Omega: Sort-of Won!

Not a terribly exciting winning screen. But then, I didn't win in a terribly exciting way.

Unfortunately, Omega has a few bugs. It happens even with the best software. They started creeping into the gameplay shortly after I finished the Goblin Caves. Items got renamed with nonsense characters. When I hold a two-handed weapon, the game sometimes thinks it's two separate items and assigns me the weight of both. I deposited 4,000 gold in the bank, and it was gone when I returned. An outdoor fight went bad, and all my commands just made nonsense characters appear on the screen.

I am actually armed with an Axe +6, not "gold pieces +6," and I am wearing a ring of strength +2, not an "0^C^A)F&&\%fuX&&\^A +2."

But not all the bugs are bad. I went to the pawn shop and asked for an item letter that wasn't being displayed. I was told that that item (another random string of characters) cost -67,348 gold. I bought it, and suddenly had over 70,000 gold pieces. With this money, I bought a condo and retired--the game's least satisfying way of winning.


I'm not actually going to end the game here. I restored an earlier save from before I made the transaction. But it might get to the point where there are so many bugs I can no longer play. We'll see how long I can go on.

On the real main quest, the sewers beneath Rampart were rendered a bit faster by a series of elevators. In only about an hour, I was exploring Level 18, where I found the Great Wyrm. It took me three or four reloads to kill him, but ultimately I got his head and the duke's sword, and I headed for the surface. I didn't find any elevators on the way back, so getting out took considerably longer than getting in.


Returning to the duke, I was congratulated, promoted, and asked to kill a dragon and get some dragonscale armor. I have no idea where to find it. Meanwhile, the Oracle wanted me to find the ArchMage's Castle.


More references discovered: Occasionally, you encounter a parrot in the dungeons. If you kill it, the game says "the parrot is dead!" in a probable Monty Python reference. (I've already risked your disdain by telling you about my dislike for anime and Lord of the Rings, so I'll also confess that I can't stand Monty Python.) If it's not, the "holy hand grenade" I discovered in the ArchMage's Castle certainly is. In the sewers, I found a "rodent of unusual size" from The Princess Bride. There were banshees, but spelled sort-of like the original Gaelic way, "ban-sidhe." There were also some Tritons from Greek legend.

With no particular idea where to go next, I began exploring the outdoors. As I said early in posting about this game, wandering the wilds is annoying because you get hungry every two or three steps. You have to carry dozens of buckets of food with you to keep from starving to death. Aside from that, the outdoor area seems quite large. I found a few towns scattered about, and each helped me with a map shop that gave me a map of the surrounding area.


This would be a good time to mention the economy, which is excellent in this game. As I discussed long ago, I like the process of collecting gold and spending it, and I don't like games that leave you with nothing to do with your riches. I don't think that's a problem here. Between the condo at 50,000 gold, working out at the gym, buying things in the pawn shop, recharging spell points, buying maps, and donating to charities (if you're lawful), I don't think there's any way to have too much money.

The outdoor map is large, and all kinds of things can happen on it, including "chaos storms" that either kill you or leave you having "learned something" and thus with more experience. There are also random encounters that take you to a "tactical map." With all of the difficulties, it would be nice if all of the dungeons and castles were visible on the map, but they're not: you have to "search" for them, and with such a large map it's hard to imagine searching every step. Fortunately, in the case of the ArchMage's Castle, I found a secret mountain pass that obviously led to something, and so I knew enough to search at the end.


Finally, as I close for the day, on Level 2 of the ArchMage's Castle, this might be the truest-to-life experience I've ever had playing a CRPG:

Casa Mia, Kennewick, WA, 2002. Trying to impress a girl. Ended up at Kennewick General Hospital instead.