Fate: Time to Be Done

From your lips to God's ears, Mandrag.

    

Fate has been lingering beyond the point of decency, but it didn't fully lose me until the events of the last session. There's simply no excuse for a game this big without the depth of content to support its size, and there's no excuse for some of the choices the developers made along the way as regards encounters and combat.

As I closed the last session, I was just entering the Agyssium on the quest to retrieve the stone heart of Bergerac. If you've lost track of the plot, I need the stone heart to revive Bergerac, who's the one mage who can take me into the inner Forbidden Zone, where I hope to defeat the evil wizard Thardan and find a way back home to the real world. I had to retrieve the seven pieces of the Moonwand to enter the Agyssium in the first place.

   

Multiple enemy parties wait to assail me in the Agyssium.

    

I spent about 8 hours in the Agyssium and have very little to say about it. Lore had told me that it was built from the bones of dead creatures, and the walls did have a certain disgustingness about them. It was huge, packed with enemies, and bereft (as far as I could tell) of any special encounters beyond the stone heart on the seventh level. But it's likely that I missed some things. I faithfully mapped the first level, and when I saw how large and empty it was--aside from monsters, the only thing besides stairways was a single weak dagger--I said "screw it" when it came to mapping the other levels. I explored each one just long enough to find the stairs down.

   

The large and pointless Level 1.

    

Incidentally, it took me forever to find the stairs on the first level because doors look like this.

   

They're hard enough to make out head-on, let alone from the side.

   

It would have taken 30 minutes except for the monsters. There was an encounter practically every step. They consisted of alien-insect looking creatures called things like bogons, crags, zorbs, slints, dromans, armans, and krysts. None of them carried any treasure. A few of them qualified as NUKEs, and even some of the ones that weren't were capable of doing several hundred hit points in physical attacks. By this time in the game, I was uninterested in learning the strengths and weaknesses of yet another set of creatures, and I was uninterested in going round after round with indistinguishable insects, watching them shrug off spells and physical attacks until I found a combination that worked.

    

I've had enough of this.

    

So I settled into a pattern: Upon the initial encounter (assuming it wasn't a very small number I knew I could easily kill), I would try to pray them away. That's working about 8 or 9 times out of 10 these days. If that didn't work, I would try hiding. That usually failed, so the third option was running. Upon failure of all of these options--maybe 1 time in 25--I would stand and fight and save if I won, cast "Revive" if I only lost one character, and reload if I lost more than one.

    

A prayer makes the monsters go away. This game does love its "spheres," for whatever reason.

    

Through this process, I slowly made my way down to the bottom level and the chamber holding the stone heart.

   

Everything about this game is strange.

    

Mandrag had to cast some spell--the game wasn't specific--to deactivate its protective shield and pick it up. Unfortunately, there was no quick teleporter or secret stairway to the exit--I had to fight back up 7 levels. I'm sure there were even more monsters on the way back up. But with time and patience, I eventually emerged in Katloch, made my way back to my ship, and set sail for Cassida.

    

The game is great about giving hints when you don't need them and not so much when you do.

     

I had expected to march into the plaza, stuff the heart into Bergerac's statue, and get a new party member. In anticipation, I sadly ejected Juliet from the party. She'd been with me since nearly the beginning, but she was the most expendable of my characters, with low caps on her statistics and the lowest character level.

   

Hopefully, her "magic ears" aren't that important anymore.

    

I was premature. The game had to pull the rug out from under me again:

     

    

The statue had vanished. Okay, what now? I wandered around Cassida but didn't find anything new. The populace, still under the curse that made them rude, offered no help. I wandered to the city of Perdida but didn't get any new dialogue options or hints. Same with Fainvil and Valvice. Lacking any other ideas, I jumped back on the Cavetrain and headed for Larvin, intending to visit the altar and see if there were any more dialogue options there. I swear the Cavetrain went in a different order than before, but I could be wrong. I did visit the altar and got some attribute boosts, but there were no new dialogue options in Larvin.

Lacking any more ideas, I consulted a spoiler site again. It said that I should go back to Naristos, the kind man who sheltered Winwood in the game's backstory. I headed back to the game's starting square and searched the area until I found a body on the ground between some trees. It was Naristos.

     

    

According to the walkthrough, I'm supposed to find his servant, Jordrak, at his tower. Unfortunately, there's a stone blocking the tower and I can't figure out any way to trigger the next part of the plot.

    

I think those are the stones of his tower behind the rock.

   

I started mapping some of the unmapped squares, and suddenly Winwood had a revelation:

    

By this point in the game, players could be forgiven for having no idea who "Naristos" is.

    

That answers the question of how I was supposed to know to visit Naristos. I reasoned that perhaps now that Winwood had made the suggestion, something would happen when I went back to the area. At first, nothing did. I posted a comment looking for help. It turns out that you need to keep hitting "examine" multiple times. Eventually, Winwood notes that Naristos is holding a staff. When Winwood reaches out to take the staff, he vanishes into thin air and Naristos's body crumbles to dust.
   

   
After this, I can switch to Winwood's "party." He was in the dark, alone, with brick walls surrounding him. I tried walking a bit and soon found an item that turned out to be a "goldeye," which casts magical light. I'm in a dungeon I've never seen before. I'm way overburdened because I have all the weapons and armor from Juliet that I was going to see if Bergerac could wield. I wasn't carrying any food or water.
   

  
Will Winwood survive? Will he reunite with his companions? Find out next time on Fate: Gates of Dawn! I don't often get to end on a cliffhanger.

These twists are cute and all, but honestly, the game has been going on too long to pull 11th hour stunts. It's time for this one to be finished.

Time so far: 249 hours