or the storyline, and in my opinion they’re even detrimental to both.

“Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk”

I did have one major beef with the game, however, and it has to do with performance. Admittedly, I played the game on a Mac, and a somewhat older machine at that. Nevertheless I can play games that look a whole lot better and have a whole lot going on without a problem. Cross of the Dutchman, which isn’t exactly cutting edge as far as graphics go, brought my system completely to its knees, however. I started out with mid-level graphics settings, and it ran fine, then started lagging, and I lowered them, which fixed the problem. But after a few minutes it would start to lag again, and I’d have to repeat the cycle. It always seemed to get progressively worse, and for no apparent reason. By the time I finished the game, I was on “Very Low” settings, with a resolution that would make a late-90s game blush.

The sound effects were decently done – nothing remarkable either way. The music was also kind of pleasant – typical cinematic fare that jives well with the situation at hand, though I can’t say it’s anything memorable. There’s no voice acting, which you’d expect from an indie game like this. The localization was pretty eclectic, too – there’s English, of course, but no German, French, or Italian. Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese are available, as is Dutch, naturally, and Frisian!

I think the decision to have a Frisian version was really cool – believe it or not, Frisian is the closest surviving relative of English (apart from Scots), as the title of this section (“bread, butter, and green cheese is good English and good Frisian”) attempts to demonstrate. I even played some of the game in Frisian, and was able to more or less make it out due to knowledge of English, German, and Dutch, though it was still way too hard to play the whole game that way.