The Red Crystal: Chipped and Cracked

 

I'm offering money for a town I already somehow own. This is the least of the problems I experienced this session.

         

The Red Crystal turns out to be hilariously broken, which likely explains why there are no walkthroughs or videos longer than 15 minutes to find online. At the end of my first entry, I had discovered some fairly bad mechanics (NPCs, combat), but this session produced a plethora of bugs that--and here I have to give the game credit--I've never seen before.

   

A lot of the bugs have a common theme. The game seems to get confused about the relative positioning of things, whether the character on the map or items in the inventory. Just a sample:

    

• When you sell items at a shop, the game often sells the "wrong" item--that is, a different one than the one you selected in the menu.

• As you explore towns, the game thinks you've walked into buildings that you are nowhere near.

• When you exit buildings, the game often puts the character on the far end of the map from where the building actually is.

• You often use items and completely different items vanish from your inventory.

     

This isn't a bug, but NPC icons look exactly like yours, leading to some confusion.

       

• The game gives you an option to "Bribe" before every battle, including those with insects and animals, but they never take it. 

• NPCs to whom you deliver quest items often take completely different items from your inventory, including quest items meant for other people.

• The game frequently crashes on NPC screens.

• Wandering NPCs sometimes turn out to be houses which say "nobody home."

       

This is the result of an NPC running into me, not me running into a house.

     

• When you start up the game, it gives you a copy protection screen asking you to type a specific word from a random position, page, and paragraph in the manual. It took me a while to figure out its conventions, including paragraphs that start on a previous page don't count but headings do. Even knowing this, the game tells me that I entered the wrong word about half the time and boots me to DOS.

     

There are other things to talk about that may be bugs but may just be weird mechanics.

   

Since the first entry, I exhausted myself exploring Gronk's castle, leaving with nothing to show for it except a Lost Crown and something called Hunwell's Skull. For all I know, one of those two things is one of the "Seven Secrets of Life." I mean, I expected the secrets to be textual, like "brush your teeth between meals," but they could be physical objects.

   

I made lots of money, so I returned from the castle to the nearby town of Groth. There, I visited an NPC who asked me to find the Lost Crown in the first place. He gave me 3,050 gold coins for it and said he'd give me more when he was restored to his rightful throne. What I didn't notice until later is that he didn't take the crown from my inventory, but rather a random club. I was later able to visit him again (accidentally) and get another 3,050 coins. He didn't take the crown the second time, either. It did disappear from my inventory later, when I tried to use a potion.

        

Notice that he hasn't actually taken the crown. He took a club.

      

Also in town, I purchased a "bull axe," learned the "Door" spell, and acquired the deed to the town for 1,732 zetos. I set taxes "fair."

       

The rate before I arrived was set to "exorbanant" [sic]. The people are going to love me.

         

Towns are horribly annoying to navigate. First, you get absolutely swarmed with NPCs as if they're trying to attack you. Second, wandering NPCs have absolutely no use whatsoever. None. All the useful NPCs are in houses. Wandering ones don't give you the slightest hint or advantage. They just deliver stock lines, like most of the NPCs in Ultima II. Soldiers say, "Move on, desert rat!" Merchants say, "What can I do for you?" but don't do anything for you. Dwarves say, "Good day, stranger." And you have to stop, wait, and acknowledge every damned one. As above, sometimes wandering NPCs turn out to be houses. I don't know how that works.

        

As you've already told me 25 times.

     

And speaking of houses, you have to thread yourself through the town carefully, because a building will read your approach from a mile away. You can point yourself vaguely at the wizard's tower, move a millimeter, and suddenly find yourself in the tower. Other times, you can wander back and forth on top of a building and not enter.

   

I returned to Gronk's fortress to try again. Enemies remained relentless and combat never really got any better. It did get shorter. My sword had done maybe 5-15 points of damage on the right attack setting, but my axe did more like 15-40. However, the sword would do small amounts of damage even if I didn't choose the optimal attack type (one of nine options as covered last time). The axe would just miss if I didn't choose the optimal option.

     

This was one of my weaker swings, but I didn't get screen shots of the stronger ones.

      

Slowly, I mapped, taking screenshots as I completed each level, since the game forgets each level as you move to the next one. I found some gold armor and put it on, raising my armor from 7 to 8. The game's approach to armor is weird. It disappears when you use it (put it on), and the effects of multiple pieces of armor are cumulative. By the end of this session, I was wearing gold plate over my gold plate and had three sets of boots on.

     

I found my way to the bottom level of the dungeon but got stuck there. The bottom level has a weird blue tone. It is full of invisible walls that appear on the automap but not the main screen. In the southeast corner is a hallway heading east, but there seems to be no way to get into it. The game has a secret door mechanic, but with no wall to see, there's no door to find. I hunted around the level multiple times and could find no way to access the attached area. I don't know whether that's a bug or whether I missed something.

       

The weird bottom level of Gronk's fortress. I can't get to that area to the east.

     

I made my way out of the dungeon--this time, I had risen to Level 5--and decided to try the dungeon in the northeast corner of the outdoor map. On the way, I stopped in the isolated town of Stalnaker. There, an NPC named Solas gave me a sword that did over 100 points of damage when I chose the optimal attack position, so no complaints there--except that NPCs kept stealing it when I tried to give them other things, forcing me to reload.

      

Nice! See you in Dragon Age 4!

    

I went to town hall to see how much it was to buy the town. What I didn't notice is that at some point, the game decided I already owned the town, and put "Owner: Chester" in the town information block. So when I offered 3,200 zetos for the deed, the game told me that I was paying myself (I didn't get them back, though). The deed appeared in my inventory.

    

An NPC named Pizunni said he was sick and needed an elixir. I bought one from the nearby mage's tower and returned it to him. He took my Solas Sword instead, and the game froze on this screen, so I never saw the rest of her message. It happened again after a reload. I had to give up.

      

Hey! That's not going to cure your illness!

    

In the northeast corner, I visited the city of Nazar, where nothing interesting happened. North of it was the Temple of the Undead. I entered and found a scroll on the ground that said, "Only Xoptaous may enter." There were no exits from this room. I assume I have to find something somewhere else that lets me disguise myself as Xoptaous.

When I exited the dungeon, I was all the way on the south edge of the world map even though I had entered the building in the northeast. 

    

Not for long.

      

I went to the closest castle, Tagar's, and explored seven floors without finding anything that seemed like a Secret. One by one, I lost all the items in my inventory while using my Red Crystal to view the entire automap without having to explore everything. I still couldn't get past a certain point. I had paid to learn spells in the towns, including "Crystal," "Detect," "Aware," and "Door." These are supposed to help make maps, find secret doors, and create doors in blank walls. I couldn't get a single one to cast. Maybe knights just aren't good at magic.

   

Anyway, with all those inventory items missing, it's probably a good thing I didn't find the Secret. I'll have to reload from before visiting the castle. I wish I knew what the secrets to exploration are so that I could find at least one of the Secrets of Life. I wish I even knew what I was looking for.

      

Do these rocks have anything to do with it?

     

It's probable that I'm not going to be able to continue with the game and will have to code it "NP" for "not playable." However, I'll leave it open for a little while in case someone comes along with any intelligence--including perhaps author Charles Griffith, to whom I've sent a message. In the meantime, I had a look at Computer Gaming World's April 1994 review of the game by Alan Emrich and Petra Schlunk. It is easily the harshest review I've ever seen in the magazine. They encountered many of the problems I described above and several that I didn't. They were unable to get multiplayer to work, for instance--although it turns out that if you do get multiplayer going, the only thing that you can do with the other player is trade off who fights in combats. You can't even talk to each other.

    

They do offer that: "The seven secrets of life are decent pieces of sage advice, told by one of life's truly great adventurers, co-designer Bruce Williams (founder of QQP)." I don't really know how to interpret this. Do you meet Bruce Williams on top floors of the castles? Is his advice written on scrolls or something? Or am I misinterpreting what CGW is saying?

The review concludes:

     

Frankly . . . we can't believe that it says QQP on this game's box . . . Like Babe Ruth, when QQP steps up to the plate and connects with a game, they hit home runs and the fans come back anticipating the next one. When they miss, however, a strike-out seems all the more disappointing. We fear that this foul ball has hit them in the face, leaving a black eye that may take some time to completely heal.

         

Well, QQP came back all right, publishing more than a dozen strategy games and casino games before the company was sold in 1995. (It was sold a couple of times after that, too; its assets currently seem to be held by Digital Leisure, a Canadian company.) They never tried another RPG, though.

Ed. I just realized from the screenshots that despite reloading when something important disappeared, I somehow lost Hunwell's Skull at some point. I hope that wasn't important.

     

Time so far: 8 hours