Don't Go Alone: Won! (With Final Rating)

To paraphrase from the esteemed Doctor Cox: "Good god in heaven, Don't Go Alone, there are just so very many ways for me to say this to you: Never; not in a million years; absolutely not; no way, Jose; no chance, Lance; nyet; negatory; mm-mm; nuh-uh; uh-uh; and of course my own personal favorite of all time, man falling off a cliff, NNNNOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo....pff."

          
Don't Go Alone
United States
Sterling Silver Software (developer); Accolade (publisher)
Released 1989 for DOS
Date Started: 3 December 2012
Date Won: 6 December 2012
Total Hours: 10
Difficulty: Easy (1/5)
Final Rating: 18
Ranking at Time of Posting: 7/73 (10%)

Ranking at Game #455: 114/455 (25%)

          

Don't Go Alone, aside from being a somewhat boring, pointless game, committed an unpardonable sin in the final act. For the first seven levels, I ground against monster after monster, getting experience point rewards of around 500-2000 each. My characters increased an average of 1.5 character levels per game level, which felt like steady progress.

Suddenly, on the last three levels, the dynamic changed. Encounters against much tougher creatures--blood demons, demon lords, stone giants, "powers"--became the norm, delivering experience point rewards of 40,000 or more per battle.

This was the highest experience point total I received.

"What's the problem?" you ask. It's this: the game caps you at Level 10, which you reach at 300,000 experience points. All my characters hit Level 10 while they were still on Dungeon Level 7. For the next three levels, I was getting hundreds of thousands of experience points for no reason. I ended the game with well over 1 million experience points--700,000 more than I needed. Level caps are annoying enough, but to have them so easily reachable well before the final stages of the game is simply unforgivable.

The end came very swiftly after my--I'm sorry, but that level cap thing is completely indefensible. What the hell were they thinking?! The only thing this game had going for it was steady character development, and they utterly ruined it. How do these developers sleep at night? No wonder they never made another RPG; RPG players must have been organizing a boycott of this company. 1.1 million experience points, of which only 300,000--that's less than 30%--do any good! Jesus.

See how I have 1,021,087 experience points here? This screen looked exactly the same back when I had 300,000 experience points.

Right. Okay. Sorry. The end came very swiftly after my last posting. I found two gold keys in random combats on Level 7. There were some corridors that shocked my characters with violent images of corpses and such, raising their fear with every step, but otherwise it was no big deal. Levels 8 and 9 were co-joined, with multiple stairways up and down. I had to visit five areas on Level 9 from Level 8--corresponding with the chambers of someone's sons (the back story was unclear here, perhaps from the lack of a manual), in each finding a scrap of paper with part of a spell I would need against the Ancient One. If you're interested, it combined uranium, neodymium, thorium, and titanium.

If I ever become an evil warlord, the first thing I'm going to do is have my minions sweep up any scraps of paper that give clues about how to defeat me.

From Level 8, the five gold keys unlocked a series of doors leading to Level 10. 

A small part of the huge Level 10.

Level 10 was huge, with chambers for I think every creature in the game. Although I wasn't getting any more levels, I did increase significantly in firepower, going from weapons that did an average of 8-10 points of damage to those that did 50-60 points in just a few minutes. I ended the game with three characters with bazookas and one with a "spirit wand," which appears to be the game's most powerful weapon but only usable by the psychic.

When I first stumbled on Level 10, I had trouble--for the first sustained time in the game--against  many of the foes, but this was soon rectified with the better weapons, and the game became easy again.

I'll also have them look for notes that outline the secret path to my lair.

There were a number of navigation puzzles in the level, making it simultaneously more interesting and more annoying than the previous 9. At one point, I thought I'd fully explored the level and couldn't figure out what to do next, but my grandfather (psychically, I guess) whispered to me to use the "auric acid" spell. I wasn't sure where to use it, so I just used it on a wall near where I got his message, and sure enough it brought me to a teleporter.

This is not a puzzle you solve through trial and error.

The teleporter dumped me in a large maze that I could only escape via a secret door. At that point, I was in an area full of one-square rooms, surrounded by secret doors, in which a misstep sent me back to the beginning of the level. Clues to navigate this maze were written in the walls of the dungeon, but I had written them down wrong, so it took me a while to find the right path. At the end of it was the Ancient One.

The Ancient One looks suitably terrifying, I have to admit.

I lost my first two fights against the Ancient One. Losing sends you back to Level 1, on the first square of the maze. I wasn't having any of that, and I reloaded both times before I found the combination of offensive spells, weapons, and defensive spells that seemed to do the trick. Or perhaps it was just luck. In any event, he died.

It doesn't look like he's been treating grandpa very well.

With the Ancient One's death, my grandfather and I (I still don't know which of my characters' grandfather he was) were reunited, and we fled the mansion just ahead of its self-destruction. Since the mansion was equal in size to 10 Boeing factories stacked on top of each other, I assume news of its destruction was carried on CNN around the world.

This sequence of images was probably the best part of the game:

Okay: A) What does it mean that my grandfather is "vindicated"?; and B) Doesn't it look like there's only four of us escaping the mansion? What happened to grandpa? After all that, did we leave him behind?

The game immediately offered me the opportunity to take my Level 10 characters back to Level 1 and take another jaunt down through the maze, which I would not do if I were locked in prison and this game was literally my only form of entertainment.

If you do choose to return, you get this message. How did he rebuild it so quickly?! It was a smoldering ruin just moments ago!

I have to say, though, that the series of cut screens redeemed the game a bit. I am a bit of a sucker for a scripted, cinematic ending. We don't get many of those, but I've been lucky enough to experience four or five in a row.

Let's GIMLET this game and get out of here.

1. Game World. This one is tough to assess because I never found a manual, so I'm not sure how much back story it provided. What I can say is that in-game, there's hardly any story. You never learn what the Ancient One is doing, why he's trapped your grandfather, or the history of the mansion. I would have been prepared to give the game some credit for its horror setting except it doesn't really have one. It feels much more like a standard high fantasy game with the exception of guns and modern-looking characters. The mansion is huge and mostly empty. Score: 2.

2. Character Creation and Development. Good on the surface, lousy in reality. You can only choose from 16 pre-rolled characters--one of each of four classes--and your only real option is to set the names. The four classes really don't distinguish themselves during gameplay, except by what weapons and armor they can and cannot use. For instance, I didn't find the "chemist" notably better at formulas, nor was there anything technical for the "technician" to do. Level progress is steady for 3/4 of the game, and the characters get palpably more powerful, but I don't have to repeat what happens at the end. Score: 2.

Choosing among three homely women and "Kotar"--I think that's a Cree name--for my psychic.

3. NPC Interaction. No NPCs, not even any that say single lines. Score: 0.

4. Encounters and Foes. There are no encounters that offer any role-playing choices at all, just a few puzzles that, until the end, weren't notable. The "foes" are diverse in name and graphic, but not in how you combat them. They don't even do different kinds of damage--just different intensity of damage. Areas do respawn if you want to grind, and the encounters are a balance between fixed and random. Score: 2.

Could this vampire possibly be more cliched?

5. Magic and Combat. You have only the most basic options in combat: attack, cast, flee. There are really no tactics, except perhaps to know exactly when to cast that healing (fear reduction spell). Combat is extremely rote and boring for these reasons. The "chemical formula" system of magic sounds like a good idea but just comes across as stupid and clumsy, although I suppose it's interesting that you sometimes only get partial formulas and have to find clues to fill in the rest. Mildly interesting. I found most of the spells useless except for the mapping spell, the most powerful "fear reduction" spell I had at any given moment, "auric acid" (a puzzle spell), and the final protection spell against the Ancient One. Score: 2.

Reducing my fear with a few spells.

6. Equipment. Perhaps the only tolerable part of the game, and even then not very. I admit that armor and weapon progression was fairly satisfying--you find something new almost every level--and there was a wide variety of utility items and protection items that (theoretically) made the game easier. The problem was that although the game assured me that my "string of garlic" was offering some protection against undead, it was hard to really see it. Nowhere do you see any statistics on how much damage you or your enemies are doing, nor how much you're deflecting.

The demon lord had a machine gun the entire time, but all he did was snarl and howl at me.

On the other hand, the variety of weapons and armor was just silly--a weird combination of swords and guns, medieval armor and SCUBA gear. The idea that three characters could attack repeatedly in narrow mansion corridors with bazookas or elephant guns is just nonsense. And a lot of it was just worthless. I carried mirrors and compasses until the end of the game that I never used. Much was made of my technician finding an "atomic generator," but as far as I could tell it only powered a few mid-range weapons that I discarded when I found better ones. Score: 3.

Somehow, this fits into my backpack.

7. Economy. None. Score: 0.

8. Quests. The game has a main quest with only one outcome, and I still can't help but make fun of it a bit. Sure, one's grandfather is a valued member of the family, but a quest to rescue him doesn't feel exactly...epic. I mean, can you think of any book or film in which the rescue of a grandparent drives the story? Anyway, no side quests, no alternate outcomes, and no role-playing. Score: 2.

Man, I'm still burned about that level cap thing. That was such rubbish.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. These are the only features for which I give the game credit. The hallways, though featureless, weren't hard on the eyes, and the monster portraits were varied and well-designed. There was nothing special about the sound--a lot of blooping--but nothing offensive. The controls couldn't have been easier, and in every stage the input options are clearly listed on the screen. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. "Non-linear" only in the sense that the levels are huge, and I suppose you could charge down them at your own pace. The game was too easy and, because it was too easy, with no interesting encounters, it was too long. I can't see any reason to replay it, which makes it all the more odd that the game gives you the ability to do that immediately. Score: 1.

The final rating is 18, tying the game with Galdregon's Domain, and reflecting how little I enjoyed it. The funny thing is, in broad strokes it doesn't appear a lot different than The Dark Heart of Uukrul: both feature dungeon exploration through relatively (graphically) featureless corridors, lots of combat, and a party of four characters with distinct professions. There are a lot of ways that this game "sells" on paper; it was just blundered in execution.

As I said in my first posting, it was a weird one-shot for the developers and companies involved. None of them appear to have prior experience with CRPGs, and one wonders what made them decide to dive into the market. Don't Go Alone really does feel like it was written by people with little CRPG experience. I tried to find an e-mail address for Dennis Koble, who's still in the software business, but I was unable.

Well, at least I contributed to the literature. If it wasn't for these recent postings and one walkthrough, the game would barely be mentioned in the last 22 years. Chuck has commented a few times on these postings, and I hope he comments here on what drew him to even create a walkthrough for this game (it looks like he also played it without a manual) despite what appears to be a distinct lack of enthusiasm for it:

Q: Where's the complete item list? Why didn't you find all the keys? What kind of a FAQ writer are you?
A: The lazy kind. If you find things that I've missed, let me know and I'll add them in. Or just write your own FAQ--you might not have noticed, but mine's the only one around at the moment.

A couple of reviews are mysteriously positive. MobyGames reviewer "Mr. Hapton" calls it "a decent RPG." He seems to find value in the monsters and the "formulas," although he admits that he might be seeing the game through rose-colored glasses because his dad gave it to him. More baffling is the rave by Bob Guerra, writing in the February 1990 QuestBusters, whose questionable tastes are best encapsulated in a few of his lines:

• "One of the things that I really like about Don't Go Alone is the way its combat system tosses together a wide variety of totally unrelated elements with no rhyme, reason, or excuse." That's one of the things you "really like"? Thematic consistency is bad?
• "Best of all, you won't have to save up a fortune in gold to afford these weapons. Everything you need during the game can either be found lying around, or retrieved after slaying specific monsters." Here, he's somehow managing to put a positive spin on the game not having any economy.
• "It's the type of game that makes you want to keep going." I don't even...I need a drink.

At least Scorpia came through. In the November 1989 Computer Gaming World, she lamented the lack of puzzles and said that "the game [has] a very empty feel. There is no real substance to it. Walking along corridor after corridor, going through empty room after empty room, with nothing much to do besides fight monsters, soon becomes boring." She concluded that it was for "beginners only." Glad to have some vindication.

All right, Drakkhen lovers: Before you get too excited, we're going to be taking a little detour to an early CRPG (it's a surprise), and then I need to play NetHack for a while before I forget how. But Drakkhen is the next new game. I've never seen it before and have very little idea what to expect.

With the vacancy, Girlfriend Construction Set just floated to the bottom of the "coming up" list. Don't bother telling me it's not a CRPG: MobyGames says it is, and there's no way I'm not giving this one a try.