Hillsfar: Final Rating

 
Hillsfar

Westwood Associates (developer), Strategic Simulations (publisher)

Released 1989 for DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64; 1990 for PC-98; 1992 for NES

Date Started: 27 February 2013
Date Ended: 28 February 2013
Total Hours: 8
Difficulty: Moderate-Easy (2.5/5)
Final Rating: 31
Ranking at Time of Posting:  43/86 (50%)

I'm a little annoyed that I didn't play Hillsfar before Curse of the Azure Bonds. I had this idea that it was unrelated to the Gold Box games, but after playing it, I realize it was definitely meant to fall in between Pool of Radiance and Curse. I'm particularly upset by an anonymous reader's comment that completing this game produced a few more journal entries in Curse. I looked through the journal entries and found a few candidates.

Granted, these NPCs show up in these places regardless, but it still would have been nice to have this extra flavor.

Knowing all of this makes the game feel more like what it is: a brief diversion in between two superior games, providing some additional context to the region and some additional experience points. You could run your entire party through the guild quests, one by one, and end up with an exported Pool party a level higher when they start Curse.

A 2004 GameSpy article on the "history of D&D video games" encapsulates Hillsfar perfectly:

Neither fish nor fowl, Hillsfar was the first attempt at a Dungeons & Dragons game by then-unknown, Westwood Studios. Hillsfar was basically a series of mini games masquerading as a role-playing game. The story was simple enough; you played a wandering adventurer who came to the town of Hillsfar in search of wealth. When you arrive, you're stripped of your armor and equipment and need to use all your wits to escape from the town. In the process you'll go through many arcade game challenges, including riding on a racing horse over hurdles, an archery shooting gallery, one-on-one arena combat, and picking locks using a full set of lockpicks. While some of the games were fun, none of them could hold a player's interest that long and most ended up giving up on a failed experiment.

The game feels very much like an "experiment." What's all the more striking is that I don't think any of the innovations in Hillsfar lived beyond the game, which is too bad. It would have been fun to see the lockpicking mini-game, for instance, employed in the context of a true RPG. In the Gold Box games, when you want to pick a door or chest lock with a thief, you just choose "Pick Lock" from a menu, and a random roll determines success or failure; adding the mini-game as an option would have been a lot of fun; alas, we had to over a decade before we saw a lockpicking mini-game again (unless someone did it before Oblivion), and it wasn't as good.

The best part of the game. Fast-paced and challenging.

 
Or consider the way the game seamlessly blends action and attributes in the archery mini-game. You have to carefully control your aim by using keypad to nudge a constantly-agitating crosshair while simultaneously timing the firing. A character with high dexterity gets a crosshair that shakes much less than a character with low dexterity. A similar combination of action and attributes governs arena combat and lockpicking. I think that horseback riding is all action, though.

All classes have to prove themselves in the archery mini-game at some point.

The main interface is also a step up from the Gold Box series, supplying a top-down navigation map while still offering a first-person perspective. This is yet another element that wasn't transferred to later games. It really is too bad that these innovative elements weren't employed in the context of a better RPG.

I started a second game with a magic-user character because I wanted to see how the quests and games differ. They don't, really. Neither magic-users or clerics cast a single spell in the game (except goofy ones in taverns), and the only thing that varies among classes is that non-thieves don't have lockpicks. I think magic users can use the "Rod of Blasting" my thief kept finding to clear out obstacles on the horseback trails.

The one thing that changes for the classes are a few silly options in the taverns, none of which amount to much.

 
To compensate for the lack of lockpicks for non-thieves, such characters are frequently solicited by thief NPCs, who will join (and thus allow access to the lockpicking mini-game) for half the discovered gold. Although a good idea, the artifice simply conspires to ensure that every player has essentially the same game regardless of class, with the exception of the specific guild-based excuses for breaking into various buildings and riding to various places on horseback.

I thus didn't play very far with my magic-user, but I did take several minutes of annotated video to give you a sense of how the game and its mini-games operate. I'm curious about your reactions to this. I've moved into an office that produces an annoying echoing effect when I record things in it--at least until I get more stuff on the walls--so I thought I'd try an unnarrated video with more text annotations instead. It takes longer to make than voice-over recordings, but I imagine it might be easier for some of you to watch.

A quick GIMLET, then:

• 3 points for the game world. The game basically "fits" in theme and setting between Pool and Curse, but although the manual sets up an intriguing story about a city under the grip of a tyrant, the gameplay makes essentially no use of the story. The iron-fisted rule of Maalthiir is simply an excuse to have no weapons or magic in the game.

• 2 points for character creation and development. Like the game's back story, character creation is just a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Your character class determines only what guild you join; gameplay is otherwise the same. This means that dexterity and strength are going to be the two paramount attributes for any character, regardless of class: you need them to dodge traps, force locks, and perform well in arena combat. This is one of the few RPGs in which a magic-user with an intelligence of 5 could still succeed wildly. You get experience for quest completion and arena combats, but so little that my multi-class fighter/thief didn't rise a level during the game.

• 4 points for NPC interaction. There isn't much of it, but you do get wandering salesfolk, informers, guild masters, waitresses, and bar patrons. There are no dialogue options among them, nor many choices to make, but these interactions do help teach you about the game world and advance the plot.

• 2 points for encounters and foes. There are essentially neither in the game, with the exception of the arena combats. But the game does do one thing well by having bar patrons talk about the foes you'll be facing in the arena, offering tips to help you plan a combat strategy.

 

• 2 points for magic and combat. There's no magic. The limited combat in the arena is action-oriented: a series of feints, blocks, and attacks from the right, left, or forward. We've had action combat before--Drakkhen, Galdregon's Domain, and Times of Lore among them--and in general I've given these games low ratings for lack of tactics. The mini-game in Hillsfar is a little better than these, but overall this is one of the few RPGs in which combat doesn't play a major part in the gameplay.

• 2 points for equipment. One of the few RPGs in which your character doesn't carry weapons or armor. The equipment you do have is limited to healing potions, knock rings, lock picks, and Rods of Blasting--all designed to make the mini-games easier.

• 3 points for the economy. You get gold from chests and quest completion, and the gold is necessary to keep a good supply of your limited equipment items, plus buy bits of information from NPCs on the street or in taverns. There's a bank where you can store it to protect yourself from the occasional thief or guard that steals it all. I would say that the quest rewards provide too much, making it unnecessary to explore random houses for it, but if the game had forced me to do a lot of that, it would have just annoyed me.

• 3 points for the quests. I have to say, I'm a sucker for the "guild-based" quest system where you show up, get an assignment, complete it relatively quickly, and turn it in for the next quest. It takes even a boring game like this and propels it forward briskly. We've only seen such a system with a few other games, like Star Command. Unfortunately, there are no role-playing choices to make and no alternate outcomes. The game does a reasonable job mixing and matching its limited gameplay options in its quests.

If it was lying outside the chest, why did I have to open the chest to find it? This game's insistence on tying almost all quest-based progression to chests is a little absurd.

 

• 5 points for graphics, sound and interface. All okay. We've exited the "bloop" era for sounds, and effects like arena blows and galloping horses sound realistic, but there are very few of them in the game. The graphics are pretty and the limited controls are easy to master. I liked the map/first person split screen while navigating the town. The only place I really had any kind of problem was in the arena, and I'm willing to admit that I'm just not very good at that style of combat.

• 3 points for gameplay. Though boring, trite, linear, and repetitive, the gameplay has three things going for it: it's pitched at a good difficulty level, it offers some minimum amount of replayability for different classes (if you really care to see what all the guilds have to offer), and it doesn't last very long. When a game isn't very good, it can only be redeemed by not wearing out its welcome.

As you can see, Hillsfar doesn't excel in any area, and the final score comes to a measly 29, the lowest I've given a non-1970s game since Don't Go Alone. I'm going to us my "bonus" category to bump it up to 31, though, to recognize the innovations in the mini-games. I did enjoy the challenge that lockpicking and archery provided, at least, and I have a regard for games that show me something new.

Ads for the game emphasized it as a stopping point between Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. I can't think of many other franchises that allow you to transfer characters in and out of such different games.

Computer Gaming World reviewed Hillsfar in the same September 1989 issue as Curse of the Azure Bonds. Reviewer Roe Adams also praised the lockpicking mini-game, noting that the game provided "the best simulation of thieving skills ever done in any medium," and that "the satisfaction of ripping through a 6-tumbler lock is unparalleled"--before stating that "alas, the rest of the game fails to even remotely come up to this caliber of design." He loathed having to return to camp--requiring at least two horseback rides--to save the game--and concluded the review with a sensible bit of incredulity: "Imagine the absurdity of doing mage or cleric quests without being able to cast any spells at all!"

The developer of Hillsfar, Westwood Studios, has a spotty history with me. They were responsible for BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception, which infuriated me with its ending, and Questron II, which I felt was too linear and outdated. But all three games have a few things in common: an emphasis on graphics and not on gameplay; unimportance of combat; and a very short playing time. I'll run into them again later this year with The Mines of Titan and in coming years with Circuit's Edge, DragonStrike, and the Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore series. Here's hoping their approach improves.

Now, after a brief detour, it's on to a game that I've really been anticipating: Starflight II.