Game 167: Saga (1990)

Saga

France
Lankhor (Developer and Publisher)

Released 1990 for Amstrad CPC

Date Started: 10 October 2014
Date Ended: 11 October 2014

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Easy (2/5)
Final Rating: 15
Ranking at Time of Posting: 15/164 (9%)

Ranking at Game #457: 76/457 (17%)

Saga is a bafflingly bad game. I would expect this quality of gameplay from a title released in the early 1980s, or a shareware title, or a title released for some horrid platform, but not a) in 1990, b) from a major publisher; and c) for a perfectly respectable, if slightly aged, PC platform. Nothing about the game makes any sense whatsoever.
  

The Saga game windows. I'm only playing one character, so the right side says "player absent" for the entire game. I'm facing a human fighter and a werewolf, and the message window shows the damage they're doing to me. At the bottom  you can see my character class (elf) and attributes.

  
This is my first experience with an Amstrad CPC game, but I know the computer has some decent titles. In Europe, it was a legitimate contender to the Commodore 64/128. The Bard's Tale had a release on the Amstrad in 1987. So did J. R. R. Tolkien's War in Middle Earth, Bloodwych, B.A.T., and Dragons of Flame. I'm not holding any of these up as great games, but at least they were competent. Saga, is in fact, a late addition to the Amstrad catalogue; on my list, the only two games after it with Amstrad releases are the two HeroQuest titles.

It's not the developer. This is, admittedly, the only RPG on my list from Lankhor--perhaps the only RPG that Lankhor ever made--but the company was clearly not a bunch of amateurs. Wikipedia notes that the developer's first game, Mortville Manor, is the first game to feature speech synthesis. Here's what that game looked like, in 1987:

In short, the platform was capable of better, the developer was capable of better, and the nation of France was capable of better. Where did this game come from?

Saga is winnable in about 30 minutes, and not in the way some adventure games are, where if you know what you're doing, you can take shortcuts and buzz right to the end. There aren't any shortcuts in Saga; there doesn't need to be, because the entire game only takes up about 24 screens, and half of those are repetitive scenes in the "labyrinth." It has 5 combats and 3 other important interactions, and that's it. Although the interface suggests an adventure game, there isn't a single "puzzle" within it.

The even more amusing thing is that the game supports two players. Except for perhaps the initial combats, it isn't a challenge enough for one player, let alone two. I'm picturing two French youths running home from a computer store in 1990 and slamming this exciting-looking fantasy game into their Amstrad disk drive. One picks up the joystick while the other positions his hands on the keyboard. They spend about an hour creating their characters, exploring the available classes. Finally, after a lot of debate, a lot of laughs at the goofy character portraits, they finally settle on their choices. Excited, they swap disks, hit ENTER, and start exploring the game world.
  

Creating two characters.

  
Less than half an hour later, they're looking at each other, confused. "Je ne comprends pas," they say. "C'est fini? Ou sont les orques? Je veux tuer plus de mauvaises choses, s'il vous plaît." Defeated, they have nothing to do but go outside and play bilboquet or something.

Heprena has some troubles.

  
The back story is simple. In the "13th century," the character has received a message from his old mentor and guardian, Merlux the Magic Master, that "Heprena is dying." The character leaves his simple house in an enchanted forest and responds to Merlux's call. 

The player creates a character from one of six classes: warrior, magician, assassin, elf, paladin, and priest. Each has a different set of attributes (strength, dexterity, charisma, intelligence, hit points, magic points), a different set of weapons, and--for those capable of casting magic--a different set of spells. The player can then put 6 points in any combination of attributes that he wishes. Agility, intelligence, and strength all influence various combat and spell rolls, but I didn't see any place in the game where charisma made a difference.
  

Choosing from among 6 character classes.

  
Gameplay takes place on a series of static screens. The interface has only five inputs, whether using the keyboard or joystick: up, down, right, left, and execute. If using the keyboard, the movement keys are nonsensically mapped to:

      S

,             .

      X

Mimicking a joystick on the keypad was much easier.

Commands include "Move" (followed by the direction), "Open," "Look," "Use," and separate sub-menus for various things to do with items ("Take," "Give," "Drop") and other actions ("Attack," "Talk," "Cast a Spell").

For a while, I couldn't get anywhere with the game until I realized that commands apply to the location of a cursor on the screen. You use the movement keys to position the cursor over whatever you want to look at, open, talk to, attack, and so forth, and then choose the appropriate command. The cursor resets to the upper-left corner whenever you change screens.

As I mentioned, the game is quick and easy for the right sort of character. The only real difficulty is in combat; some of the classes aren't well-equipped for the game's 5 battles. When combat arrives, enemies start attacking in real time, doing 4-6 points of damage every 20-30 seconds or so. During this time, you're furiously positioning your cursor over the enemy, hitting SPACE or the joystick button to bring up the command screen, scrolling down to "Actions," scrolling down to "Attack," scrolling to the chosen weapon, hitting the button again to execute, and then hitting it a few more times to simulate the dice rolls. I found it extremely hard to get through this sequence without accidentally selecting one of the other commands, then having to cancel it, and taking extra unnecessary damage in the meantime.

Selecting commands to attack a gargoyle.

There are two places in the game where all of your hit points are restored. You have to survive 3 combats (2 with 2 enemies each) before that, and this is the toughest part of the game. When my first character, a paladin, was unable to get that far, I enlisted a warrior as a second character. Although I couldn't effectively control both at once, I could use the warrior as cannon fodder for the first few battles. When he died, the game maintained an annoying screen saying "your quest ends here."

Both characters stand outside the starting area and swap some items.

Assassins, who come with 5 poisoned blowdarts capable of heavy damage, and magicians, who come with spells, were promising, but their low hit point totals meant that I had trouble staying alive. I finally won the game with a high-HP warrior.

The combats technically give you experience points, and the manual promises that these make up a kind-of "character development," except that I never saw them doing anything. With only 5 battles in the entire game, it's hard to argue that experienced-based leveling is really necessary.

Combat, as primitive and annoying as it is, is probably the most sophisticated part of the game. Adventure games usually come with a lot of inventory puzzles. This game has 8 inventory slots, rendered all the more mysterious because there are only 4 items to pick up throughout the game, and you only ever have 2 at any one time. None of the uses of the inventory could remotely be called "puzzles."

There are a handful of characters to interact with, but all interaction is just a matter of putting the cursor over them and choosing "Talk" from the menu. Sometimes you have to do this multiple times to get all their dialogue.

I'll try to summarize the plot concisely. North of the starting house, there's a forest of mushrooms. Looking at the largest one reveals that it has a door. Opening the door finds you in combat with a man and a werewolf. Killing them brings you to "Malus the Crazy," who expresses astonishment that you killed his two companions, gives you a "male gzouzou," and tells you to leave before you make him mad.

A few screens later, you come to a gnome pointing to the right, saying "over there!" If you try to talk to him, he says, "Everything I have to tell you is in the bubble. No joke." Continuing, you find yourself in the "Labyrinth of the Gnome," a small maze that you don't really have to map. There are two battles in the maze, one with an animated sword and sickle, one with a giant bee. A note found in a well tells you to keep going east from there, which takes you to the exit. Along the way, you can release a genie from a bottle and get fully healed.

Fighting animated weaponry.

Outside the labyrinth, you move north a couple screens and find a boat. Boarding, a pirate threatens your life and gives you 1 minute to respond. The only way to appease him is to give him Malus's "gzouzou." This seems to be a creature that the pirate gives to his own familiar as a companion. As a reward, he sails you to Heprena.

Heprena is desolated, with all the residents fallen into a torpor. In Merlux's house, the old mage expresses gratitude for your presence and tells you that an "evil spirit" has taken control of the city and plunged everyone into a "sleep of nightmares." He reveals that the evil spirit, the "Eye of the Devil," is in a tomb in the graveyard, but he succumbs to the mystical sleep before revealing the name on the tomb.

In his house, you kill a gargoyle and retrieve a wooden stake (as far as I can tell, this is never used) and 10 gold pieces from a chest. A spellbook heals you. A crystal ball elsewhere in his house tells you the name on the grave: "Edgar Padpoe."

Looking for the final game area.

You give the 10 gold pieces to a coffinmaker in exchange for keys to the cemetery. In the cemetery, you look at the graves until you find the right one, then open it and descend into a dungeon. A tablet informs you that "evil born of evil perishes by evil." A room full of mirrors imbues your own eyes with "satanic reflections." You fight one final combat against a "guardian of the door," then enter and find the "Eye of the Devil." Defeating it, in accordance with the tablet, simply involves looking at it. 

Good lord. Where is the rest of him?

After a quick ending screen and an option to save the player, you're back on the desktop.

Always nice when NPC dialogue blends with interface instructions.

I was happy but surprised to find that the game had ended. I assumed everything to this point had been a prologue. My best guess, given the unused inventory screens and limited character development, is that Saga was meant to be a modular game, like Eamon, with the same character transferable among multiple "adventures." I suppose it's possible that there are others in the Saga line out there, but this game was pretty obscure on its own.

In a GIMLET, I give it:

• 1 point for the game world. There's nothing particularly notable about the "13th century" fantasy kingdom invoked in the back story except that it's full of weird characters and tropes that perhaps make sense in France.

• 2 points for character creation and development. For the brevity of the game, the choice of character class does make a legitimate difference, but it's not long or complex enough to feel the effects of "development."

• 2 points for NPC interaction--the handful of bland NPCs that give some information.

• 2 point for encounters and foes, featuring generic monsters and no true adventure-game puzzles, even.

The last battle of the game.

• 2 points for magic and combat, with some minor choices related to type of weapon and spells.

Casting a spell in combat. The mage's options are "Healing," "Petrify," "Invisibility," and "Dagger."

• 1 point for the limited equipment, all puzzle-based, which means the game technically doesn't meet my criteria as an RPG.

• 0 points for no economy. The 10 gold pieces found at one point are just another inventory item, not something that you can spend flexibly.

• 2 points for a vague, unsatisfying main quest.

• 1 point for barely-serviceable graphics, no sound, and an awful interface.

• 2 points for gameplay that while linear, non-replayable, and bereft of meaningful choices at least has the decency of finishing quickly.

The final score of 15 is the lowest I've given to any game since 1983 with the single exception of The Stone of Telnyr, which was a shareware title.

From a recent eBay auction. It went for £36.

Lankhor was a French company that was around from 1987 to 2001. Their catalog consists primarily of action, sports, and racing games with a couple of adventure games thrown in. I think that Saga is the only title that aspires to RPG status, though I have to check out something called La Crypte des Maudits in 1991. The authors of the game, listed on the main screen, resolve to Regis Blazy and Guillaume Genty. Genty, at least, was a full-time Lankhor employee, dispelling any possibility that this game was an independent title that Lankhor charitably published. He is credited on a variety of racing games for both Lankhor and other publishers after Lankhor went bankrupt. Why he decided to turn his talents to a godawful RPG is anyone's guess. Blazy is a little more obscure; his last name is given as "Blazis" on a different site, but either way I can't find him credited on other games.

This is the second French game in a row to disappoint me, but the country will have some chances to impress me in the coming year, with Le Diamant de I'le Maudite and Tyrann both coming up in 1984. Eventually, I'm going to take second looks at Tera: La Cite des Cranes (1986) and Le Maitre des Ames (1987), as I didn't get far enough in either game during the first round to even rate them. The good news is that my French has vastly improved since 2010, and I didn't have any trouble with the text in this game. I had to use Google Translate for about half a dozen individual words, not the entire paragraphs that I had to plug in for Tera and Maitre.

Next we'll finish up the Warrior of Ras series and take a look at Hard Nova.