DarkSpyre: White Hot Hatred

Good. This world deserves a terrible fate.

Over 100 games into my project, I've met plenty of games I didn't like, plenty that I thought were stupid, plenty that offended me, plenty that I thought were too hard, plenty that wasted my time--but prior to DarkSpyre, can't honestly say that I've truly hated a game. Now I know what true, blazing hot hatred really feels like. I would honestly rather play all of my lowest-rated games again five times than play another minute of DarkSpyre. 

About a week ago, when I last posted, I was committed to putting DarkSpyre aside for a bit and trying to play Dragon Lord. But I've been on the road for the week, and every night upon returning to my hotel, I haven't felt the intellectual energy necessary to learn a new game (and Dragon Lord seems complicated). DarkSpyre, loathsome though I came to find it, was a game that I knew how to play. I figured I'd suck it up, push through it, and get past it by this weekend.

I did make progress, though maddeningly slow--maybe a level and a half each evening. Finally, I achieved the last two runes and was rewarded with a level where I could "spend" the runes on advanced equipment, though some of it was the same stuff I'd been finding all along.

Gideona's gear after the "reward" level.

During this process, I came to love the random maze levels. Though they could be long, they didn't involve any stupid lever, pressure plate, door, key, movable wall, teleportation, or inventory puzzles. They only challenge to them was combat, which is essentially this game's only strong suit. It does a reasonably good job adapting the Dungeon Master mechanic of level progression and special weapon attacks to a top-down interface. I'm not saying it's fantastic, but compared to the game's "puzzles," it's brilliant.

Already at my last post, I was annoyed by the nature of the puzzles. Aside from those, the game continued to get annoying in other ways, including:

1. Numerous enemies capable of poisoning the character, plus poison-causing traps. Poison isn't immediately deadly, but it saps hit points every five seconds or so. Lots of CRPGs feature poison, but there's usually some kind of "cure poison" spell. In this game, curing poison requires an "Algit" potion, which you have to find or make from rubies. There are far more occasions that cause poison than Algit potions or rubies available in the game, meaning I spent a lot of the game walking around with uncured poison, waiting to find another potion.

2. A ton of the higher levels feature barrages of fireballs that shoot from the walls and ricochet down the corridors. They're too fast to outrun or evade, so whether you get slammed with seven of them in a row is far more a matter of luck than skill. I only died a few times from enemies and about 30 times from fireballs.

Lots of reloading on this level.

3. It's feast or famine with weapons. On some levels, I'd find six or seven weapons and have to leave some behind. Then a combat-intensive level would come, and all the weapons I'd hauled from the previous levels would shatter in my hands, one by one, ultimately leaving me with a single dagger or nothing at all. Unarmed fighting does nothing to higher-level enemies. This was annoyingly true of magic weapons, too. I got a very powerful sword called Rancor on the "reward" level, and it lasted maybe three combats before it broke.

Gideona "solves" another sequence of "puzzles."

On the puzzles, I don't have a lot to say, except that I've pulled more levers, weighed down more pressure plates, shoved more giant balls, tossed items into more teleporters, and otherwise trialed-and-errored my way through more game levels than I ever want to do again. There were a few I didn't hate. One made me trace a path through a series of pressure plates such that I didn't cross any of them twice, and it made me fondly recollect a time in my childhood when my mother taught me the "barn door" drawing puzzle and I refused to accept there was no way to do it without putting a roof on the barn. I must have drawn thousands of squares and X's before I finally agreed that it couldn't be done. This one, in contrast, was much more easily solvable--the equivalent of that barn door with two caps instead of one.

Anyway, after I got all the runes and passed through the "reward" level, I entered a level called "War." It wasn't very hard, just lots of combat against foes ("musketeers" among them) that left me with only two viable weapons by the end.

I figured the next level would be "Intellect" and the third would be "Magic," and I was right about the "Intellect" level anyway. The level started with an easy riddle--something like "it separates us from the apes," with the two choices being "intellect" and "stupidity." After that came a more difficult riddle:

A three-volume set of books stand together in order on a shelf. Each book is 3 1/4 inches thick. Each cover is exactly 1/8 of an inch thick. A worm bores a hole straight from the first page of Volume 1 to the last page of Volume 3. How far did the worm travel?

Try it.

If you answered 10.25 inches--three full volumes plus two sets of two covers--you're not thinking about how books are actually arrayed on a shelf. Page 1 of Volume 1 would actually be on the book's right, adjacent to Volume 2, as would the "last page" of Volume 3. Thus, the worm only passes through the full width of Volume 2 plus the two sets of covers on either side. The answer is thus 3.25 plus 4/8 or 3.75.

The game, however, insists that the correct answer is 3.5. I don't know where it gets this idea. It's only calculating two covers, but the worm plainly passes through four: the front cover of Volume 1, the rear cover of Volume 2, the front cover of Volume 2, and the rear cover of Volume 3. Some God of Intellect. [Later edit: Okay, fine. The thickness of the book includes the binding, so I was wrong. I still figured out the order-on-the-shelf part.]

Anyway, even if this one was wrong, I was looking forward to more puzzles like this on the level. I settled in for a sequence of them, entered a teleporter, and found myself confronted with more lever/plate/door/rolling ball puzzles.

Lever/plate/door/rolling ball puzzles from Hell.

I hope whoever designed this level faces a level just like it in Hell.

Each lever and plate seemed to do multiple things, but inconsistently. Enemies wandered all over the level triggering things. No matter what I did, I couldn't get one door open that would allow me to exit the level, and I kept getting stuck behind grates and doors with no way to proceed.

After about four hours trying, I broke down and looked at a walkthrough, but it was no help. It basically said yeah, it sucks, there's no step-by-step instructions you can follow because the rolling balls and enemies create total chaos. I kept reloading and trying, though, and on maybe my 20th try, I managed to make it to the end of the level.

Only to find that I needed a Ambrosia Potion to pass. I'd found a diamond on the level, and used it to make an Ambrosia potion, but I drank it. Goddamn this game.

Nine or ten reloads later, I managed to follow the same sequence--but this time with the potion. I joyfully made it to the end, used the "Raido" rune to save the game, and went through the portal. I found myself on the last level, "MAGIC." Some skulls taunted me with the fact that both Borel and Chesschantra had made it this far but had failed the level.

The level's puzzles seemed to be about the right spells, and fortunately it had replenished all my spell points at the beginning. I moved in, solved one puzzle involving the creation of poison, walked down a corridor, stepped on a pressure plate, and was killed by fireballs.

I went to reload my saved game and got only a black screen.

This is apparently a known corruption. You can't save on the last level or at any point on the previous level once you enter the lever/door puzzle area. My only working save is from five levels ago, before I found the last rune, and no way am I going through that horrible "Intellect" level again every time I die on the "Magic" level. Thus, one level from the end of the game, I must declare defeat--my first unfinished game in over a year.

Screw this game and anyone who likes it.