Saturday, October 29, 2022

Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep: Summary and Rating

 
       
Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep
United States 
FTL Games (developer); Interplay Entertainment (publisher)
Released 1993 for PC-98; 1994 for FM Towns and SEGA CD; 1995 for Amiga, DOS, and Macintosh
Date Started: 15 August 2022
Date Ended: 21 October 2022
Total Hours: 37
Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: 44
Ranking at Time of Posting: 429/483 (89%)
    
Summary:
A worthy sequel to Dungeon Master, Skullkeep offers a similar experience (first-person tiled movement, action-oriented combat, lots of puzzles) but with a few additional CRPG trappings. Weak storytelling, constant respawning, and poor pacing and balance hurt the title, but excellent character development, a variety of combat tactics, and superior enemy AI save it. In a sea of clones, there is only one Master.
     
****
    
As examples of their particular sub-genre, it doesn't get much better than Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back. They both have that "tight" quality that I discussed in relation to Quest for Glory and for which I still need a better term. They don't do everything a "full" RPG does, but what they do, they do to near perfection. They're challenging but fair, meticulously laid out, with room to breathe but with no fat. If I had been rating Dungeon Master clones, I would have given them a near-perfect score. But I was rating RPGs in general, and I deduced points for elements they lacked.
   
In some ways, Skullkeep feels like someone read my comments and took them to heart. They threw in an economy and town, offered some explicit weapon statistics, made the world a little more open, improved enemy AI, and made the puzzles more diegetic--that is, integrated with the theme and reality of the game world rather than purely abstract. The result is a game that loses some of the "tightness" of its predecessors but shows that FTL can offer a Dungeon Master experience using more conventional RPG trappings. If I was writing in 1993, I would say that this bodes well for the series, and I'd be looking forward to the sequel..
 
As I discussed last time, I spent some more time on the final battle. I thought I could defeat Dragoth by standing across the void from him and summoning one attack minion after another, but I guess the game is programmed so that the more minions you summon, the more Dragoth summons. I saw some people online recommending minions as a strategy, but mine seem to get killed almost immediately, leaving half a dozen of Dragoth's minions to hassle the party.
     
Taking on Dragoth one more time.
        
I was able to defeat him with hit-and-run tactics. My concerns about Dragoth healing during my absences were apparently unfounded. I spent some time fighting him with weapons and spells until my characters had only about half-health, then throwing myself off the platform to the surface, healing, and teleporting back into the tower. It took about half a dozen rounds of this before Dragoth started hustling back to his own realm for healing, at which point I unloaded on him with the Numenstaff.

I have a lot more to say about the game, but most of it falls comfortably within the categories of the GIMLET, so I suppose I'll just launch into it:
     
1. Game World.  I've never felt that the series was strong with its stories, and I don't think it improved much here. FTL loves to tell elaborate framing stories that are well-written but needlessly complicated and often kind of silly. The story here, at least until the ending cinematics, is perhaps a bit more sensible than the stories of its predecessors, but not by much.
   
A key problem is FTL's almost pathological aversion to including any reference to the story, or any sort of world-building, in the actual game. It's as if they subscribed to some ideology that in-game text is bad. Where its contemporaries and competitors, including Lands of Lore and the Eye of the Beholder series, filled their games with textual cut scenes, NPCs with dialogue, books, and scrolls, FTL seems to want you to get all your information about the game world from what you can hear and see in the environment. For instance, the hint book calls the various outdoor areas the "Sun Clan Area" and the "Moon Clan Village." I guess you're supposed to intuit those names from the symbols on the obelisks. There will come a time in which graphics and sound are advanced enough to support such an approach, but we aren't there in 1993. I want to know the names of enemies I'm facing, and the villages I'm visiting, and why this world has such a weird combination of technology and fantasy.
     
This is 25% of all the text in the game.
    
The final cinematic came out of nowhere and could have been replaced with almost anything else. (I'm always amused by games that add a "twist" to a story they never competently told in the first place.) To the extent that Lord Chaos was ever interesting, it was in the context of an event that split the original Gray Lord into two extremes. The revelation that Order was just as reprehensible as Chaos--that any pure extreme was inherently bad--should have been the end of the concept. If they weren't going to stop there, I would have liked to see Chaos's reappearance in Chaos Strikes Back balanced by Order's reappearance in the sequel. Continuing to use Chaos as a villain retcons the first game's resolution, both narratively and thematically. Score: 3.
 
2. Character Creation and Development. I liked the character development system here about as much as the original. I'm not sure I favor a use-based system over more standard experience-and-leveling, but we see so many examples of the latter that the former is at least refreshing if not universally better. I like the option to have characters either generalize or specialize (I did the former but wish I'd done the latter). Leveling happens neither too often nor too rarely, and it's always satisfying when it does. Magic leveling is particularly gratifying; you go from one spell wiping out your entire mana bar to, by the end of the game, struggling to deplete it as fast as it refreshes.
   
I'm not a huge fan of the convention established by the series where you choose your characters rather than create them. I also think the choice is somewhat arbitrary, since whatever strengths and weaknesses the various characters exhibit are quickly smoothed out by leveling. There really isn't any replayability in character selection unless you just want to look at different portraits. Score: 5.
       
I never got sick of this.
     
3. NPC Interaction. Unfortunately, there isn't really anyone in this game that I would call an "NPC." The shopkeepers don't really count. They don't have personalities of their own; they're just visual instruments of the bartering system. Score: 0.
   
4. Encounters and Foes. We start to get into the game's real strengths with this category. As longtime readers know, I've started using it to include the quality of puzzles, but even if I didn't, Skullkeep would deserve a few points for its enemies. Some of them are recognizable from other games (skeletons, wolves), but most are original creations, and even the derivative ones have original AI. The varying ways that monsters behave make up one of the best parts of Skullkeep. Some keep their distance; some rush you. Some snatch items out of your hands. They grab items from floors and alcoves and put them to use. Some can be blocked and cornered; some fly right past you. Many of them flee when their hit points get too low. Some have spells. Some are actively hostile; some only attack if you get near them. None of them move in predictable patterns. They use the same movement tricks that the party does to get an advantage, including actively dodging to avoid missiles and spells. (I particularly can't get over how the trees advance when the party's back is turned.) They push buttons, activate switches, set off traps, and in places try to undo the party's progress. There aren't many 2020s games in which these things are all true.
     
These guys live to stoke the furnace and only attack when you interfere with their job.
     
Respawning is perhaps a bit too rapid, particularly towards the end of the game with the minions. Fortunately, the respawning doesn't really pose a huge threat. You ignore and run past many enemies. Their presence also facilitates as much grinding as you want. But I do like to occasionally "clear" an area, and that's not really possible in Skullkeep.
   
I can imagine that some players prefer the puzzles of the original two games. I admit there's something attractive about a puzzle system that only has six or eight core mechanics but with lots of potential creative combinations. But I rather preferred Skullkeep's puzzles, for which there was less repetition, better integration with the environment, and more options for potential solutions. I was recently playing Far Cry 5, which has a few dozen puzzles in which you have to find ways to open the vaults of Montana "preppers." Most of them involve some kind of visual interpretation of the environment--for instance, tracing electrical wires from their destination to their source so you can turn on a breaker. I love that we live in an era in which graphics are detailed enough to allow such interpretation without any abstraction. Skullkeep strikes me as the beginning of this era. You can trace conduit along the walls to find switches and places where fuses and gears are needed, for instance, and the Zo Link mechanism has visible tendrils running throughout the castle to all its component parts.
    
I suppose my only complaint is that the puzzles were a bit too easy. I had to ask for help several times with Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back, but in Skullkeep the only real difficulty I faced was in the final battle, not in any of the puzzles. Score: 8.
         
The enemy catches us in a spike trap.
   
5. Magic and Combat. There remain many things to like about combat, particularly the sheer number of options that you have. Games in which combat is integrated with exploration almost always afford more tactics than those with separate "combat" screens. Between melee combat, offensive spells, buffing spells, missile weapons, throwing items, magic items, leading enemies into traps, summoning minions to fight for you, hit and run tactics, and other uses of the environment, Skullkeep supports just about any playing style. I'm not particularly good at action-oriented combat, particularly with the mouse as the primary controller, but I still recognize the game's strengths.
   
Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the spell system. First, I don't like the use of abstract runes. They just don't work with my brain. I've played over 100 hours of Dungeon Master games, and I probably couldn't draw more than two or three of the runes from memory, and I wouldn't be able to tell you their names. I was constantly having to look up the sequences even for spells that I cast frequently. Second, trying to cast spells in the midst of combat is just too hard. If some of you don't think so, more power to you, but I don't excel at keeping one eye on the screen and one hand on the keyboard to dodge enemy attacks while putting the other eye on the spell panel and the other hand on the mouse and trying to hit the right rune combination.
 
While I ultimately figured out what most spells did, I didn't love the experience, and I'd rather have had explicit names. I didn't realize until after I'd won the game that there's a "Light" spell that's better than just plain FUL. The "Push" and "Pull" spells remained a mystery the entire game because I never tested them while facing something that could be pushed or pulled. I supposed this is my fault, but I didn't have a strong handle on the different minion types. I didn't use minions as much as I could have because their utility seemed extremely variable. I now know that this is because one of the minion types doesn't even attack; he just carries objects. That's kind of a cool option, and I suspect that 80% of players never learn about it unless they read the hint book.
 
Nonetheless, I give the game credit for the sheer number of options, and this still ends as a strong category. Score: 6.
    
6. Equipment. Another strong category--there are lots of wearable and usable things--including craftable things--and it's a bit easier to tell their relative strength and utility than in the previous games. As we get deeper into the 1990s, I'm going to levy more criticism at games that always put the same items in the same locations, reducing replayability and any sense of surprise, but in this regard, Skullkeep wasn't doing anything that most other games weren't doing. Score: 6.
       
An attack damage evaluation meter tells me that this is the most powerful weapon in the game.
     
7. Economy. Well, the Dungeon Master series finally has one, and I love that the developers put their own spin on it with the various pieces of currency stored in a money box, handed to you individually by shopkeepers over a table. To my surprise, I never got sick of the mechanic. Hand-placing coins and gems into that box was surprisingly rewarding--much more interesting than the generic "gold" statistic that we find in most games. 
   
The economy is a bit overly generous, but not outrageously so. I would have had to scrimp and loot to afford the "Voraxes," the best weapons in the game, for instance (until a commenter pointed them out, I didn't even really notice them). The economy isn't particularly necessary to the game, but it offers some additional options. A cautious player could grind in the early areas and then purchase some of the best equipment, for instance. The tavern means that you don't have to hunt thorn demons and digger worms every time you get hungry. Some players will see it as an unnecessary appendix to the Dungeon Master experience, but I thought it supplemented the game nicely. Score: 4.
       
I never got sick of the bartering process.
     
8. Quests. Alas, we're back to a weaker category here. There's a main quest with some optional areas, but no real "side quests." There are choices involved in solving some puzzles, but no choices in the overall direction of the plot. There are no role-playing options, and you don't even get a (bad) alternate ending as you do in the original. Score: 3.
   
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. There was a lot I liked in this category and a little I didn't like. Graphics and sound both benefit from the fact that this is technically a 1995 game, and you get nice effects like the constant thunderstorms outdoors, the vibration of the Zo Link generator, and the cackling of electrical fields. The monster portraits are a bit less absurd and cartoonish than some of the game's contemporaries. Perhaps most important, the ability to interact with and move so many items in the environment makes the game so much more interesting than its contemporaries that feature nothing but textures.
 
There are more ambient sounds than the typical RPG, and I like that you can hear enemies in the distance and identify them by their unique sounds. I don't like that so many of their unique sounds are so aggravating, particularly the mechanical clanking of the minions.
   
The interface requires far too much mouse work for my tastes, and I continue to demand more keyboard redundancy. My complaint about the spell system could have been handled by allowing, for instance, the "C" key to activate the casting panel and then the number keys from 1-6 to select the chosen rune. A fireball at full strength would be C-6-4-4-ENTER. Of course, keys for attacking is something that Dungeon Master's competitors had been offering for years now.
   
I didn't find the magic maps very useful. They show too small an area and no consistent orientation. I liked that at least one (the one that summons minions) could be used for puzzle-solving, but I found the rest mostly useless. Seeing the positions of enemies in a four-square radius doesn't really help that much, since you can just look around the area yourself. I held on to about half a dozen magic maps for most of the game when I could have spared myself the inventory space and just sold them. Score: 5, and before you flood the comments, recognize that I'm rating three things in this category, not just graphics and sound. Games that scored higher do so because they have good interfaces as well as graphics and sound.
        
This, on the other hand, is an interface element that every game should have.
    
10. Gameplay. There's some early-game nonlinearity that I enjoy, and I think the overall length and level of difficulty are just about right, although there are some balance issues. As commenters have noted, the pre-Skullkeep portion of the game, which is open and sprawling and almost completely devoid of puzzles, clashes with the five linear, densely-packed Skullkeep levels. There were times that things were a bit too easy. I'm not sure we needed so many portals back to town, for instance, and food and water was never much of a challenge. I'm still not happy with the sudden spike in difficulty during the last battle. Finally, I don't really see the game as "replayable" except in a mild sense of trying different character builds. Score: 4.
 
That gives us a final score of 44. It surprises me that it's lower than the 47 I gave Dungeon Master. As I said in the opening, I recall Dungeon Master as arguably a better game but not necessarily a better CRPG. I rather thought that the concessions Skullkeep made in service of the broader RPG genre would propel it to a higher total. But I played Dungeon Master during my flawed first year of blogging, and I see category scores that I couldn't justify today. I suspect if I rated it again, it would fall to more like a 41, which still doesn't make the sequel a lot better but does recognize its innovations.
 
The advertisement emphasizes "creatures and characters that actually think for themselves and react to your actions." This element deserved more recognition in reviews.
      
Then again, maybe I'm forgetting aspects of the original that justified the higher rating. Contemporary reviews definitely did not agree with my suggestion that the sequel makes for a better CRPG. Owing to the delayed western release, Computer Gaming World didn't get to it until October 1995. For the first time I recall since I started reading her reviews, Scorpia couldn't finish the game. It was the last battle that held her up:
   
You're on a small patch of clouds, trying to avoid shots from both the minions (coming from all directions) and the big D, doing fancy footwork to keep from stepping over the side and falling back to earth. There is no place to hide, nothing to duck behind, because it's all open . . . . [W]henever it seemed the party might be getting somewhere, those attack minions popped up and ruined everything.
     
This was one of many things that led her to characterize Skullkeep as a "dreary experience" that disappointed her more than even Ultima VIII: Pagan. Most of her other complaints echo mine--abstruse spellcasting system, overly-rapid respawns, no NPCs, annoying minions. She has nothing to say about the enemy AI, economy, or other improvements since the original game: "Very little has changed for the better," she says," and there is much that is worse." One of those things for some players, though apparently not for Scorpia, was that the game had some problems with SoundBlaster cards. I had to laugh at her report that a patch was available "on many online sites, including the Internet." (Yes, I know that "online" meant a lot more than the Internet in 1995; it still sounds funny.)
    
For the first time--again, we're jumping a couple years ahead on this one--I get to quote a GameSpot review. The site gave Skullkeep a mere 50/100: "The computer gamer will easily be able to find better-looking, faster-playing, more immersive fantasy games out there, without the epic yawn-factor found here." Ouch. Another choice quote comes from the U.K.'s PC Format (December 1995; 60/100): "Are you really willing to fork out over forty quid for a game which could just as easily have been written seven years ago?" The German PC Joker (August 1995; 67/100) called it a "museum piece." Generally, continental magazines found more to like than English ones, but almost all of them use terms like "nostalgic" and "old-school." Apparently, a lot is going to happen in the world of CRPGs over the next couple of years if Skullkeep was outdated by 1995. I look forward to it.
     
I went looking for a hint guide and was surprised to find three of them. Interplay published an official one, with the subtitle Unlocking the Secrets of Skullkeep, in 1995. But before the DOS version of the game was even released, an outfit called Sandwich Islands Publishing (SIP) released an "official" strategy guide. I guess "official" doesn't have any legal meaning, because it also appears on Prima's guide from 1995. The SIP guide includes an interview with FTL's Wayne Holder, who says that the team considered an Underworld-style free-movement engine for Skullkeep, but they ultimately thought it would ruin the types of puzzles that Dungeon Master fans would be looking for. I agree with his reasoning, but he certainly didn't "read the room" with some of his comments: "A lot of the free-movement games are tedious to play because you spend so much time bouncing off the walls. Personally, it gets very tiring." As if to mock Holder's own comments, the guide accompanies them with a screenshot from the far-more-successful DOOM
        
If Holder really found free movement "not that hard to do," FTL should have done it first and made a fortune.
      
The interview contains no information about why FTL prioritized Japanese releases for Skullkeep, but clearly there was something lucrative about the Japanese market, as one of FTL's last acts before it folded in 1996 (Skullkeep's sales were miserable) was to license the name and interface to Tokyo-based Victor Interactive Software. The result, Dungeon Master Nexus (1998), is the last game in the Dungeon Master series, released only in Japan, and only for the SEGA Saturn. Reviews of the SEGA CD version of Skullkeep noted that the interface doesn't work well with the SEGA controller; I'm not sure if or how they overcame that for Nexus.
     
Holder and original Dungeon Master designer Doug Bell wrote a book on Java programming for games in 1998, but otherwise they have mostly slipped below the radar. Holder seems to have worked on a large variety of independent technology products since then, and Bell has held positions at a variety of information technology companies. He returned to gaming in 2010 with a position at Riot Games, then designed the micro-transaction platform for Trion Worlds' MMO Defiance (2013). His LinkedIn profile shows him most recently working for a workplace automation software provider called ServiceNow.

The manual for the game is needlessly cute when it comes to the roles the various programmers played. I would love to know who gets the credit for the excellent enemy AI. It may be "monster trainer" Bill Kelly, but if so, his talent was largely wasted. After Skullkeep, he worked on only one other game, a bicycle messenger simulator called Courier Crisis (1997). He passed away last year, just shy of his 50th birthday.
  
It's too bad that FTL had to go out with a whimper, under the perception that Dungeon Master was its crowning achievement, Chaos Strikes Back somewhat lesser, and Skullkeep even lesser still. All three games have their charms, and while I might have also rated them in that order, I don't think any of them are clearly better or worse than the others. Holder may have been a bit tone-deaf regarding the future of free-movement engines, but that doesn't mean that tiled gameplay is inevitably "retro"; it's just one way of doing things. It grinds my gears to see so many mid-1990s reviewers dismissing technology that produced fantastic gaming experiences just because something newer and shinier came along. I'm grateful that thanks to such "old-school" titles as Legend of Grimrock (2012), Might and Magic X (2013), and Aeon of Sands: The Trail (2019), I'll always have a reason to stock some graph paper.
   

94 comments:

  1. "Most of them involve some kind of visual interpretation of the environment--for instance, tracing electrical wires from their destination to their source so you can turn on a breaker. I love that we live in an era in which graphics are detailed enough to allow such interpretation without any abstraction. Skullkeep strikes me as the beginning of this era."

    Maybe Skullkeep was the beginning of it in the CRPG genre, but other types of games (such as Myst) had done it before. Incidentally, if you enjoy puzzles like that, you should play Myst, which has a lot of them, and mostly very good ones.

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    1. I have played Myst, including quite recently. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me to mention it. I don't think it influenced Skullkeep given they came out the same year, but clearly the trend really started this year.

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    2. If you really like that sort of thing, I can't recommend the 'RHEM' series of games enough. They're basically scrupulously fair and devilishly complex puzzle boxes, with wires and pipes and pathways and all of that stuff in complex interweaving systems. Note-taking is absolutely required and expected. They're the deductive side of Mystlikes amped up to 11.

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    3. I second RHEM, despite the first game somehow looking worse than Myst despite coming out years later, its puzzle design is top notch.

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    4. There are hundreds of Myst clones but... yeah I agree with Rhem. It's surprisingly solid and straightforward, and I am one of those who dislike Myst like games.

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  2. Hmm, Eye of the Beholder III, Dungeon Master II, and later on Ultima VIII... Seems like the years 93/94 were defined by some high-profile disappointments - not really bad games, but sequels to much acclaimed games or series that somehow underperformed and turned out weaker than their predecessors. Games that either failed to really innovate and improve on the formula (EoB 3, DM 2) or tried to veer too much away from established conventions (U8). Since these days many reflect on the early-to-mid-90s as some sort of "Dark Age" of the CRPG genre and even a few magazines back in the day asked whether the genre was on its last legs (at least until stuff like Fallout or Baldur's Gate came along), I wonder whether they were looking at the genre in general or more at these rather prolific misfires.

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    1. I think this is an astute observation, and I very much agree with your conjecture, El!

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    2. Good points, but I think they were looking at the genre in general. 3D was becoming a thing, and CRPGs sacrificed the RPG part on behalf of having these new engines. The mid to late 90s (until Fallout and BG1 as you mentioned) were full of bad CRPGs that had jumped on the 3D bandwagon - I always use Lands of Lore 2 as the "perfect" example of this.

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    3. I started playing cRPGs in 1995, and I think there is a kernel of truth to it. Magazines do get a wider view of the industry, and I think the overall number of major games did go down. Significant series stumbling (Ultima), taking a break (M&M), or having development issues (Wizardry) didn’t help things either.

      As a consumer, it was less noticeable since back catalog games were still available sometimes literally from the company’s catalog, I did this a lot, and enough new games came out to fill in the gaps. It was definitely a transitionary period too, and the landscape looked different at the other side. There were fewer turn-based games and more focus on real-time and action. Calling it a Dark Age is a little dramatic, but it does have a general arc of a collapse, shift in power and then rebuilding.

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    4. There isn't really that much ifference between "the genre as a whole" and "three of the most prominent franchises". Especially when the other two pillars of the genre - Wizardry and Might and Magic - are conspicuously absent for most of the period. M&M had a five-year gap between V (1993) and VI (1998), and it was a full nine years between Wizardry VII (1992) and VIII (2001). There wasn't a total dearth of games in the period, of course, but when the five most prominent franchises in the genre are slumping or missing, it isn't a good sign.

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    5. As a contemporary gamer of the time I can all but agree to this. I had to chuckle when reading "Apparently, a lot is going to happen in the world of CRPGs over the next couple of years if Skullkeep was outdated by 1995. I look forward to it.". I don't know if this is meant to be ironic but I think I won't spoil much by saying I can't remember any game in the next years before Fallout bringing a great innovation to the genre. I rather think the bad reviews for DM2 perfectly reflect the impression of the genre during that time, even OK or good CRPGs seemed to be reviewed under a burden and got compared to other genres innovations a lot.

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    6. I meant to say I can fully agree to that, sorry.

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    7. To me the Dark Ages of CRPGs of 1994-1997 was the era of the great indie games. Games like Nahlakh, Aethra Chronicles and Aleshar: World of Ice.

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    8. Doom came out in 1993 and I remember it feeling like a gamechanger for the industry. It felt like EVERYTHING needed to move toward bleedingly fast action and better graphics, and it made CRPGs that didn't evolve with the new expectations feel "disappointing" in comparison. Of course, there was a delay before CRPGs could respond to the new expectations created by Doom, just by the mere fact of game development, but CRPGs needed a few "hiccups" before they could catch on. I think it was Baldur's Gate with its real-time-with-pause, isometric, party-based gameplay that moved beyond the blobbers and Ultima-like games to update the genre and make it "relevant" again.

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    9. (Should also mention the successful Diablo coming out in 1997 as well, which is its own controversial "fork" in the development of CRPGs)

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    10. And let's not forget Fallout, the first "modern" CRPG.

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    11. Nahlakh and Aethra Chronicles were great. Never played Aleshar. I'd also add Excelsior phase One: Lysandia to the list

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    12. Speaking of indies, let's not forget Jeff Vogel's Exile trilogy that appeared in 1995-1997.

      "I can't remember any game in the next years before Fallout bringing a great innovation to the genre"
      Sometimes I feel like the younger generation truly believe TES started with Morrowind. Arena came out in 1994 and Daggerfal in 1996 - and it really doesn't get more innovative than that.

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    13. You guys forget that Wizardry Nemesis existed. That one and other projects like Skullkeep showed that some devs were absolutely lost in what they wanted to do with crpgs, and also they were high profile, expensive projects.

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    14. @VK Yeah I forgot. Also Diablo came out the same year but before Fallout. Whatever, while Arena was certainly an innovation I'll say that it's not a good game. I played it only months ago to see what I missed with the early TES games, Daggerfall will be up next (and with a release in late 1996 IIRC near the end of this period) maybe it will make a better impression. I'm not surprised so far that players today And back then only startet to recognize the series with the third part.

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    15. I meant the comment a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I don't know. There's probably one or two I'm forgetting, but I can't think of a single game I've played that was released between 1994 and 1996. I don't think there are even any more 1993 games I haven't played except Ultima VII, Part 2. So we're definitely entering an era in which anything is possible.

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    16. Let me correct myself because last night I literally felt bad before falling asleep: when I said Skullkeep I meant Stonekeep. Thank you, good day.

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  3. "Chaos Strikes Back somewhat lesser"

    There's nothing lesser about CSB.

    BTW, does DM2 have directional sound (the Amiga versions of DM and CSB did, but not the DOS versions or the newer remakes), or is it just a general ambient sound when monsters are near?

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    1. "There's nothing lesser about CSB."

      That's why I wrote "the perception." Reviews of the time don't agree with your opinion, which I recognize is reflective of many modern opinions. Sales of CSB were also a lot lower than DM. In the interview I quoted with Holder, he basically says he wishes they'd never made CSB, so clearly HE felt it was a lesser game.

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    2. I'm one who will call CSB a "lesser" game to DM. I loved Dungeonmaster - one of my favorite games of all time - but didn't get far at all in Chaos Strikes Back. The difficulty at the very beginning was too high IMO, and I didn't find it compelling. I didn't get far into it before quitting in exasperation.

      Also of note from FTL are Sundog: A Frozen Legacy, and their incredible spelling and puzzle-solving tool - The Word Plus. I miss that when I get stuck on Wordle. :-) They were a short-lived, but great, company which was responsible for some of the success of the Atari ST.

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    3. I guess for Holder it was a lesser game commercially, but I can't understand how it could not have been a labour of love. I mean, it has the most intricate 3D dungeon of all time; that's not something you just make for a quick cash grab. I can understand how most "normal" gamers would prefer DM, though.
      I'm always a bit saddened with artists demean their own great works. In music Pink Floyd did it with Atom Heart Mother, King Crimson with Lizard, both among my favourite prog albums even if they admittedly are rather uneven.

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    4. I remember that being a big deal about Dungeon Master. You could put on the headphones and literally deduce where monsters were just from locating the sound. Scariest of all was when they suddenly walked up behind you. It's great when a game gives you an actual scare instead of a stupid jump scare.

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    5. Yes, the DOS version of DM2 has directional/stereo sound for the monster sounds.

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    6. @Bitmap, thanks for info.

      @Harland, one of my favourite moments in CSB (Amiga version) was when fighting dragons who would breathe rudely through illusory walls. Using headphones it was very satisfying being able to do the combat waltz based on hearing where the dragon was when you couldn't see it.

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    7. "I guess for Holder it was a lesser game commercially, but I can't understand how it could not have been a labour of love." I don't get the impression that Holder had a lot to do with design of CSB. I'm sure it was a labour of love for Doug Bell, but Holder is clearly speaking from a business perspective.

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  4. I sympathize with your take on the rune spell system, which while interesting, is incredibly cumbersome.

    In that context, an early expansion of our German pen&paper system 'Das Schwarze Auge', which intriguingly allowed players to ascend past level 20 (the former maximum) and travel to new lands, employed a similar rune magic system where you have a three step structure of source/transmission/target, but all that proved very impractical during play. It's a fascinating concept, for sure, closer to real druidic practices, but there's a reason why named spell lists with level restrictions established themselves as an rpg standard. It simply works well...

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    1. What would have helped a LOT here is adding hotkeys: it is MUCH easier to remember that a firestorm spell is 644 or IFH, than that it is "squiggly icon, wobbly icon, dotty icon".

      And, I'll wager that most Ultima players will quickly recognize that IFH = In Flam Hur = create fiery wind = firestorm; so having actual meaningful names for the runes would also help. But primarily: hotkeys, hotkeys, hotkeys.

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    2. I remember playing the sourceport of DM, Chaos Strikes Back, allowing the player to press the number keys to press the runes. I just figured the game was always like that and not just a modern invention. Interesting.

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    3. But keyboards are old and busted. Your dad used the keyboard to enter data on his boring spreadsheet. Remember, if it's new it's great, if it's old it sucks. Mouse controls show that your game is modern and therefore good.

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    4. Funny thing is, that the rune based casting system ws only estabished because publisher Schmidt Spiele obtained a huge amount of these runestones at a very low price and forced the Schwertmeister authors to use them for their magic system. At the time of the game's arrival I always wandered what runes had to do with the Japanese inspired world of the hollow earth scenario of DSA Professional.

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    5. Sir_Brennus, I didn't know about this tidbit, that's an interesting correlation, and it's heartwarming that you know about DSA Professional (silly title, but a cult classic). I was a bit too young when my brother purchased those boxes to criticize DSA's world-building, but I remember a distinct japanese influence in the weapon and armor design, and of course, the tactile experience with the rune stones. The concept was all over the place, as you say...

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    6. Arc Fatalis has rune spells too and it's definitely annoying.

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    7. Radiant, the Dungeon Master runes have meaningful names and even descriptions. Unfortunately they are only listed in the manual. Fireball is FUL IR - fire, flight. Lightning is OH KATH RA - air, shock/explosion, energy. Health is VI - water. Cure poison is VI BRO - water, protection. Etc...

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    8. What I mean by "meaningful names" is that you can tell from the name what it means. For instance "FLAM" obviously means fire, whereas "VI" doesn't seem related to water, and so looks like a random (if consistent) syllable. The former is just easier to remember than the latter.

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    9. So, how does IN relate to creation or HUR relate to wind? That looks just as random as DM's syllables to me.

      AN? DES? EX? JUX? KAL? LOR? MANI? ORT? POR?... What do any of these mean? Out of the Ultima runes only FLAM, NOX, SANCT and WIS and maybe FRIO have obvious meanings. The rest are just as opaque as DM runes.

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    10. Don't be daft. IN)voke, HUR)ricane, AN)ti, DES)cent, and so forth. Why yes, Richard Garriott put a decent amount of thought into this one.

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    11. Certainly weren't obvious for me. I've played several Ultima games and I've never seen any of the runes ever listed with the materials from the games or guides that match them with mnemonics like that. And that still didn't address most of those (also, there is the rune KAL - "invoke" which conflicts with that IN mnemonic.) How is JUX danger/trap/harm? How is MANI life? UUS? YLEM? ORT?

      On DM side VI relates to healing spells just as much by VItality and water being life being common symbolism. The void rune DES is described as DESolation in the manual. There is VEN(om). There is BRO which symbol is embracing arms (described as such in the manual), you don't even need to expand that, it's already the short form for "brother". RA is expanding RA(ys) - the star symbol. OH sounds like exhaled breath.

      As sidenote, I personally find the DM runes easier to remember than Ultima runes, because the DM runes for the most part look like the thing they represent. While Ultima runes are literally runes. Water is water lines, air is dots that look like dust in air, fire is flames, void is described in manual as desolation of burning sun over barrel desert which is the symbology of the rune (circle over a flat line), poison is an hour glass (common symbology), creature is a head with a raised arm, shockwaves look like a WiFi icon, flight looks like wings, protection is pair of embracing arms, aspect of fighter is a sword, aspect of wizard is raised staff, aspect of priest is a cross, and energy is star of energy rays.

      There are few that are more open to interpretation. Earth looks like window panes. Thief is supposed to be grasping hand, but it's a bit hard to see. Darkness is a horned demon head.

      Couple are opaque. Enemy is a lightning bolt. Negative matter is three rings.

      Of course these don't necessarily help put names to the runes, but it does help put meaning to the squiggles.

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    12. I don't mean to claim that Ultima is 10/10 perfect on this front, but the difference does appear to be that Ultima's runic meanings are something thought out and considered beforehand, and DM's runes are something that you attempt to justify after the fact.

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  5. While I can't speak definitively on how well the console Dungeon Masters control from never having played them, the Sega CD one would have been made to support the original Genesis controller, which only had 4 buttons total, while the Saturn one would have had 9 to work with. That being said, I don't know if Nexus changed the interface to work better with a controller, while the console port of Skullkeep had mouse control as an option

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    1. For what it's worth, the Mega-CD version of Dungeon Master II did support the Sega Mouse.

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  6. Thank you for this fine series of posts. It was a lot of fun to read your experiences.

    While playing along, I thought that DM2 is still a very good, fun, interesting, intelligent game. It's too bad that there were no further sequels, as the guys at FTL really were very good game and level designers.

    Sometimes you see players or reviewers complain that the game development industry invests huge efforts into improving the graphical realism, while neglecting to significantly improve the artificial intelligence (or more generally, increasing the variety of behaviors) of the enemies and NPCs. This is a case where the development team seems to have primarily directed their significant technical talents towards improving the monsters' intelligence. This was not rewarded (or even noticed!) by a lot of the reviewers and the players of the time.

    And those criticisms that classify step-wise movement as outdated due to recent innovations with free movement -- like Holder said, free movement and less grid-like levels like in Ultima Underworld would be really quite incompatible with how a lot of Dungeon Master's puzzles and traps work. Also, I think that free movement requires the mouse or an analog stick for turning left/right, otherwise turning feels slow and clumsy compared to DM's lightning-fast grid-based movement. This means that you don't have the mouse cursor free anymore in order to control the UI. Which means that you'll probably only control one character, not a party of four.

    Going by gameplay videos, in the Sega CD version of the game, the gamepad moves the mouse cursor stepwise from button to button (when using the buttons on the right side of the screen) or continuously (when the cursor is in the world window). That must feel very clumsy. Dungeon Master Nexus on the Sega Saturn even has pointless, slow continuous movement and turning, while keeping the levels grid-based -- shudder!

    It is interesting to think about ways to offer an alternative control scheme like the keyboard-based spell entry you mentioned. I think it would be possible to design a Dungeon Master style game with some differences that enable an input method via gamepad that might be both efficient and pleasant.

    For example:
    - D-pad: forward/backward/turn left/turn right.
    - Left/right bumpers: side-step left/right.
    - Left/right triggers: melee attacks of the two front row characters.
    - Hold left trigger, then tap a spell sequence with the A/B/X/Y buttons, then release trigger, to cast a spell with the left back row character. Equivalent for the right trigger.
    - The spell sequences that are tapped with the A/B/X/Y buttons could be "shapes" and thus be easily remembered. For example, a full circle with A-B-Y-X-A would be a protection sphere around the party, a zig-zag A-X-B-Y would be a lightning spell, etc.

    The world needs more games in the Dungeon Master sub-genre, that improve upon the formula and explore the unfulfilled potential.

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    1. (I meant that the d-pad is for stepwise movement and 90° turns. Not continuous movement and turning.)

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    2. Nexus doesn't play that badly in practice because it has a dedicated attack button and lets you switch between characters with the shoulder buttons. It is way too slow though. My guess is that they took that from the first King's Field, but enemies generally have less HP in comparison and it isn't a grid.

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    3. What comes to mind is the Magicka series, that implement a casting system rather similar to what you describe. The 2014 Gauntlet game uses a simplified version with only nine spells, for its wizard character. Although both of these are action games, not RPGs.

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  7. I'm really looking forward to BloodNet! I read about it a lot in the magazines at the time but every time I've tried it I've been immediately repulsed by its confusing and repulsive... everything. Good luck!

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  8. Regarding DM2's poor reviews, I believe that 1993 was the beginning of the era where reviewers strongly felt that "all games must be polygonic 3D or else they suck".

    There are a ton of early 3D games that haven't aged well, because such reviews pushed designers to prioritize 3D graphics over good gameplay. And conversely, there were a lot of mid-90s games that reviewed/sold poorly because they weren't 3D, and that much later got vindicated by history because of solid gameplay. Looks like this is one.

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    1. Precisely. It was a terrible "fad" until the success of Baldur's Gate

      (I know Fallout came before Baldur's Gate, but BG was the one that got all the acclaim)

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    2. DM was released outside of Japan in 94/95, which was far from early 3D. Not that you aren't right of course. If it wasn't 3D, it was FMV. That said, its not like reviewers decisions to focus on graphics over everything else was a new thing. Its well known that a high rating for an Amiga game just meant it looked nice at the time, maybe it was well-animated, or a flight sim with more than 6 polygons per model.
      Also, the reviews like the GameSpot one tends to highlight how a lot of people handled and still do handle reviews of old games in that they tend to have a lot of contempt for any concepts they deem old and out of date.

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    3. Far, far too many games were interested in developing new technology than actually making a good game. Reviewers demanded it and would give poor ratings to good games that didn't implement new technology. It's a personality that is quickly bored and demands novelty and new shinies all the time.

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    4. I wish you would get bored of making the same damn comment on every thread, Harland. It's really lost its novelty.

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    5. It's really lost its novelty.

      See what I mean? A constant demand for novelty and thinking anything that already exists must be boring. Thanks for the assist, it really helped to make my point! :D

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    6. That tendency of reviewers is still true even in 2022, too.

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    7. The use of the nick "Anonymous" lost its novelty around 1995.

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    8. I know I shouldn't let myself be baited by a trolling comment like this, but come on, Harland, your monotonous repetition of the same five comments / themes over and over through the last years is clearly not the same as reusing a tried and tested and well-working mechanic in another game. Many people might enjoy the latter each time again, the former just becomes grating.

      @PO: I'm just following Harland's request to stick to the tried and tested instead of going for the novelty.

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    9. crpgs suffered from this, but it was adventure point n click games the ones who were the most punished. They didn't quite recover from that because, well, there are few games that have that attention to detail that Baldur's Gate has. Like, ever.

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    10. Enough. Scroll past Harland's comments if you don't like them. And Anonymous, pick a name.

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  9. "A lot of the free-movement games are tedious to play because you spend so much time bouncing off the walls. Personally, it gets very tiring."
    I get where he's coming from, since that's kind of how you could describe Ultima Underworld if you hated it, and wallhugging in FPS games around this time wasn't much fun in retrospect. That said, there's actually nothing preventing the concepts and ideas of DM into a more 3D space. I don't believe there's something for Doom that turns it into a DM-like game, but the means are there. Further, its very much possible to do something like Wolfenstein like DM. There are a few games upcoming for 1993 that do that, but I specifically want to cite a non-RPG, Bram Stoker's Dracula, from the guy who did Hexx, Bloodwych and a few others. It doesn't have any actual RPG elements, but it takes every other expected element from dungeon crawlers and puts them in a Wolfenstein-like setup. Its actually better than you'd think at first glance because of this.

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    1. ShadowCaster actually used the Wolf3D engine and is probably the closest I can think of to "Dungeon Master but free movement".

      It was okay but not terrific. Was single player but it doesn't really work as well without a party.

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    2. I liked Shadowcaster, but its hard not to argue that it has significant flaws in regards to health regeneration primarily. It really should have been more than it was.

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    3. I played an awful lot of Wolfenstein 3D before learning that you could strafe. I was a kid, and the copy was probably pirated with no manual. I was fascinated by the experience, but I also remember finding it very frustrating. I didn't really get the point of free movement before Ultima Underworld.

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  10. As I've said before, DM2 got a poor reception in Amiga (at least) reviews at the time, because after a seven-year gap it wasn't a dramatic change on what came before. I liked it. I stopped because I kept dying on the lightning tunnel near the end - I meant to come back but I never did.

    I still class original DM as the best of the dynasty because IMO it was perfect. It was original - a few games came out with similar systems around the same time, but none did what it did. It was balanced - a good level of fear and challenge, but a reasonable player could expect to beat it. It was satisfying - just about the right size, and you would defeat the boss just about when it looked like the time for that to be happening.

    CSB was intentionally bastardous. DM2 was decent, but the balancing was not as good as DM. But all in all, every one was a good game.

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    1. AND it fit on a single floppy disk. 880 kilobytes. AND it had one of the most effective copy protection systems of the floppy disk era, taking more than a year to crack when most releases were cracked in weeks or days.

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  11. I was a little surprised to see:
    "As we get deeper into the 1990s, I'm going to levy more criticism at games that always put the same items in the same locations, reducing replayability and any sense of surprise"

    I consider the two approaches to have their own strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes, I want Dark Souls, which is meticulous with its design. Sometimes, instead, I want Diablo.

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    1. You can hand-craft a world without making all its items foregone conclusions. Look at Elder Scrolls.

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    2. I dislike randomized items to be honest. The best Elder Scrolls game is Morrowind, which has a lot of hand placed artifacts whose location often makes sense. Meanwhile in Skyrim you keep opening chests with random loot inside and it's always disappointing.

      Fully hand-placed is superior imo

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    3. There's two great problems with hand-placed non-random items. The big one is the one the Addict mentioned - if you play a game multiple times, it is too easy to beeline toward good items and break the sequence of play, or ignore large amounts of content because it is guaranteed to be worthless to you.

      The other aspect is more subtle. If your game has character development that rewards specialization (such as on-level point assigns, for example), hand-placed items can result in creating several trap options (if, for example, your game has more good magic swords than good magic axes, specializing in axes is a poor choice). If your game is also non-linear, you can create said traps even if you make a good effort into making sure there are good options for all playstyles, because you can't guarantee that a player is going to find the magic axes in a timely manner - they might randomly miss the necessary dungeons. With random loot, at least, there is a decent chance of finding something you can use, and if you get screwed by the RNG it at least isn't the designer's fault.

      The best example of this I can think of, unfortunately, is in the first Fallout game. Only minor spoilers, but I'll ROT13.

      Gur bayl svernezf fxvyy jbegu gnttvat ng gur fgneg bs gur tnzr vf Fznyy Thaf. Ovt Thaf abg bayl unf srj glcrf va gur tnzr, ohg gubfr glcrf naq gurve nzzb ner vaserdhragyl ninvynoyr hagvy arne gur raqtnzr. Raretl Jrncbaf vfa'g dhvgr nf onq, ohg gur rneyvrfg Raretl Jrncba lbh'er yvxryl gb svaq vf n cynfzn cvfgby va gur Arpebcbyvf frjref, juvpu cbgragvnyyl vfa'g gung sne sebz gur fgneg bs gur raqtnzr vgfrys.

      If you go into the game without knowing that, you can cripple your character for much of the game.

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    4. If improbable but still plausible bad luck can screw your character, that's as much of a design flaw as badly placed handcrafted items. There are ways to mitigate that, both for random and handcrafted items.

      There are fixes for the beelining problem, too, just as there are for randomly generated items (which might allow savescrumming or producing a too powerful item too early - in my first Diablo playthrough with an Archer, I found a bow that knocks back enemies on the second level, and it made everything but the last levels trivially easy). For replayability, hand out the best items based on character class/skill. Or maybe you're replaying the game just to make these optimizations.

      I think in the end, which of the two is better comes down to the overall design of the game, and preference of the player. A game like Diablo is obviously built around random drops. In Oblivion, they are pretty much a disaster, and might even break a quest. Games with less loot might do better with handcrafted drops, as the RNG is more likely to produce extreme results with few rolls. Etc.

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    5. Personally I consider items being a foregone conclusion to be more of a feature than a flaw. It makes it easier to give items and rewards more personality, along with making it easier to reward players going out of their way to explore and challenge stuff they shouldn't be doing yet. I also feel like it can help replayability, because if you know where stuff is you can more easily plan a character build or a challenge run around it, whereas with randomized stuff you're going to be at the mercy of RNG.

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    6. While I definitely see the value of randomly-distributed items, I struggly to think of any games in the 80s-90s that actually DO that - except of course via random encounters dropping random loot (which includes Roguelikes and Diablo).

      Is Elder Scrolls the first to do this or are there some big titles I'm overlooking?

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    7. It's possible to do both - i.e. have both fixed and random loot. (I think some of the Might & Magics did this, though I could be wrong.)

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    8. Might and Magic VI through VIII are the best example of randomized loot, I think. Each object has a level assigned to it, and each chest draws from a specific range of levels depending on where it is.

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    9. Exactly, I was going to make the same comment as Gerry Quinn. This debate seems to spend a lot of time approaching this as either/or, when I think the right question is how to blend these approaches and use them both appropriately. Sure there are plenty of ways to use randomness badly, but almost every game can benefit from it when done right.

      It might make sense to have some significant story items always in the same place, but that leaves a lot of other stuff that could be randomized. Or maybe that story item is always in a specific building, but the location of that building can vary within a sensible range. Or the layout of the building changes so the treasure room holding the item isn't always in the same place. There are endless ways of mixing the two approaches to draw off of the strengths of each.

      (And with the ability to resuse random number seeds, you can also pretty easily cater to players that do want to replay a familiar world at the same time as offering novelty to players that want it.)

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    10. The procgen folks seem to be very good at randomly generating large games/areas/whatever where the random element is reined in by rigorous rules ensuring the resulting game is playable (if only "technically winnable" sometimes) , but there seems to be a sour spot for a lot of games that are mostly-scripted-but-with-load-bearing-random-elements. Which is a real shame, because as asimpkins points out, there's a lot of good to be done by adding random elements to a mostly-handcrafted design.

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    11. Most of the classic CRPG series had random loot in various degrees. Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Might&Magic, Gold Box. The most extreme one before the Diablo games was probably Might&Magic 2.

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    12. Radiant, funny enough, Chaos Strikes Back randomly distributes much of its major loot. Which is quite a feat, since the engine doesn't have any kind of support for such. (It's implemented by having monsters carrying said loot run around randomly into teleporters that teleport them into walls which kills them and drops their loot into the wall alcove on that tile.)

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    13. The original, Apple ][+ version of Wizardry from 1981 only had random loot, but every monster was assigned a 'loot level' so they would usually drop something appropriate.

      On the first level, you'd get maybe a +1 sword or armour if you found an item - on level 10, you could get any item in the game and the chests would have 2 or 3 items.

      Very good random loot design.

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    14. I guess it also depends on what you're looking for in an RPG. I'm big into simulationist approaches that attempt to portray a real world. Items should be placed deliberately and with purpose. Things being placed differently with every playthrough doesn't feel right to me in such games. The lair of assassins should have daggers lying around, not two-handed warhammers. And if there's a dagger on someone's nightstand, it should always be there. He placed it there. It has a purpose. It is not random.

      I can enjoy games with procedural generation for a while, but they don't grab me the same way fully hand-crafted experiences do. The less proc gen there is, the happier I am. I love digging deep into a game that always stays the same every time I play it - at least initially. I like it when things change based on my choices, or based on dynamic AI actions. But a procedural algorithm deciding that today, the chest that usually contains a Sword +1 will have an Axe +2 this time is something I dislike. It doesn't really add anything. You still go to the same location and fight the same enemy but the reward is different. Why? What's the logic behind it?

      There's a reason Thief is my favorite game and I play more of its community-made fan missions than I play commercial releases these days. Everything in a Thief level is hand-placed and the focus is on exploration and discovering all the cool hand-placed things. No randomness whatsoever.

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    15. This seems more like a complaint against poorly done randomness than against ever having any randomness at all.

      You can't really have truly random content, it all needs to be bounded by parameters that are hand-crafted. In that sense everything is hand-crafted, but just includes varying ranges of randomness (including zero).

      Take your lair of assassins example, the loot should be drawn from a random pool of sensible items. If the loot pool includes warhammers that's not a failure of randomness, but of doing a bad job defining the hand-crafted procedural generation within which the randomness works.

      There are situations that call for zero randomness, but also many that can benefit from low/slight randomness, and some that can benefit from a lot more. But it's important to use the appropriate amount the right way, and not dismiss the advantages because it's been used poorly.

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    16. I'm still going to prefer the 100% handmade assassins lair with zero randomness in item placement to the one that has even just one item be slightly and appropriately random.

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    17. I prefer random loot with important-interesting items hand-placed. But whatever the loot distribution may be, I love it when the game gives the player the option to tweak/craft their equipment. Something like in DA:Inquisition (I have serious issues with the implementation of the system in that game, but the idea sits very well with me.)
      Such a system can take care of involuntarily bottlenecking yourself, keeps things flexible and can still make you look forward to future loot, and those few special loot containers with built-in juicy stuff.

      Delete
  12. Does this mean you've played and recommend "Aeon of Sands: The Trail" or simply that it's a recently made similar game with apparently positive reviews?

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    1. I was aware of that game because the developers sent me a review copy. Then I got busy and never actually sent them a review. I've been feeling bad about that for years. I played about an hour of it and enjoyed it.

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    2. Thank you for the answer.

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  13. IIRC Happy Computer/Powerplay named it RPG of the year at least (even ifthey noted it was because of was weak year).

    My theory regarding the pacing is, that this was so much delayed, that they didnt fit in more levels, which probably were planned to smooth things out.

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  14. As far as being thankful of old school newer grid RPGs: I would be so, so fascinated to read your review of and thoughts on Zanki Zero, a game that could not be less marketed towards you, yet perfectly embodies that exact type of gameplay. Ah well.

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  15. Dungeon Master 2 is 10/10 (100%) game for me ;-)

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  16. Didn't the Alternate Dungeon games feature free movement (and textured walls, not just polygons) before the first Dungeon Master ever came out?

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    1. My recollection was that Alternate Reality used very small incremental movement rather than continuous movement, but there were about 25 ports of that game, each with different features, so I'm hesitant to say anything definite about it.

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