Magic Candle: Final Rating

The Magic Candle
United States

Mindcraft Software
Released 1989 for DOS, C64, Apple II; PC-88 version followed in 1991 and NES version in 1992
Date Started: 2 September 2012
Date Won: 12 October 2012
Total Hours: 70
Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)
Final Rating: 52

Ranking at Time of Posting: 67/75 (89%)
Ranking at Game 455: 430/455 (95%)

Since I started this blog, I've played a lot of games in which I've doubtless been affected by the nostalgia factor. I remember Ultima IV, Ultima V, Pirates!, the Zork series, and other games so fondly that I don't doubt they've colored my views of how well the games play today.

Playing The Magic Candle, for the first time, I experienced a sort-of déjà-vu nostalgia: the sense that I'd played the game before and remembered it fondly, even though I never had. It probably had something to do with its similarity to the two previous Ultimas, plus the copious comments you've all been feeding me since roughly the beginning of my blog.

There were aspects of The Magic Candle that I really enjoyed: having to talk to NPCs to learn about the quests and characters; the skill development system; the party-splitting options; and the permancy of death of monsters in dungeons. But there were aspects I didn't like, too, including the repetitiveness of combats and the overall speed of the game. Even though it dragged in the latter stages, I did have a lot of fun with it. Let's see how well my GIMLET reflects that.

1. Game World. Lots of points here for a manual and game world full of lore and history. Dreax has an interesting back story, the land has geographic enclaves with their own populations and character (i.e., a dwarven region, an elven region, a halfling city). The manual rivals the Ultima series for its detail and attention to story, and your character's origins and place in the world is very clear. The game world is persistent: enemies stay dead (outdoors, they respawn every 90 days, but indoors they never do), traps stay triggered, and magic walls stay dispelled. I wish there had been more attention to the evolving game world when it came to NPCs, though. Most of them say the same things no matter how far you are in the game.

There are times that the interface doesn't live up to the world. In many ways, The Magic Candle occupies a weird space between the realism we start to see in an era of more disk space and processing power and goofy arcade-game tropes of previous years. We have dungeons with unique characters (an orc town, a wizard's tower) but silly maze puzzles and snakes that have to be "repelled" with a special spell. Neat encounters coupled with chutes and ladders. Plus, the "gods" system really doesn't make a lot of sense (why are they sleeping?). Score: 7.

A page from the lore-filled manual, courtesy of Canageek.

2. Character Creation and Development. It's refreshing to play a skill-based system now and then, but like the game world there were some oddities. You don't create a character in the game; every potential PC comes to you with a defined set of statistics, and you interview and hire them. The only real choice you have is naming your main character. Development comes in a lot of ways:

• Melee, missile, and magic skills improve through use and can also be trained up to a certain level at academies.
• Learning skill and charisma can only be trained--charisma, only by a single trainer.
• Hunting improves only through use.
• Strength, maximum stamina (the game's version of "hit points"), agility, and dexterity improve through a multi-stage process by which you awaken gods with their chants to increase your maximums, then find fountains in dungeons to increase the actual number.
• Speed improves when you visit elven maidens and request their unique songs.

I think I forgot to cover elven maidens earlier. There wasn't much else to them, though.

On the one hand, these various things give you a lot to do in the game; on the other, some of them don't really make a lot of sense. I might have preferred a more purely use-driven system rather than one that uncomfortably combines elements of Rings of Zilfin and Wasteland.

My biggest complaint is that you max your skills too fast. Halfway through the game, almost all my characters were maxed in combat skills (admittedly, I might have added to this via over-training). I also don't like that you can only awaken each god once. Improving statistics like strength is vital, and if you awaken a couple of gods with certain characters, you're locked into those characters unless you want to live with significantly lower statistics. [Later edit: It seems I'm wrong about this. See Four Hands's comment below.] I'm not sure how much having a second roster of PCs at Crystal Castle really added to the game.

On the plus side, the results of skill increases are palpable, whether it's finally being able to talk to a PC because you increased your charisma, or spells taking a lot less time to learn because of "learning" increases, or more damage done in combat due to weapon bonuses, or being able to wield a better weapon because your strength went up. Score: 6.

Giauz at game's end. I guess I could have worked on his magic some more.

3. NPCs. God help me, I have a weakness for games where you feed NPCs keywords, learn things, and have to take notes. In some ways, this game goes Ultima IV-V one better by giving you NPCs you encounter randomly on the roads, too (dwarves that sell gems, farmers that sell food, merchants that sell teleportal objects, and knights, wizards, elves, and other characters that just have things to say), plus characters who stay in their houses and have to be roused by knocking on their doors--but only if other NPCs have told you their names.

An NPC in his home, with intelligence vital to the main quest.

But, as with everything else in the game, there were slight annoyances. I didn't like how NPCs disappeared at times, and you had to loop around a city multiple times to make sure you caught everyone. I didn't like that the NPCs never asked you anything back, giving you no roleplaying options. And I didn't like that almost everything they said was plot-driven. Ultima IV-V had NPCs who would chat with you a little bit, too, offering words of wisdom or funny observations. Magic Candle NPCs are also a bit soulless, even when you ought to be able to differentiate them based on things like race and job. Still, The Magic Candle outperforms almost every other game of the era when it comes to NPCs. Score: 6.

This clue was vital. Most NPCs respond to each prompt only once. Without this, I would never have known to keep asking the mad wizard the same term until he finally gave me the ring.

4. Encounters and Foes. Different types of monsters are described in detail in the game manual, and they do have different attacks and behaviors according to type. But with the exception of high-level and rare creatures like Dreads, I did find them somewhat unmemorable. There were no scripted encounters and no real role-playing options at any point in the game. Outdoor areas respawn after a few months; indoor areas don't. Normally, I regard respawning and grinding opportunities to be good things, but in this game there were far more monsters than necessary. Score: 4.

5. Magic and Combat. This is a tough one. On the one hand, as I described in an early posting, there are a number of tactical options in combat, ranging from party deployment, to intelligent use of mushrooms, to figuring out whether to use swords or bows, to casting the right spells. It's much more fun at the beginning, when your characters are undeveloped and your resources are limited. Towards the end of the game, you have enough money to keep a full supply of mushrooms stocked, which eliminates a lot of the need for careful planning: you can just go into every battle loaded up with mushrooms, cast all the spells you want (Sermins will restore that energy fast), and not worry too much about the consequences.

The magic system, as I covered recently, is interesting and well-balanced. Even when I got the mass-damage spells from the Zoxinn book, I didn't think they were overpowered; indeed, they compensated for the multiple-enemy part by reducing the potency of the spells. It's not as intricate as the D&D spell list, nor is spell use something that you have to manage as carefully as the Wizardry series, but it outperforms most games of the era, including the Ultima series. Score: 5.

Towards the end, combat was only really fun when the enemies were hard, and you had to bring all your resources to bear.

6. Equipment. Not the best part of the game. You have a selection of a few melee weapon types, two bows, and six or seven armor types. You upgrade your weapons when your strength allows it and your armor when you can afford it; both are rare. There is one magic weapon to find but otherwise you rarely get any development through equipment upgrades. There are a few other plot-driven equipment types, like shovels, ropes, boots, and teleportal objects, but once you have enough money you just buy some and don't really think about it after that. I didn't think the "wear & tear" system really added a lot to the game.

What would otherwise be a low score is redeemed a little by the mushroom system. There are eight mushrooms in the game, each with a different purpose, and using them in the right combinations is vital to surviving combat and navigating the wilderness. In some ways, it's not much different than a lot of other CRPGs, if you substitute "potion" for "mushroom," but it's still interesting. I'm not sure why the game made such a fuss about being able to find mushrooms in the wilderness, though. They're not that expensive to buy, and about mid-game you have more gold than you know what to do with. Score: 4.

The purchase options in the general store.

7. Economy. A little unbalanced. You get paltry gold from melee combat (more of it might have made battles less annoying) and heaps of gold from finding gems in dungeons or buying them from wandering dwarf traders. Mushrooms, spellbooks, and training are so vital that I was hoarding pennies during the first third of the game, but I never worried about money again after I started exploring the first dungeons. I like the gambling mini-game, but I never got a handle on a good strategy and it didn't help me much. Score: 4.

8. Quests. I do like the main quest. Although it's a variation of  "stop the big bad," it's an original one, with a unique ending. I like the multiple stages that you have to progress through to get to the end, and how after finding the Zirvanad, it's basically non-linear. There are only a couple of things that we might call "side-quests," like finding the sword Brennix or cleaning out enemy towers in towns. Although I normally like side-quests, I'm not sure they'd serve a significant purpose here, since you don't really need the extra development or cash--which is more a problem for those categories. I just wish we'd finally break into the era in which there are some choices and multiple endings for quests. Yes, we've had a few of them before, but it's still not a regular part of the CRPG experience.

I'm also going to toss in a point for the timer system, even though it hardly mattered. There aren't many timed quests in the era, and this system keeps you from completely abusing the game mechanics by, say, resting until your spellcasters have memorized 99 of every spell. My score of 4 for this category seems low, but I'm hardly ranking anything high in this era, and I won't until quests start offering some real role-playing.

I don't think this quite counts as an "alternate ending."

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. The iconographic graphics are reasonably good, and I like how occasionally you switch to a side-view for a special encounter. They certainly don't detract at all. The sound effects in the DOS version are awful. I think we're just on the cusp of the era when the PC speaker gave way proper sound cards like AdLib and Sound Blaster, and I look forward to hearing better sound soon.

The interface swiftly became second-nature to me, so no complaints there, except perhaps with the conversation system, which has two separate commands and boots you out of conversation after every successful keyword. I also find the inability to move diagonally (especially when enemies can) a bit unforgivable. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. The Magic Candle features a large world, all of which is explorable from the beginning of the game. Although there is a natural geographic progression, the game is completely explorable from the outset, leading to a real tension as you extend yourself further from a comfortable home base. Features such as teleportals and ships keep from having to do too much backtracking over land. The dungeons, though perhaps a bit too large, are interesting to explore.

While I found the overall difficulty moderate, the combats are simply exasperating by game's end, and it drags on a bit too long because of this. I also can't see much replayability here. Yes, you could try a different party of PCs, but aside from a little extra challenge in combat, I think you'd have basically the same game no matter how you played. Score: 5.

The score stands at 49 right now, but hang on. We have to award some bonus points for something that doesn't fit into the other categories: the party-splitting option. Although Wasteland offered it first, this is the first game that truly makes use of it. I love how you can set a character to working a day job while his compatriots adventure; how you can keep a mage holed up in an inn memorizing spells while your fighter trains at an academy while your halfling wanders around town talking to the populace. It caught me by such surprise that I didn't really optimize how I used it until almost a third of the way through the game. I can't think of a single modern game that offers this option at this level (admittedly, I haven't played them all), and I liked it enough that I think it's worth an extra 3 points, giving a real final score of 52. That puts it in the top 14% of games and ranks exactly where I would have placed it in my preferences: above most games, but below the last two Ultimas, the two Might & Magics, Starflight, Wasteland, and Pool of Radiance.

I liked party-splitting far less when it was necessary to navigate dungeon corridors.

Although a lot of people seem to have forgotten about the game in the modern day, it was very well-received at the time. In an April 1989 Computer Gaming World article that combines plays on "flame," "wax," and "paraffin," Scorpia positively glowed about it. While noting the slow combat system and a few other negatives, she praises the game-ending ritual: "There is something very satisfying about a finale that does not require an anti-climactic battle or the passive reading of text on the screen." (Scorpia was never shy about spoilers.) She concluded that it was a "well-balanced CRPG with several good and original features." More than that, the magazine gave it its RPG "Game of the Year" award in October 1989--which really says something, because Pool of Radiance was another nominee. (While I agree with their praise for The Magic Candle's skill system and party-splitting, I can't even begin to agree that it's a better game than Pool of Radiance.)

Finally, the magazine re-visited the game in a superlative-filled November 1996 issue, in which it won the "Most Rewarding Ending of All Time." "Instead of fighting a massive battle at the conclusion," it says, "you enact a detailed ritual using--you guessed it--magic candles." Well, no, CGW; the final ritual involves only one candle, and you don't really "use" it. But while I liked the ending of the game, would it have been too much to ask for a massive final battle and the ritual?

(Incidentally, I was happy to see that Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic topped the list of "Least Rewarding Endings of All Time": "You win and immediately drop to the DOS prompt.")

This is the second game from developer Ali Atabek and the first from his own company, Mindcraft Software. His first game, Rings of Zilfin (which I won over two years ago), seems to have been set in a different game world but with many of the same terms, including the names of mushrooms. Mindcraft would go on to make 12 more games but only four CRPGs, and all of them set in the world of The Magic Candle: The Keys to Maramon (1990), The Magic Candle II: The Four and Forty (1991), The Magic Candle III (1992), and Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale (1993). That means I'll be returning to this campaign setting every year for the next four years.

Atabek went to Interplay in 1994 and only worked on one CRPG after that: a 1997 adaptation of the film Waterworld. It looks like he left the game business around 1998 and has held a number of consulting and software development jobs in various companies since then. He's currently an application developer with Eyefinity, an Irvine, California company that specializes in software for the eyecare industry.

And with that, it's time to move on. I think I need to make a NetHack posting or two before I forget how to play the game.