The Red Crystal: So Bad It's Tolerable

 

I finally find the first boss--two of him.

      

Wow, did this entry go through a lot of drafts. I started it as a "Summary and Rating" in which I intended to claim it as "NP" (not playable) because of all the bugs. Then I saw proof that other people had won it online and redoubled my efforts but still couldn't find a single Secret of Life, so I decided to do it as a "Summary and Rating" taking the loss, supplementing my coverage with the experiences of the online players--except that meant watching about 13 hours of video to find the Seven Secrets and other key moments. While I was watching the videos, I started playing myself again, and finally managed to get one of the damned secrets, so now . . . I don't know. I guess I'm going to keep at it.

    

Red Crystal models itself thematically if not visually on Ultima IV. You have to assemble seven adages about Living the Best Life before you can take on the final boss. Each Secret of Life is in the possession of one of the big boss's lieutenants, each in his own castle. Each castle has 10 or so levels connected by a maze of up and down stairways, and each is absolutely swarming with respawning monsters. 

    

The very world starts breaking apart.

     

The outdoor map is a single screen. In addition to the lieutenants' castles, it has eight towns and a couple of optional dungeons. The towns have NPCs who offer services and side quests. Both the outdoor areas and towns have wandering NPCs who have no purpose whatsoever.

       

Exploring the overworld.

    

As we've seen, the game is staggeringly broken. Amusingly, some of the ways that it's broken cancel out the others. For instance, there are a lot of side quests that require you to return items to NPCs--but they usually take the wrong item. They sometimes take other NPCs' quest items. This would be a game breaker except that the side quests are mostly unnecessary in the first place, since regular combats provide you with more money than you can spend.

        

The cut scenes are nice.

    

Many of the NPC side quests have to do with artifact weapons, which you would normally want to find because combat with the starting weapons takes so long. But these quest chains are broken (I think) because NPCs who are supposed to give you information refuse. But that's okay because there are a couple of weapons so overpowered that I think they must be bugs. A bull axe, which you can buy after a couple of hours of adventuring, kills most enemies with one hit. We'll see some more examples of how I learned to compensate for bugs below.

     

I wasted a bunch of time looking for a bug-free version but I had no luck. Thinking that the problem might have been with my previous game, I started a new character--a barbarian--but he had the same problems. Later, I saw that the YouTube players also had the same problems.

      

A new character. It doesn't help.

        

I spend four hours exploring Kang's Castle, getting my character up to Level 5, but I never find Kang. I log a few notes about dungeon exploration on the way:

   

• It turns out that food and blue potions only heal you if sufficient time has passed since your last one. 

      

Finding both food and a blue potion.

      

• There are occasional NPCs in dungeons, but what they have to say is usually mysterious, perhaps signs of broken side quests. In Kang's dungeon, I meet an NPC named "Shakes" who says: "Forget me! I am not worth your blade! I will run . . . run . . . run!" He then disappears. Another one named Homple says, mysteriously, "Go to Lexor," and another named Mitakaron, even more mysteriously, says, "You smell horrible."

        

Yeah. I'm a barbarian in a medieval society who has slaughtered about 50 things in the last hour. I'm sure I don't smell like Irish Spring.

        

• Yet another NPC (who looks like an enemy) thanks me for an elixir which I never had and definitely did not give him. "Now know this," he continues. "Seek out Rotazar Hoterag in Trautner and he will help you in the search for Xopotaous's legendary axe." This is one of those broken side quests. Rotazar wants nothing to do with me. 

    

Maybe it was one of my blue potions.

      

• There are traps in random places on the floor of dungeons. I usually set them off and take the damage. I guess thieves probably have a chance of disarming them.  

        

Not how lightning works.

       

• Armor, as we discussed before, disappears once you equip it, and armor values continue to stack as you equip new pieces. I don't think this is a bug; I think it was intended to work in this (stupid) way.

• I find a lot of keys in the dungeons and never find a door that takes a key.

• About 50% of chests have nothing in them, and the other 50% have less gold than you get in the typical random encounter.

       

Whoop-de-doo.

     

• Money accumulates so fast that I assume the game intended that you would bribe most enemies--except that non-sentient enemies (spiders, maggots, wolves) can't be bribed, and they're the most annoying. I don't believe you get experience from bribes. 

• Enemies occasionally have bits of dialogue before they attack. That's fun.

• You occasionally run into things in the dungeons that, if there's anything to do with them, I can't figure it out.

    

They are, indeed, rocks.

    

After frustrating myself for hours, I leave the dungeon and go to the nearby city of Trautner. As before, cities are annoying to explore because there are dozens of useless wandering NPCs whom you have to acknowledge, plus you're always accidentally entering buildings that you don't intend to enter. I meet an NPC named Fabian who says: "The ultimate thief would be the one who could rob the king of thieves! With proof of that feat, I could make them rich beyond even a thief's dreams." Clearly this is a side quest that requires bringing him some item. 

    

A druid named Utan wants a knight to rescue his lord, King Tuwoka, held in Worm's castle. Someone named Malcome warns me about Kang's elite bodyguards, the Black Circle. I think I met one in the dungeon.

   

Trautner doesn't have a weapon shop, so I move on to the city of Ogden. More NPCs: Ganzador simply will not talk to "the likes of me"; I'm not welcome in Angus's home; and all Grogar has to say is that "the whole realm has gone to the dogs." I buy the town from some guy named Corzar for 1,300 zetos and set a "fair" tax rate. This puts a deed in my inventory that I have to be careful doesn't get taken by some other NPC or accidentally used in a dungeon (more below). 

    

I still can't find a store, so I move on to Zervos. Here, an NPC named Grandar offers 10,000 zetos for the Destiny Sword. I find a shop and buy a bull axe for 3,000 zetos. There are more expensive weapons, including an "orb cutter" and a "mage slayer," referring to two human enemies you find in dungeons (I have no idea why one is called an "orb"), but the bull axe kills them just fine. I buy the town from Amaro for 1,500 zetos and get the deed, but on a later visit, the ownership has somehow reverted to Amaro. I imagine that's another bug.

      

That mountain looks awfully big to be in the middle of a city.

     

To my surprise, I find a hidden dungeon in Zervos while exploring some hills. It's not very big, but it has a lot of enemies. I find two artifact weapons in the place: the Deathaxe and the aforementioned Destiny Sword. The Deathaxe looks like an axe in my inventory, but its animation looks like a club. It seems as overpowered as the bull axe, killing most enemies in one hit. The Destiny Sword, on the other hand, is a lot less effective. I keep it instead of returning it to Grandar for reasons I can't explain. He probably wouldn't have taken the right item anyway. 

       

I find the Destiny Sword in a cave.

      

Because I have plenty of money, I visit the mage's tower and buy every spell that they sell.

    

While in Zervos, a couple of NPCs mention someone named "The Shadow Killer," who apparently carries a key that unlocks an optional dungeon to the north. An NPC named Tolman wants me to retrieve it from him. Finally, an orcish-looking NPC named Rocco says he'll train me if I meet him on the first floor of Tagar's Castle. 

  

I try the castle next, but I don't find Rocco. I spend hours in it and get hopelessly lost. I meet a "war party" that says they're looking for Shadow Killer, so I guess he's in this dungeon.

      

Great. More enemies.

       

Combat is, of course, relentless. It accounts for 95% of the time you spend exploring dungeons. Although weapons like the Deathaxe make it a little faster, it never really gets better. For one thing, once you have a certain class of weapon, the difficulty becomes hitting the enemy at all. When the game first started, and I had an introductory weapon, if I chose an attack type that wasn't optimal, it would do at least 1 point of damage. But once I started getting better weapons, the "wrong" attack type simply misses. This is worse than only doing 1 point, because when it misses, you don't know whether it's because you've chosen the wrong attack type or whether you just got unlucky and missed. So you have to miss several times to be sure, then switch among different attacks.

    

To refresh memory: there are 9 attack settings, three high, three middle, and three low. When the game began, the type made sense. Tall enemies like humans responded to high atttacks; low enemies like maggots responded to low attacks; medium enemies like wolves responded to medium attacks. At some point, logic goes out the window, especially when the game mixes multiple enemies on the same screen. I think it actually gets confused about which enemy is which. For instance, I might fight a group of two maggots and two undead knights. Undead knights will normally respond to high attacks and maggots will normally respond to low attacks. But in this battle, one of the knights will die to a low attack and one of the maggots to a high attack, which makes no sense unless the game mixed them up.

   

Oh, and the game punishes you for leveling up by throwing more and more enemies into each battle. Pretty soon, you can't walk four steps without having to fight another group of six enemies, which you have to fight with hit and run tactics while testing out 9 different attack positions. Oh, and for extra fun, sometimes the game will start you in the middle of a pack of enemies and you can't move. You just start laying attacks all around you, hoping to kill them before they kill you.

     

Swinging my Deathaxe/club at a group of druids.

     

As I said, I get lost in Tagar's Castle. I try to escape by casting "Transport," but it turns out that spell can take you to entirely different dungeons, so soon I'm even more lost than I was before. 

   

Eventually, I learn the secret to effectively navigating dungeon levels. First, you want to use a red crystal to reveal the entire dungeon level. You can try a red potion or the "Crystal" spell, but both of these tactics reveal the levels only temporarily; you forget the level when you go up or down the stairs. The red crystal, on the other hand, keeps it in memory.

   

The problem is that when you use a red crystal, you don't really use it. Because of the game's inventory pointer problems, it always consumes the last item listed in your inventory instead of the crystal. So you have to load up with a bunch of junk items, like weapons you don't want, before you can use the crystal.

       

I'm about to use my red crystal--but it's my mace that will disappear.

        
Once you have the levels in memory, you need to make careful note of stairway locations and mark off which ones you've already tried. If you can't find your way to parts of a level, you have to look for secret doors. Supposedly, the "Door" spell will make a door in a blank wall for you, but I've never once gotten it to work.

    

Eventually, I find my way out of whatever dungeon I've landed in, and I return to Tagar's Castle. This time, I do find Rocco in a corner of the first floor. "Your training shall commence now," he says. "To prove yourself, journey below and slay the vile Trithalgma. Emerge victorious and you shall have glory beyond your years."

      

You realize I'm already Level 6?

     

I head back down again, this time mapping and taking more careful note of my progress. I meet a fish guy named Igar who again warns me of the Shadow Killer and gives me a broadsword to help deal with him.

       

Thanks! That broadsword will come in handy for the next time I want to use a red crystal.

    

Finally--lo and behold--I find Tagar on a lower level. He attacks with two copies of himself plus a floating eye. I kill them without too much trouble and, at last, get one of the Seven Secrets of Life, which I render without editing:

      

Moderation. Moderation in everything. To pig out on anything food, drink, or merryment. Material items usually lead to an unhealthy situation physically or mentally.

       

In the space of two sentences, we've gone from "moderation" to complete asceticism.

     

I've always preferred Oscar Wilde's take: "Everything in moderation, including moderation." Some of the best memories of my life (and, admittedly, some of the worst) have been born from excess. More important to our present purposes, how does this character operationalize this advice? I'd be glad to fight fewer enemies. Stop sending them my way.

   

Once the message disappears, I get a little hourglass in the lower-left corner indicating that, as the manual warned, I only have a short amount of time to get out of the dungeon. Fortunately, I don't have to remember how to get back to the surface. As soon as I go to the first stairway, I'm taken outside, and the dungeon is represented as a smoldering ruin. I hope the Shadow Killer and Trithalgma quests weren't all that important.

      

Hope you got out, Rocco.

       

I made it to Level 7 in the dungeon, and I guess I actually completed the Shadow Killer quest. There is a key in my inventory that I got somewhere. When I return to Zervos, Tolman thanks me--and takes my green potion, leaving me the key. A bunch of other NPCs who were interested in my Destiny Sword try to take that, too, but they end up taking random short swords that I purchased so I could use red crystals in the next dungeon. I don't feel so bad, since Grandar only gives me 1,000 zetos instead of the promised 10,000. That, in turn, doesn't bother me because I have no idea what I'm going to spend the 20,000 zetos I already have on, particularly since purchasing cities, at best, just gives you more money you don't need and, at worst, results in the deed disappearing from your inventory while you're trying to drink a potion or something. You see what I mean about errors canceling each other out. It's almost impressive.

    

I confess to being mildly curious about the other Secrets of Life. Maybe one of them will be life-changing.

   

Time so far: 13 hours