Phantasy Star: Banallure

  

Me when I'm awakened at 03:00 by a crash in the dining room.

     

When I wrapped up last time, Alis had assembled her team and was trying to act on Noah's recommendation to find Dr. Luveno in the Gothic Forest. He had directed us to a manhole in the Palma spaceport, which took us to a dungeon, which took us to another continent. We found our way to a partly-ruined city which was called, groan, "Gothic"; hence, the Gothic Forest. All right, people, in the comments we have to come up with a term for when an RPG name originally sounds intriguing but turns out to be boringly literal Examples: The Lords of Midnight takes place in a land called "Midnight." Perihelion takes place on a planet called "Perihelion." The Gothic Forest is a forest around the city of Gothic. I propose banallure or banalluring, but I'm open to other suggestions.

    

I started to explore a dungeon that an NPC later told me was called the Tower of Medusa. It's a bit too hard, and since I don't have any reason to be here in the first place (Luveno is supposedly in a prison called Triada), I give it up after a while.

    

Triada is supposedly south of Gothic, so I poke around the mountains until I find another facility. A robotcop takes my Roadpass shortly after I enter. The dungeon has no enemies, just NPCs in individual cells, some of which I have to open with my dungeon key. Some of them want cola to talk to me, just like the citizens of Gothic. What is with the cola shortage around here?

    

• "The tower deep in the Gothic Mountains is known as Medusa's Tower." I guess that's why she disappeared from the cave where I found Odin.

• "Spider monsters are actually very intelligent." I guess maybe I should try chatting with them in combat. More importantly, this clue sets up:

• "Polymeteral will dissolve all materials except for Laconia." This is spoken by a giant spider, no special spell needed or anything.

     

Why do your brethren just attack me?

     

• "I've got a friend in Bortevo. He's probably having a hard time because of the lava. Why not visit him?" Because of the lava, maybe?

• "On the far side of the mountain lies a pool of molten lava created by a volcanic eruption."

• "Do you know the robot Hapsby?" NO. "It's a robot made of Laconia, but it has been abandoned somewhere as being useless."

    

We find Luveno in one of the cells. "If you've come for help, you had best forget it. Leave!" he shouts. I leave, but I accidentally re-enter his chamber immediately because I'm always forgetting that the game doesn't spin the party around to face the other direction when it exits an encounter. In this case, it's fortunate, because he has something else to say on my second visit: "You want me to build a spaceship for you? Not a chance! I can't accept such responsibility." I actually did not know that I wanted him to build a spaceship. I guess it would help.

      

But for a subsequent mistake, my journey may have ended here.

    

On a third visit, he agrees to help: "I will go to Gothic Village nearby to make preparations. Come then. Do not waste worry on me." Isn't he in prison because he blew up Gothic Village? How can he just leave? Is imprisonment voluntary in this universe?

     

Back in the village, Dr. Luveno wants us to fetch his assistant, "likely hiding in the underground passage." We found him last time; he just told us to go away. We visit him and he agrees to help Dr. Luveno without any problems.

   

Now Dr. Luveno wants 1,200 mesetas to build the spaceship that we didn't explicitly ask him for in the first place. Still, it's less money than my last sword cost, so I guess it's worth it. He tells us it's going to "take time" to build, but we're wise to that trick by now. We just return to his house multiple times until he tells us The Luveno (I would think that I get to name it) is ready.

    

Joke's on you. We would have paid triple that figure.

     

"But you cannot fly a spaceship!" he drops on us. "You must find a robot named Hapsby. He can fly a spaceship." In the prison, we learned that Hapsby had been junked. I have no idea where to find him. I check around Gothic again, but there's no sign of him.

    

I start exploring the surrounding area. There's no way to go north. A southern route, ignoring the mountains, leads to the coast, which bends west and then north. We come to a large field of red, which is the pool of lava we heard about in Triada. I wonder how I'm supposed to get through it, and it turns out (unless I missed something) that the answer is: just walk through it. We take some damage, but not as much as we ought to take from lava. I don't even have to heal.

    

Let's just wade right into it.

       

The lava field spits us out near a dilapidated town and a cave. An NPC tells us that we're in Bortevo. The volcanic eruption has clearly had an influence on the place, as the buildings all look burned and crumbling, and the NPCs are all wrapped in shrouds. Many of the buildings have piles of metal in them, and one of the NPCs tells me: "In this pile of junk, somewhere, there is s'pposed to be a usable robot, but you know how rumors be." 

      

You should have built little round metal domes, like we do on Palma.

       

I find nothing else, so I try the cave. It turns out to be a passage to the northern continent. An NPC in the middle of it tells us: "Polymeteral is for sale in Abion." (Are they going for "metal" or "material"?) An NPC in Triada told us that polymeteral dissolves everything except Laconia, and someone else told us that the robot is made of Laconia, so I assume I'm supposed to find polymeteral and use it on one of those piles of junk to reveal the robot. It feels like a good prybar should have gotten us there, too.

    

I should perhaps note that all of these wanderings have been accompanied by copious battles, many of them with nicely-drawn and animated monsters like skeletons, ghouls, sphinxes, vampires, shellfish, octopuses, and giants. I've stopped really even noticing them, partly because none of them have any special attacks. I just pound the primary attack button, which by default selects "attack," and watch episodes of Bosch in another window while the combat executes. (Occasionally, I have to heal a character, more often because a chest is trapped than because the enemies hit very hard.) It's just so repetitive and boring and frequent that I can't imagine any player really takes the time to invest in "tactics." 

   

One of the tougher monsters in this area.

    

I hit a few dead ends trying to find a way out of here. Eventually, I notice a break in a rock wall and sidle through it. The coastline eventually leads us to another city, but it's not Albion; it's some place called Loar. Here:

   

• An armory sells heat guns, an upgrade from Odin's needlegun, and silver fangs, an upgrade from Myau's iron fang.

• "Do you know about Laerma trees?" NO. "They grow on the altiplano plateau on the planet Dezoris." Noted.

    

Let me guess. It's named after a guy named Bob Altiplano.

    

• "There is a village called Abion on the western edge on this island." Yes, that's what I'm looking for.

• "Have you heard of a gem called 'The Amber Eye'? Some say the Casba Dragon has one." Again, noted. I can't wait to find out what the Casba Dragon is. 

• "You are going to try to kill Lassic, I hear. That's great!" Does everyone know about our secret mission?

• "I have heard that a certain crystal will block evil magic." The Amber Eye, maybe? 

      

We're pretty low on health, so we welcome the presence of a hospital, even though we don't usually pay for healing.

   

Northwest of Loar is Abion. There:

   

• The second-hand store sells magic lamps (which I already have) and magic hats, which supposedly let us understand the language of monsters. That's the third thing the game offers to talk to monsters, yet it hasn't worked for me once so far.

• The food store, of all places, sells polymeteral for 1,600 mesetas.

    

We probably don't want to mix it up with cola.

    

• The armory sells laser shields. Alis, Odin, and Noah can equip them. I don't have enough money for all three.

• "Some cats, if they eat a certain type of nut, they become huge and can fly. It's really very weird." I agree.

    

Some people, when they eat a certain type of nut, think they see giant flying cats.

    

• "A strange man came to this town. He seems to be performing animal experiments. He brought a large pot or something."

• "I'd like to travel in outer space."

   

The town has a cave in it, so we check it out. It takes us to an island in the center of the town. The island has a building. We enter, and a guy in a weird suit immediately says, "Hey, bring that cat over here!" For some reason, I say, "Yes." The game immediately reports the result: "Myau died." The man, apparently not realizing that he's already killed Myau, gloats, "Oohh, ha, ha! The cat will die!"

      

At least it spared us a graphic depiction.

   

We then launch into combat with "Dr. Mad," who kills the rest of us.

    

I probably do not need to do what I do next, which is spend about an hour grinding for both money and experience. I think that with the right combination of spells, I could have defeated him the first time. Plus, I had no particular reason to kill any "Dr. Mad." But this place is so out of the way that I didn't want to have to go through the trouble of returning, either to kill this guy or to buy laser shields. So I fight enemies until I can do the latter.

    

I actually saved up enough for three laser shields and diamond armor.

    

I take this time to experiment with the new spells I've been earning along the way. Each character has a different selection of spells that they learn in a different order (Odin doesn't learn any). Here's my report:

     

• HEAL (A/2): Heals for 20 hit points, both in and out of combat. All healing spells are useful.

• BYE (A/2): Ends combat. Would be useful for no-win situations, but it's too easy to save and reload to worry about escaping individual battles.

• CHAT (A/2): Supposedly talks to monsters. I said above that I had never gotten it to work, but late in this session, I did get it to work on a tarantula. He gave me this hint:

   

Well, we're a spacefaring race.

      

• TRAP (M/3): Disarms traps? You don't really have a chance to cast it after battle, so I'm not sure how it works.

• FIRE (AN/4): Shoots two fireballs; each does about 8 damage. They sometimes hit one enemy, sometimes two different ones. A physical attack usually does more.

    

Alis's FIRE spell nails a tree that is apparently already dead.

    

• EXIT (MN/4): Exits the dungeon. I should have been using this more often instead of finding my way out.

• OPEN (N/4): Unlocks magically-locked doors. I haven't found any yet.  

• ROPE (A/4): Ties an enemy up for at least a round. Enemy has a chance of escaping it each round. I've found it very useful when I'm only facing one enemy. 

• TELE (N/4): Also supposedly lets you talk to monsters. I'm not sure what the difference is between it and CHAT.

• TERR (M/4): Terrifies an enemy and makes it ineffective. Useful, I think it fails a lot.

• CURE (MN/6): Heals for 80 points, both in and out of combat. Invaluable.

• FLY (A/8):  Takes you back to the last church you visited. I wish it always just took you back to Camineet instead. Not useful if you don't remember where you last visited a church.

• HELP (M/10): The only buffing spell, it raises an ally's combat effectiveness.

• PROT (N/10): Protection. I'm not sure how it differs from WALL.

• WALL (M/10): Creates a magic wall.  See above.

• RISE (N/12): Resurrects an ally. I didn't realize I even had this until recently.  

• WIND (N/12): An offensive spell that strikes three times.

• THUN (N/16). Shoots a lightning bolt that does around 30 points of damage to all enemies.

      

I still have some experimenting to do, but when I returned to Dr. Mad with my new shields and a better understanding of spells, I was able to defeat him without much trouble. (I said no to his demand for Myau, but he attacked anyway.) I had Alis freeze him each round with a ROPE, enhanced Odin with a HELP, and deflected his attacks with either PROT or WALL.

      

Wasn't this an Inspector Gadget villain?

   

From him, we looted a Laconian pot. I don't know whether that's the same one I sold earlier in the game. It sure gets around. 

    

We made the long walk back to Bortevo. I started searching buildings and using the polymeteral on each pile of junk. The fourth attempt produced a result: Hapsby emerged from the pile and offered to fly The Luveno. 

     

How do you know the name of the ship?

   

All I had to do now was find it. It turns out there's a western exit from Gothic that leads to a field where the ship is parked, but I go all the way back to the spaceport first before I search the city again and find the exit. They aren't happy with me at the spaceport. They confiscate my passport. I guess I won't be flying commercial anymore.

   

All right, everyone. Who has ideas for a new name?

     

The ship will go from Gothic to either Uzo or Skure. I've experienced neither of these places, so I try Uzo first. Uzo turns out to be on Motavia, the same planet as Paseo, where I still have to buy some diamond armor. An animation shows The Luveno take off, fly through space, and land just to the east of the city, which judging from the manual map is south of Paseo and on the other side of the impassable wall of ant lions. For fun, I take a quick trip to the northeast, to see if there really is one enormous ant lion in the middle of the pack, as the map depicts, but I don't find it.

      

"Gothic Uzo Skure" would make a good band name.

       

All there is, then, is to explore Uzo. Keep in mind that at this point, I have no specific goal except to find Lassic and kill him. There's been no intelligence about where he is or where the capital of the empire is.

    

• "There is a town called Casba to the south of here." And dragons from there must be Casba Dragons. Goddamn it, they got me again.

• "There are dragons living in the Casba Cave. These dragons have gems in their heads!" I was about to say it would have been cooler if they were zombies, but I guess the song wasn't out yet.

• "Have you heard about mantles made of frad fibers? They are light, but provide great protection." I'm beginning to think that the game is just making up words. 

• "Have you heard about the soothing flute?" I have! From a sphinx! "It's a secret, but I buried one on the outskirts of the town of Gothic on Palma. Don't tell anyone." No, I'll just go take it.

• "If you use a vehicle called the land rover, the ant lion will not be able to harm you." Just the price of gas.

The armory sells a light saber! I suppose if you're going to blend science fiction and fantasy, that's the first thing you'd want to include. Only Alis and Odin can use it. I'm not sure if I should buy one for Odin, since he's the only character who can use guns (which hit all enemies). The manual indicates that the best weapon for Odin is an axe, so I guess I can't keep him with guns forever. I buy two light sabers.

      

We head outside and go south, looking for Casba and this cave. We fight scores of crawlers, tarantulas, and other creatures on the way. We're in pretty bad shape when we find the city to the southwest of Uzo, then groan to see it ringed by mountains. Apparently, we'll have to go through the cave to get there.

      

Some kind of hovercraft would sure come in handy.

    

The caves are quite long, with multiple sections of multiple levels, but they're also quite linear, so I don't have to map it. Enemies are quite easy, about the same difficulty as the forest back on Palma—until I run into a blue dragon. I have to defeat him mostly without spells, as I need to save the few spell points I have left for CURE. Even then, he's not that hard. In his treasure chest, we find an Amber Eye.

       

When do consoles become capable of using more than eight characters?

      

The cave emerges in Casba, which thankfully has a hospital, which heals health as well as magic. Elsewhere:

    

• "Have you heard of the vehicle called the hovercraft?" NO. "It's a good thing to have. It moves across water." That would be a good thing to have, but we have to find a land rover first. Later, while checking the same building, I meet the same NPC and say YES. "I bought it in Scion on Palma but it seemed broken so I abandoned it in Bortevo. It probably can still be used, though."

• "There are legends of a mystic shield in a village surrounded by mist. It is the shield Perseus used in days to conquer magic beasts." I don't know if the game is talking about the Greek hero Perseus or a different character in its universe.

      

Yes, but why?

     

• "There is poison gas above the sea to the west. No one can go near there without some protection." I keep thinking maybe the game is coming towards an end, but every NPC I talk to increases its size by another 10%.  

• "Fierce dragons live in the cave near here, and I'm scared of them." I think I explored exhaustively, and I only encountered one dragon. You don't need to be scared of it anymore.

• "Don't believe your own eyes in the depth of the dungeons." I have no idea how to operationalize that.

          

Both churches and healers use crosses. I don't think that would be allowed in an NES game.

     

The land rover is for sale in the second-hand shop! I figured there was going to be some big puzzle associated with it. Somehow it sits in our inventory, but when we use it, the party icon changes to a vehicle. It doesn't stop us from meeting random encounters.

    

We take the land rover across the ant lion mounds to Paseo, where I buy the diamond armor I've been saving for. I discover that Alis and Odin can both equip it, but I only have enough money for one. I'll have to come back. 

   

Eat my treads, ant lions.

      

I also confirm with the land rover that the world wraps, which is ridiculous—it's far too small to represent an entire planet.

    

We take the ship back to Gothic, where I try the "Search" command at an obvious place at the end of a road and find the flute. I guess I'll go on to the third planet next. It would be nice to think the game is coming to an end. I feel like I've basically experienced it at this point. I have all the spells listed in the manual. Many more hours would feel superfluous.

   

Time so far: 13 hours

Game 544: Blade of Doom (1993)

 

With the title and the company name, it feels like the authors were playing off Doom by id Software. But Doom was released later in the year than the file dates for Blade. It's just one of those weird coincidences.

     

Blade of Doom

Germany

UD Software (developer and publisher)

Released 1993 as shareware for DOS

Date Started: 11 March 2025

Date Ended: 12 March 2025

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

   

In broad strokes, Blade of Doom is a single-character Dungeon Master clone. You run around a dungeon, find keys, open doors, navigate teleporters, fight enemies in real time, collect inventory items, stave off hunger and thirst, and level up. Having just finished Walls of Illusion, I'm not particularly eager for another game of the same type, but there are some interface features that make Blade at least a little more interesting than the standard clone.

     

The game is little-known online, probably because surviving versions (or, at least, the two I found) are unregistered shareware. "UD Software" appears to have been a one-off partnership between Karl Schuster and Uwe Dörr of Walldürn, Baden-Württemberg (Dörr's initials serving as the name of the company). They asked 30 DM, or about 35-40 of today's dollars or euros. More on this in a bit.

    

I don't know what's happening here.

   

After an interesting title cinematic featuring a row of gravestones, a skull, a flash of lightning, some kind of spectral dude whose torso becomes a ribbon of light, and a few digitized words in German, the game brings you to a main menu, on which you can define a different hero for two saved games. I completely overlooked the "create character" option when I first started playing; I just kept hitting "new game" and I guess using the default character. It wasn't until I had this entry ready for publication that I realized there is a character creation process where you can assign bonus points among multiple attributes. 

   

Character creation.

    

Once the game starts, it is instantly familiar to anyone who has played Dungeon Master or one of its derivatives. You have a compass/GTFO cluster that you can use for maneuvering, but thankfully it's replicated on the numberpad. Almost nothing else has a keyboard analog, which is too bad. When you meet enemies, you click the large attack icon in the lower-right hand corner. You start finding items and add them to your inventory while keeping a careful eye on your health, fatigue, hunger, and thirst meters. If enemies damage you too much, you camp for a while to restore hit points. Yada yada.

    

The game begins.

    

But Blades has a few surprises in its interface, if not its content:

    

• Confused about what a button does? There's a separate program (ANLEITNG.EXE) that allows you to click on each button and get a description of what it does. 

       

The game's description of the hit point bar.

     

• The inventory screen has a paper doll on which you directly place pieces of armor. This is rare even for commercial games of the era.

  

Slowly assembling armor pieces.

     

• If you don't feel like going to the inventory screen, you can scroll through the items in your pack in a window on the main screen. 

• The "eye" icon, which takes you to your inventory screen, starts to close as you get fatigued.

• There's no full on-screen automap, but you can get a map of the immediate area by clicking on the "scroll" icon on the main interface. Or you can go into the inventory screen and print an ASCII map of the dungeon level. Explored and unexplored areas, stairs, traps, teleporters, messages, pits, and secret doors are all symbolized.

 

The game's printed map of (most of) Level 3.

         

None of these features absolutely enthralled me, but I found them all at least notable.

   

Beyond that, we just have the variants on the standard Dungeon Master template:

    

• Magic seems to be taken directly from Dungeon Master. You combine two or three runes to make a spell, then select a power. You set up a particular spell in the book, then cast it from the main screen. I've only found one rune ("Reversal") so far, so I haven't been able to experiment much. I don't know whether there are in-game instructions for spell recipes or whether that came in a separate document. 

     

The spell creation interface.

      

• Character attributes are speed, power, knowledge, learning, and endurance, plus offense and defense statistics based on the inventory. These values all start quite small (3s, mostly). You get to increase one attribute by 1 point when you level up.

  

Reaching Level 3.

      

• Combat takes place on the main screen like in Dungeon Master. It's real-time, and it involves clicking furiously on a large attack icon in the lower-right corner or casting a spell. There's a brief "cool down" period but no feedback on damage done. The enemy just eventually dies, or you do.

• Among the first three levels, there have only been five monsters: bats, spiders, lizard men, some kind of viney plant thing, and worms.  

   

One of the stranger enemies.

    

• Enemies are reasonably well drawn and animated, but they always look like they're a square or more away from you. I suppose drawing them small was also cost-effective.

• All doors require keys to open. All keys look the same, but they're not. You need to find the specific key for the specific door.

     

Opening a door with a key.

    

• On the disk screen, the save/load buttons give you no feedback at all, so you just have to trust that they worked and click the option to close the screen. 

• The demo game has no money, although there is a line for it on the character screen.

     

Level 1 was a large 40 x 30. Its primary purpose seemed to be to introduce the door mechanic. The level was full of doors, some with keys right in front of them, some with keys that I had to retrieve from distant parts of the level and walk back. There was one door for which I never found a key, making it impossible to complete the map. 

     

My partial map of Level 1.

      

There were a lot of bats and a lot of items of food, though I learned the hard way that while mushrooms might be technically edible, you probably want to leave them alone. I found my first weapon, a knife, as well as a wooden shield. 

    

A couple of messages talked about JUSTICE (GERECHTIGKEIT), and indeed that was a password to get past a magic mouth. A second one, just before the exit, took another password clued in an explicit message: EINTRITT.

      

I thought we might be headed into Ultima territory here.

      

I went from Level 0 to Level 1 after beating my first enemy, a bat. Bats were the most common enemy, including a whole swarm of them near the center of the map next to a message that warned me I was entering the Realm of Chaos.

   

The first level has at least three messages encouraging the player to buy the registered version of the game. One of them has a square after it that wounds you for half your hit points. I don't know if the two things are connected. Throughout the game, I suspected that other aspects were related to it being a shareware version, but there was nothing I could tell for sure.

     

This message comes up frequently as you explore. That file isn't even in the package.

      

Level 2 was about teleporters; there were about half a dozen sections that I had to map independently. Enemies were the same as on Level 1. I reached character Level 2.

         

A teleporter.

    

Level 3 introduced some new mechanics. The "Walk of the Attentive Adventurer" (as a sign announced) had some spinners that would ensure I kept walking forever if I didn't watch for them and spin myself back in my original direction. Elsewhere, there were pressure plates that opened wall spaces. I never found any illusory walls (the kind you find by bonking into them), but the map legend suggests they're possible.

  

Spiders and worms were introduced as enemies. As in Dungeon Master, worms drop food, but here it poisons and instantly kills you.

      

 A worm attacks.

     

There was an odd puzzle in the southeast corner. "The nest is just what the hungry need," a message announced as I entered. It consisted of six lizard men guarding about as many eggs. In a nearby section are some alcoves with pressure plates, and I thought to weigh them down with eggs, for no other reason than that they were found nearby.

      

When I placed the eggs on the plates, they each spawned a ton of gear--swords, axes, shields, armor pieces, food, canteens—far more than I needed or could possibly carry. 

     

Somehow an egg turned into all of this.

    

The northwest corner had a huge open area with a building in the center. Messages around the center building read: "Get out of here. I don't need a human like you down here. Or do you want to challenge me to a duel?"

     

Sounds good to me.

    

A locked door led into the final area, and I was sure I would meet a boss enemy behind it. I had to go far and wide, through some teleporters, to find the key, but eventually I returned and opened the door. The only thing behind it was another stairway upward.

   

I knew that the dungeon was only three levels based on the number of level files in the game folder, so I was surprised by this turn of events. However, going up the stairway just takes me to a random square on Level 3 that I already explored, so I guess this must be the end of the trial. I think I've explored everything else exhaustively, save a part of Level 3 that's past a square that straight-up kills me every time I step on it.

        

The death screen.

      

In the past, it's been my policy to BRIEF games that I couldn't fully evaluate because we don't have the full version. However, I suspect that in the present situation, there never was a full version. I base this partly on the fact that it doesn't seem to exist online now, and 1993 is pretty late for that to be true. There are also no reviews, no testimonials, no walkthroughs, and no maps on either current or archived sites.

       

Two lizardmen attack at once.

    

Second, there's this paragraph in the accompanying documentation for one of the versions I tried:

      

Mit Blade of Doom möchten wir der Gaming-Community professionelle Spiele zu einem fairen Preis anbieten. Dafür haben wir uns für diesen Weg entschieden und verzichten auf den Vertrieb über Softwarefirmen. Wir hoffen, dass dies durch zahlreiche Bestellungen für die Vollversion belohnt wird und wir diesen Weg weiterverfolgen können.

     

Now, maybe there's some nuance here that I'm not getting in translation, but it sounds to me as if they haven't actually completed the full version, and they're waiting to see if they get enough people interested before they take the time to do so. For the full version, the goal is apparently to collect multiple pieces of a set of arms and armor, including the Shield of the Golden Cross and the titular Blade of Doom. The authors promise that this adventure takes place over 50 dungeon levels: "as far as we know, the largest dungeon currently in existence." Well, yeah. There's a reason for that. If the full version does exist, let's be leisurely about tracking it down. I identified a couple of potential leads on the authors but I hadn't heard back at the time this entry was published.

       

I think the authors are trying to tell us something.

       

Since this seems to be the only version, I'll rate it at a 15 on the GIMLET. There is a lot of potential for it to go higher, but since I wasn't able to experience spells, or very much character development, or more than a few enemies, or more than a few pieces of equipment, I have to rate it as a much simpler game.

Upcoming Games: Warriors of Legend (1993), Talisman (1985), Hired Guns (1993), Realms of Darkness (1987), Pathways into Darkness (1993), Sandor II (1990)

All right, let's give this a try, based on this suggestion by Gnoman. Here's where we can talk about the next six games on the list. This type of entry will not recur if people post spoilers, so please don't do that. What's allowed here are:

    

• Opinions about the game's RPG status
• Tips for emulating the game 
• Known bugs and pitfalls
• Tips for character creation
• Trivia
• Sources of information about the game from around the web

    

There are no hard rules otherwise, but let me encourage you to primarily comment in this forum if you already know something about a game from personal experience and would like to share it. I don't think it would be a good use of any commenter's time to try to act as my unofficial assistant and to load up the comments section with lots of pre-game research. I have my own process for that, which I enjoy, and I'm not looking to farm it out.  

One major exception would be foreign language sources that are in formats not easily translatable. I am very grateful to past commenters who have assisted with things like manual translations. This will allow us to get a head start on that kind of process.

 

Here are the next six games:

 

• Warriors of Legend (USA, 1993, DOS, Synergistic): This is the last title to use the World Builder engine that the company debuted in War in Middle Earth (1988) and used in the two Excalibur games, pluse Conan: The Cimmerian (1991). At first glance, it seems to be a more complex game than Conan, with four characters.

• Talisman (UK, 1985, ZX Spectrum, SLUG): I'm skeptical of the game's RPG status, but a couple of sources list it as such. It's based on the popular Games Workshop board game of the same name.

• Hired Guns (UK, 1993, DOS, DMA): Lots of opinions already that it's not an RPG, but both MobyGames and Wikipedia call it such, so it at least gets a BRIEF.

• Realms of Darkness (USA, 1987, Apple II, SSI): The last few times I tried this game, I couldn't get it to work, but I have lots of feedback on how to solve those problems, and I'm ready to try again.

• Pathways into Darkness (USA, 1993, Macintosh, Bungie): Looks like a first-person shooter to me, but I guess maybe it has weapon skills that increase? Again, worth at least a BRIEF.

• Sandor II (Germany, 1990, Atari ST): An early Motelsoft game that I missed on the first pass, it seems to combine top-down outdoor exploration with first-person dungeon exploration.

   

If all goes well, we'll have another of these entries when Sandor II makes it to the "current" list.

 

Phantasy Star: The Gang's All Here

 

No, I must not let my brother die unavenged. You're not the leader here.

    

All right. The solution to my recent conundrum was to keep pestering the guy at the second-hand store in Scion to sell "secrets" until he finally gave in—it took four tries, I believe. (Thanks to George Grady and thekelvingreen.) I don't know how an era player would be expected to figure that out. In any event, the "secrets" turned out to be a Roadpass, allowing me access to the spaceport from either Camineet or Parolit.

     

The spaceport offered a few new encounters and NPCs:

    

• "Long ago, a spaceship was built in the gothic laboratory." Means nothing to me yet.

• "The governor is in Paseo. He rules all of Motavia." So Paseo is on another planet. Got it.

     

The dialogue cut-off is funny here.

     

• "This is Palma's spaceport." I think I could have figured that out. "From the spaceport, you can go to Paseo on Motavia."

• A storefront offered a passport after I answered some questions: "Have you ever done anything illegal?" and "Do you currently have an illness?" Answering yes to either of these gets you kicked out with the admonition to "come back later." Answering no gets you a passport for 100 mesetas.

      

The passport gets me past a couple of guards and to the northern part of the city map, where there are three shuttles. All of them are bound for Motavia, so I guess I can't visit the third planet until later. Oddly, the shuttle trip doesn't seem to cost any money.

         

That is a planet we're flying into, correct?

   

An animation shows us blasting off from Palma, flying through space, and arriving at the desert planet of Motavia. The shuttles in its spaceport are all heading back to Palma. A few NPCs are present:

   

• "It is said that ant lions roam in the desert." I know what an "ant lion" is in real life. In an RPG, it could be a lot of things.

• "There is a cake shop in the cave called Naula on Palma." Why is there a cake shop in a cave? Why is there any kind of shop in a (locked) cave?

• "Welcome to the Paseo spaceport on Motavia." I'm learning that every town has at least one NPC who tells you exactly where you are, in case you haven't been paying attention.

          

Exploring a new world.

       

I walk past two guards to the exit, where a conveyor belt takes me to a larger city full of more stuff. At the first store I stop in, the clerk offers to sell a "rare animal" for 1 billion mesetas. (Part of me wants to know what happens if you grind for 1 billion mesetas and then say "yes.") When I balk, he offers to trade it for the Laconian pot that someone gave me on Camineet. The animal turns out to be "Myau," a talking cat-looking thing with multiple tails and a vial of medicine that he says will cure Odin. He joins me and bounds along behind me as I continue to explore the city.

     

The manual: "An unusual animal who looks like a cat. He speaks the human language." I still feel some more explanation is needed.

     

He also appears as a party member on my status screen. He's Level 1, with no experience and no equipment. The book notes that there are weapons and armor that only he can use.

       

My cat cannot wield a sword. Cats are so useless.

     

As for the rest of the city:

    

• The armory sells a couple of armor upgrades: thick fur for 630 mesetas (that's for Myau, though I don't know for sure that Alis can't use it) and diamond armor for 15,000. 

• The second-hand shop sells passports, but I'm not sure how you'd get here without one.

• There's a dungeon in town with a locked door.

• "Motavia's governor and Lassic are not on good terms, it is said." Sounds like a potential ally.

• "The governor loves sweets, I hear" and "A gift is needed if you wish to see the governor." Ah, I see. Classic console RPG logic. To gain an ally as part of an interplanetary revolution, I'm going to need to give the governor a cake that I bought in a cave—which of course is the only "sweet" in the solar system, in the only shop selling sweets in the solar system.
  

• "This is Paseo, Motavia's capital." There he is again.

• "It's not possible to pass through ant lion on foot." Wait, what is an ant lion here? 

• "Some intelligent monsters have their own language." I guess that's what the CHAT spell is for. It never seems to work, though.

• "There is a cave called Maharu in the mountain to the north of Paseo." Noted. 

      

We exit the town. There is indeed a whole row of ant lions to the north of the city, and walking into them initiates combat. I soon learn that when you have multiple party members, you specify an action for each character in combat, after which they execute together, just as in Wizardry. Myau is killed immediately, so have to reload. 

    

It soon becomes clear that large parts of Motavia are blocked off by lines of ant lions, which is what the NPC meant by not being able to walk through them. We fare better against some giant scorpions, but other enemies on the map are too tough for us, and I decide it's best to head back to Palma and get Odin so we can all grind together. Yes, I know how that sounds.

      

Alis contemplates a sea of ant lions.

     

A couple of passport checks later, we're back on Palma. We rest up, buy some flashlights, and head to the cave. I notice that with Myau in my party, enemies now frequently attack 3 or 4 at a time, when before they were limited to 2. Myau doesn't fare well against multiple enemy parties, so I leave the caves and spend some time grinding him to Level 5 (and Alis to Level 9) before we try again.

    

We reach Odin and open the medicine, which is called "Alsulin." It turns him to flesh. Alis asks him why he tried to kill Medusa, and he replies that she has the Mystic Axe. He also says he stashed a compass somewhere in the cave. When he hears Alis's story, he agrees to join the party: "I must not let your brother die unavenged."

     

Odin's flesh—and clothing—lose their stone form.

     

Odin also joins at Level 1, though with statistics that I didn't get until Level 4. He also has an iron axe and iron armor, which means I don't have to worry about equipping him for a while.

      

Enemies start attacking us 6 at a time as we explore long enough to find Odin's compass. That should get us through the Forest of Eppi. By the time we get back to Camineet, Odin is Level 3, and I have enough money to buy us both iron shields. 

   

The compass does get us through the forest and to the town of Eppi, where:

   

• The armory sells iron axes, needleguns, and bronze shields. Bronze shields are worse than the iron shields I already bought. The iron axe turns out to be so cheap it must suck. Apparently, only Odin can use needleguns. I can't quite afford one, but I'm close enough that I go back outside and do a little grinding.

      

For when you want to annoy the hell out of a bunch of enemies.

    

• "The governor of Motavia might possibly help you well." Right, if I can get him a cake.

• "Noah lives on Motavia." That's supposed to be my third companion. I should probably try to find him sooner rather than later.

• "Are you looking for a dungeon key?" YES. "I've hidden a dungeon key in a warehouse in the outskirts of the Camineet." I didn't realize it was the Camineet.

      

And then there's the NPC who exists only to tell you the town name.

     

• "Dr. Luveno had a laboratory in the Gothic Forest long ago, it is said." Okay, and from what I heard above, some spaceship was built there. Perhaps finding this ship is the key to more open exploration, untethered to the shuttle schedule between Palma and Motavia.

• "Do you know what the hardest, strongest material in our world is?" NO. "It's Laconia! Arms made with Laconia are the best to have." Ah, that's why the pot was so valuable. I thought it was just from New Hampshire.

     

I have no idea what the "warehouse in the outskirts of the Camineet" is, but I take the chance that it's the dungeon that I initially explored, and I'm right. So this is the sort of game where you can't find things ahead of time; you can only find them when certain plot points have been tripped. 

   

We use the dungeon key to enter the cave Iala, south of Scion, where I proceed to waste about 2 hours Being Stubborn. I have no particular reason to be here, and will inevitably have to come back later for some quest item I haven't triggered yet, but I insist on exploring what turns out to be four 16 x 16 "worm tunnel" levels full of traps, chests, and trapped chests. I have to leave to refresh a few times, and at least twice I overextend myself, get killed, and have to reload from outside. 

     

Using my new dungeon key.

     

In the end, Alis is Level 13, Myau is Level 11, and Odin is Level 10. We have over 5,000 mesetas, and we've found an iron fang, which is one of the only weapons that Myau can wield. Myau got magic points at some point, along with a healing spell called CURE that Alis doesn't have.

      

I'm not sure it was worth the time I spent in here.

     

I now want to go find Noah before I spend any more time grinding or make any more decisions about where to spend money. But I figure I should get the cake before heading back to Motavia. Naula turns out to be the dungeon I thought it was, north of Scion. It's also four levels, but smaller than Iala, and with easier monsters and no traps.

   

And yes, on the bottom level, is, inexplicably, a pastry shop. I have to pay 1,000 mesetas for a shortcake.

     

How do you get ingredients down here? How do you have any customers?

    

The party takes the shuttle back to Motavia. I buy some thick fur, confirm that only Myau can use it, and give it to him. The locked dungeon in Paseo, which we now can open with a key, takes us to a small passageway that leads to an island with the governor's mansion. A guard stops us along the way and relieves us of the shortcake.

     

Is this what you dreamed of doing when you were young?

       

The governor turns out to be refreshingly open about his treason: "I am told you intend to try to kill Lassic. I admire your courage. In the Maharu Cave lives an espar named Noah. I will give you a letter of introduction to present to her [an error, I guess; elsewhere, Noah is called a "him"]. I have faith that you will kill Lassic and return here eventually."

      

I intend to kill Lassic. I don't intend to try.

     

The game automatically has us "rest" in the mansion. In our dreams, we're attacked by a "saccubus" with 255 hit points. It kills us all before we've whittled away a fraction of his health, but it turns out to just be a dream, and we awaken no worse for the wear. I'm not sure what that was about.

    

The map in the manual shows only one cave on Motavia. It turns out we can defeat the ant lions now, but it also turns out that they don't disappear after you defeat them, so attacking them is not the key to getting past them. Noah's cave is accessible without needing to cross their lines anyway. 

      

The map even shows the ant lions.

       

Maharu is a two-level affair that I have to roughly map because there are a lot of corridors and intersections. We find Noah on Level 2. He originally expresses annoyance that we're bothering him, but he changes his tune when he sees the letter from the governor: "We must protect the planets of the Algol system from evil." He recommends first going to the Gothic Forest to find Dr. Luveno; a manhole in the spaceport should get us there.

      

That governor must be a persuasive writer.

          

Noah predictably comes at Level 1, with a wooden cane and a white mantle. The manual makes it clear that he's going to be limited to wands and robes for weapons and armor. He also comes with a "Cure" spell.

    

Before we head to the Gothic Forest, I take the party back to Palma for some equipment upgrades. Alis and Odin get ceramic shields from Camineet, ceramic swords from Parolit, and zirconian armor from Scion. That means with the exception of the 15,000-meseta diamond armor in Paseo, I've bought the best of everything so far. I grind Noah a few levels and then head back to Motavia.

    

The party takes the conveyor belt to the spaceport.

   

I can't find a manhole to save my life. I realize Noah never specified the Paseo spaceport. We fly back to Palma, and there it is in the southwest corner of that spaceport.

    

Soon, we're in another dungeon. It's a quick, completely-linear corridor with only one branch that leads to an NPC saying, "I'm busy. Don't bother me." The dungeon exits into a little walled village full of gravestones and empty houses. After I give her a cola, an NPC gives me the story: "This was once the laboratory of Dr. Luveno. He went bonkers, though, and [is] imprisoned in Triada to the south of here." The second-hand shop sells a magic lantern, so I shouldn't need flashlights in dungeons anymore. Another NPC warns me of a nearby tower with a magic beast who turns people to stone. 

      

I'm not sure that a "magic lamp" is necessary. A non-disposable flashlight would have been fine.

      

Outside, it's clear that while underground, we crossed the river west of Camineet and are now on a second continent. I start exploring, find a passage through some mountains, and follow it to a pyramid-looking structure, which I end this session in the midst of exploring.

     

Yet another dungeon.

     

I'll talk about combat before I go. It's frequent and a bit boring, and I don't mind admitting that I've been cranking up the emulator speed to get through it quickly.  As I mentioned, it draws from a base that goes back to Wizardry: Each party member selects an action, and then you watch as the actions execute, threaded with the enemy actions in some kind of invisible initiative order.

      

Facing off against a new enemy.

      

The problem is that the system really isn't that interesting without spells. For most of the game, none of the characters have had any combat spells. At some point, Alis got FIRE, which blasts all enemies in a party for a few points of damage, at the cost of 4 magic points. Its comparison to a physical attack is not significant enough to favor it over saving those spell points for healing. She also recently got ROPE, which entangles an enemy for a round, so perhaps I'll find that interesting the next time I face a really tough enemy. (CHAT hasn't worked once. Neither has the "Talk" action, even on humanoid enemies). Myau and Noah don't really have anything better.

      

These guys seem cute.

    

Perhaps the bigger issue is that battles are too frequent to micromanage them with spells that may offer a slight edge but don't make a crucial difference in whether you win or lose. I've found that combat is a very binary affair: either the party whomps an enemy or gets whomped by it. If the latter is true, spending another 20 minutes grinding seems to be a better solution than slowing down every combat to experiment with things like ROPE. I think Final Fantasy offered more clear advantages to spellcasting, with a greater variety of interesting spells. I'll report again when I've achieved some more spell levels.

    

More on wherever the hell I am next time.

 

Time so far: 8 hours