November 2024 Update

Just a quick note that you probably won't see anything new until the week of 18 November. I have a number of things to catch up on this week.

BRIEFs: Dragon (1984), Shadowfire (1985), Enigma Force (1985), La Foresta Dimenticata dal Tempo (1987)

 

      

Dragon

Germany

AWO Software (developer); Roeske Verlag (publisher)

Released on cassette for Commodore 64

Rejected for: No character development

       

There isn't exactly a high bar for cassette games for the C64, but Dragon manages to absolutely bottom out any expectations. It is almost baffling in its moronic simplicity. Your "character"--and I use that very loosely--wants to join the Dragon Knights of the Round Table, which requires him to enter a labyrinth and kill a dragon.

     

Moving through the map. I'm wasting time because I know where the dragon is.

       

The "labyrinth" is a relatively small map of interconnected rooms in which adjacent traps (instantly-fatal pits) are marked with a blue dot and the dragon's presence in an adjacent room is marked with a red dot. You move through it with the joystick, losing a little strength with every move. The dragon is randomly placed; he might appear (as he did twice for me) immediately in an adjacent room when the game begins. You enter the dragon's chamber and hold down the FIRE button to expend your remaining strength trying to kill him. If you fail, you get a "game over" screen; if you succeed, you get a "congratulations" screen and can enter your name as a new Dragon Knight.

       

There's the dragon.

 

And there's the "won" message.

        

That's it. Win or lose, the game takes about 1-3 minutes. Who possibly had any fun with this?

       

******

        

Shadowfire

United Kingdom

Denton Designs (developer); Beyond (publisher)

Released 1985 for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, 1986 for Amstrad CPC

Rejected for: No character development

      

The purpose of a BRIEF is for me to document RPG-adjacent games long enough to at least get a sense of them before rejecting them. Sometimes, I end up liking the game well enough to play it to the end, which is why there are so many "Es" (for "exception") in my master game list with a "won" annotation. Other times, I can't bring myself to do much more than confirm it's not an RPG. This is one of those times. I don't think I'd play it even if it was an RPG.

   

The game is set some time in the future where ships can jump between star systems using hyperdrives. Someone has drawn up plans for a ship called Shadowfire that can jump directly to a planet's orbit, which apparently has significant military implications. Someone named Ambassador Kryxix had the plans surgically embedded into his spine, but he's been kidnapped by the evil general Zoff and is being held on Zoff V. It won't be long before the plans are discovered. An elite team of six humans, cyborgs, insectoids, and robots is dispatched to rescue the ambassador, capture Zoff, and destroy Zoff V. The manual says you can do these things in any order, but it seems to me that logically that can't be the case. Anyway, you have 100 minutes.

         

One of the characters. Two of the icons in the lower right look the same to me. None of the ones in the upper left look like they mean anything.

      

Each character on the team has values (or, more specifically, a status bar) representing strength, agility, stamina, and weight. You accept them as they are; you don't get to create or name them. The values don't develop or change during the game, which makes it a non-RPG by my definitions. Even the game's manual calls it a strategy game.

   

And that's about all I can tell you. The game commits too many interface transgressions for me to see it any further. A lack of keyboard commands for a PC game is bad enough, but its worst sin is treating the joystick as a mouse. You control things by joysticking around to the various icons on the screen and then hitting "fire" to activate them. That is a solid dealbreaker. Why wouldn't you just have the inventory pop up with an "I" or the combat menu with a "C"?

      

But my problems with the game aren't just ideological. Even if I could bring myself to control Shadowfire the way it's meant to be controlled, I'm not sure I could ever get to the point where I understand what's happening or what to do about it. I find the graphics utterly baffling. Many of the icons look identical to me. Others don't look like anything to me except for blobs. The tiny game map is individualized for each character, so you have no sense of the overall game space. Even watching this video, I couldn't figure it out.

      

*****

      

The title and opening screen.

       

Enigma Force

United Kingdom

Denton Designs (developer); Beyond (publisher)

Released 1985 for ZX Spectrum, 1986 for Commodore 64

Rejected for: No character development

      

War has broken out between the empire and the forces of General Zoff. The Enigma Force is escorting Zoff to the emperor when he uses his psionic powers to crash the ship on an unknown planet. Four of the team members survive and set out to find Zoff.

    

The developers dealt with some of my objections in this sequel. It has a proper adventure screen--using a "studio view" (from the side)--rather than individualized maps for each character. All of the icons are arranged on the main screen instead of nestled in sub menus. But you still activate them by using the joystick to move a cursor around the screen and click on arrows. That's like driving a car by attaching robotic arms to the steering wheel and controlling them with a xylophone.

      

No.

    

Anyway, again the classification is MobyGames's fault. The manual calls it an action-adventure, which seems more appropriate. The individual team members have strengths and weaknesses, so you have to hustle them around to solve the puzzles that only they can solve. I guess the whole thing can be won in about six minutes, but I still don't have the patience to try.

    

This is my third encounter with Denton Designs. They produced the bugged Sonderon's Shadow the same year. I shouldn't see them again; they were around until the mid-1990s, but MobyGames classifies everything else they made as action or sports.

*****

       

I'm guessing these objects are not to scale.

      

La Foresta Dimenticata dal Tempo

Italy

"The Forest that Time Forgot"

Independently developed; published with Load 'n' Run magazine #43 (November 1987) 

Released on cassette for ZX Spectrum

Rejected for: No character development

      

I was rooting for this one, as the earliest Italian RPG that we currently know about is Time Horn (1991) from a few years later. Alas, I can't call it an RPG. It's instead a Wizard's Castle variant with fewer mechanics than even the original game. I was prepared to win it anyway, but there's something about it that I can't figure out.

 

La Foresta appeared in BASIC on the cassette tape that accompanied Load 'n' Run issue 43, a Spanish magazine that had Portuguese and Italian releases. It was published from 1984 to 1989. The game is credited to Stefano Reksten, who I confirmed is Italian. I couldn't find any other games attached to him, but he did contribute a couple of utility programs in other issues.

       

Lost in the forest, I face two centaurs with a jewel as my reward.

        

The game throws you in the middle of a forest--I'm going to go out on a limb and say that time forgot it--guarded by a dragon. The dragon has demanded that you collect a certain number of treasures of various types and then return to the castle. Most of the treasures are guarded by monsters, and against them you have only a limited pool of forza (strength) and several spells.

       

My mission.

        

You get several options during setup, including the mission number, whether to use large or small tiles, whether the map adjusts to keep you at the center, and the overall difficulty from "difficult," "a little more difficult," and "almost impossible." Finally, you choose from three characters: Kloin the Elf, Korleth the Dwarf, and Ankus the Giant. Kloin starts with less strength and more spells, Ankus the opposite.

     

Choosing a character during creation.

    

The game generates a random forest map and starts you in a square, usually with an initial encounter. As you enter each square, you generally find a random treasure (jewels, coins, crowns, shields, treasure chests) guarded by one or more monsters (centaurs, harpies, specters, minotaurs, chimeras, skeletons). You have to decide how to beat the monster from three options: physical combat, spells, and bribing them with the accumulated points you've gained from defeating other monsters. Success or failure is resolved instantly; a wrong move kills you.

       

Options when fighting a couple of harpies.

       

Combat asks you to wager a certain number of points of strength against the enemies' strength; I found that at the "difficult" level, you have to wager about 150% of their strength to ensure beating them. Spells are "Sleep," "Levitation," and "Invisibility." All of them, if successful, work as if you'd simply defeated the creature. I didn't get all the nuances, but I can tell you that "Sleep" and "Invisibility" don't work on specters. 

     

Both strength and spells go fast. Strength also depletes by 10 for every move that you make, and even Kloin only starts with 4 of each spell. The map is seeded with inns that can restore strength and temples where you have a chance of finding a chest that restores spells.

     

The dragon just sometimes ups and kills you for no reason.

      

The rest of the map is an illusion. I determined with save states that the game figures out what treasure and creature you're going to encounter next, and you get that encounter no matter what direction or distance you move.

     

Once you figure out the basic rules, the game isn't so hard except that there doesn't seem to be enough time. There are three missions. Mission 1 is "Forest Surrounded by a Wall." You have 30 days to find all the treasures in a forest that you couldn't leave if you wanted to, because it has hard borders. Mission 2 gives you 40 days, and it occurs in a larger forest that wraps. Mission 3 is titled "Save the Realm," and I didn't explore it long enough to figure out the parameters.

      

Here, I ran out of time.

      

Anyway, Mission 1 typically asks you to find around 30 treasures, and you only ever find one treasure per square. You could thus only beat the mission if you found one in every square (and you don't) and if you never entered a temple or inn. I don't know what I'm missing. 

    

But I still got on the leaderboard!

      

Anyway, if you die or if time runs out, the dragon appears to kill you, and you get to enter your name on a leaderboard based on the total points you accumulated. After this happened a few times, I decided that continuing with the game and figuring out its mysteries wouldn't be a great use of time. There are still two Italian games for me to check out--Buio! (1984) and L'Isola dei Segreti (1985)--so we'll see if either of them are RPGs.

Game 531: The Great Ultizurkian Underland (1993)

 

At this point, he might as well have gone with Wingdings.

         

The Great Ultizurkian Underland

United States

Independently developed and published

Also released as Great Ultizurkian Under-World

Several versions released for DOS, c. 1993-1995

Date Started: 1 November 2024

            

We come to the next RPG from the prolific Robert "Dr. Dungeon" Deutsch (1958-2021), whose work we've already seen in Ultizurk I: The Grandmaster's Quest (1992) and Ultizurk II: The Shadow Master (1992), which both came after nine 1980s text adventures titled Zurk. All of these games have featured a persistent hero who rises to be Grandmaster of his guild, then gets yanked about from one adventure to the next.

 

(I should mention that the date of this one is a bit unclear. Modification dates on the files are as late as April 1995. This is version 5.5 of the game, so it's possible an earlier one was released in 1993, but I haven't found any direct evidence of that so far. The only magazine advertisements I've found are from 1995, and even there, the game is listed as Great Ultizurkian Under-World. I'll try to untangle this for the final entry.)

    

The text adventure series was of course an homage to the Zork games, but the Ultizurk series draws heavily from Ultima. The backstory to this one sounds like it was written by an AI after it was fed the plots and dialogue of Ultimas IV-VI and Ultima Underworld. Arriving home from his last quest, the Grandmaster finds a mysterious tome in his quarters. The book has an image of a volcano on the cover and is titled A History of the Great Ultizurkian Underland. It describes a civilization living in a dormant island volcano split into three (interior) sections: the top, ruled by Lord Thomas Baldwin; the bottom, ruled by Lord Henry; and the "great, lush jungle" in the middle, ruled by Queen Melissa the Siren. One of the residents of the empire is Leomund, the Great Archmage, known across many worlds.

This of course recalls the moment in Ultima IV in which you receive the History of Britannia.

           

Tucked into the book is Leomund's diary, in which he recounts that some mysterious trouble has been infecting the residents. They've been "forming strange guilds" and regarding their fellow citizens with suspicion. Researching at the Lycaeum, Leomund comes to fear that a mystic rainbow pool, which allows passage across dimensions, might reside somewhere in the volcano. He worries that the "Lords of Cosmir" will arrive through the pool and conquer the world. Late in his diary, we learn that the Ultizurkian Underland is in the same world as the land of King Eldor, who the Grandmaster served in Ultizurk I. Leomund wonders if the same hero might return to aid the people of the Underland. The Grandmaster closes the book, goes to sleep, and wakes up in the volcanic empire.

      

Leomund articulates his suspicions.

      

Previous games have explained that your knowledge and skills reset whenever you take portals between worlds, so the "Grandmaster" is busted back down to Level 1, with no equipment. I've got 15 magic points but no spells. I start exploring. 

       

The character arrives. Looking at this now, I'm not sure I opened that chest. I'm not sure I saw that chest.

       

The game's tiled, iconographic interface does not appear to have changed much since Ultizurk II. The exploration window is slightly larger, but Deutsch still doesn't know what to do with most of the right-hand side of the screen. "Mana" has been added to the list of attributes shown on the screen (Ultizurk II had no magic). The iconographic elements are okay, though they tend towards a little bit "too complicated," and there are times I miss NPCs because they look like blobs among other blobs. The portraits are still howlingly bad, and sound is no more than occasional beeps.

     

I am in the Land of the Triangle-Nose People.

      

There are a few things I like. The L)ook command will give you a well-written textual description of anything you use it on. M)ap gives you a full map of the level, regardless of how much you've explored, although it's a bit small. 

       

Every piece of furniture has a description.

      

Back on the negative side, moving at era-accurate speeds is excruciatingly slow. Cranking up the cycles on the emulator causes the NPCs to move so fast I can't talk with them. Fortunately, the game lets you slow down NPCs with a special command, but it takes me a while to figure it out. Finally, the game inexplicably has a day/night cycle, despite the fact that we're underground and everything is lit with torches. When "night" falls, everything gets dark, including the text on the screen. It's absurd.

      

At night, I can't see any of my values or the message text.

       

The worst interface element, by far, is that NPCs can easily block corridors, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to get around them. There's no command to hustle them along or climb over them. You can't move diagonally past them at intersections. They won't move between doors, so if one ends up (how?) in a part of the corridor with doors at each end, there is literally no way to get by except to reset the NPCs' positions by leaving the dungeon level and returning.

       

Yes, I tried the obvious.

       

It becomes apparent that I've arrived on Level 1 of the volcano, which is supposedly at the top of the cone. Level 8 is at ground level, and apparently you can walk outside from there. (Which means the "Underland" isn't really "under" anything so much as "inside" it.) Narrow cave corridors open into large caverns that contain stone structures with furnishings and NPCs. NPC interaction draws from the Ultima IV-VI tradition in that you feed NPCs keywords and often get more keywords in response. NAME and JOB work on everyone. 

    

• Lord Baldwin, who I find last, admits to summoning me here after King Eldor told him about me. He will provide me with food, healing, and the ability to level up. He mourns the loss of his first knight, Prince John, who led an expedition down the volcano and didn't return. Later, he was found on Level 5, wearing glowing armor and leading a group of evil spirit demons. The armor seems to make him invincible. I'm not calling out all the Ultima connections, but this guy is clearly based on Rodrick, the Chaos Knight, in Ultima Underworld.

       

The game's equivalent of Lord British.

      

• Roy runs the armory and will buy and sell weapons and armor.

• Carl, the royal recordskeeper. He maintains the official history of the Underland. He tells me that Lord Baldwin is in the southwest corner of the level; Roy the armorer can get me outfitted with equipment; and Milda the Mystic knows of herbs and lore.

• Silva is Carl's wife. She helps him as a scribe and researcher. She's proud of the Underland's Lycaeum, which is even more impressive than the one on the world's surface.

• A wandering guy named Tim says he works to fend off evil, but he's not a "fanatic" like George, Bill, Keith, and Jim. They "wear painted faces and masks," which Tim thinks is silly. If I meet Marvin, I should use his nickname: HARVEY.

• Milda is a scholar of the mystic arts specializing in herbs and arcane lore (unlike Leomund, who specializes in written spells). In the Underland, I'm likely to find nightshade mushrooms, spirit jelly, and a strange silken herb. Nightshade is typically found at night in damp areas, which are typically above water areas. Spirit jelly, which restores mana, is found in the dark near water. To find "gosomar silk," I'll need to learn arcane arts. Somewhere between Level 1 and Level 8 is a level that was destroyed by spirit demons. The heroes that died fighting the demons still roam the level and may assist me.

       

Milda's clues turn out to be important for later quests.

      

• Larry alerts me to the possibility of a dungeon level below the ground floor. He says the trouble in the Underland comes from a rainbow pool; I can read about it in the Lycaeum. His guild--the Guild of the United Dungeon People Against Unknown Horrors--has buried 10 multi-colored potions throughout the dungeon. I should talk to Wayne on Level 2 about this, using the keyword ELVEN.

• Randy fixes the dungeon walls. If I want to know about "dark things," I should go to the level with wells and ask Hugh about WATER.

• Jake of the Guild of Artifact Hunters suggests I talk to Tom on Level 2 and say ZAZA to him.

• A whole bunch of NPCs have nothing to say except their names and that they "attempt to live in peace and harmony with everyone." All of them, at the conclusion of the conversation, give me a keyword to use with a different NPC. Debby: Say STAR to Kathy on Level 2. Corrie: Say GREN to Pam on Level 2. Carleen: Say WELD to Kathleen on Level 6. Cara: Say NEEDLE to Hilda on Level 2. Diane: Say ZOK to Anne on Level 2.

      

There are several rooms with treasure chests, which I loot for food, gold, and a few inventory items. Maybe that will come back to bite me. I don't remember either of the previous games having karma meters. Among the items, I find a sextant, a pocketwatch, an awl pike that becomes my primary weapon, leather armor, a leather helmet, and a wooden shield. You have to be careful picking up too many things, as you can only drop things in empty chests.

       

Only the inventory uses the right-hand side of the screen. My inventory is already full.

       

Two chests in Lord Baldwin's house are magically locked.

     

There are no battles on Level 1; you can't even use the A)ttack action. I B)link to Level 2, arriving near the ladders that go both up and down. The level is also mostly friendly NPCs, including Lily, who tends the enormous greenhouse, and Elsi, who runs the pub.

    

But it also becomes clear that most wandering NPCs simply serve as stages in long keyword chains, presumably ending in some key piece of intelligence. So my notes now have annotations like:

• Corrie (L1): GREN to Pam (L2)
• Tim (L1): HARVEY to Marvin (L2): PACK to Belle (L?)
• Diane (L1): ZOK to Anne (L2): BOG to Lonibelle (L6)
• Larry (L1): ELVEN to Wayne (L2): ELDOR to Cassie (L6)
• Jake (L1): ZAZA to Tom (L2): GRIM to Cindy (L6)
• Debby (L1): STAR to Kathy (L2): MOON to Lorisselle (L6) 
• Cara (L1): NEEDLE to Hilda (L2): THREAD to Krysty (L6)

       

From one codeword to another. Leomund complained about this in his journal.

    

• Randy (L1): WATER to Hugh (L2): FIRE to Trilla (L6) 
• Carleen (L1): WELD to Kathleen (L6): IRON to Loretta (L7)
• Titus (L1): CYCLOPS to Hector (L2): SKELETONS to Sally (L6?)

        

A couple of NPCs, Johann and Zack, have nothing to offer, so I suspect I missed keywords I was supposed to feed to them from Level 1. A lot of NPCs wander, quite quickly, and it's easy to miss them. I never find Pam, but I figure I can return later.

    

The level has an enormous potion lab with a wizard who's rude to me and won't even tell me his name. He suggests I ask Baldwin about RESPECT around mages. Baldwin later tells me that some mages have eccentric ideas, and if I want to speak to them, I should sit in their guest chair until acknowledged.

       

I'm going to adopt this policy for my students.

        

I follow his instructions. It takes a long time for the wizard to acknowledge me, but he eventually does. This turns out to be Leomund. He tells me that this realm has twelve magic words I can come to master. These words are created with the proper artifacts, so if I bring him the artifacts, he can transform them into the associated words. Each artifact will be found at the end of a quest. I ask him about each in turn:

   

• Quest 1: A nightshade mushroom, which I already have from one of the chests I opened. He gives me the spell WU ZU.

• Quest 2: A bunch of light blue berries.

• Quest 3: A bunch of yellow berries. I have these, too, and I get the spell ZIL FLAS.

• Quest 4: Strands of gosomar silk. 

• Quest 5: An elven sword. I can buy one from Roy on Level 1 for 150 gold.

• Quest 6: A blob of spirit jelly.

• Quest 7: A pocketwatch. I turn mine over and get RIM FA.

• Quest 8: A great helm.

• Quest 9: A gold nugget. I already have half a dozen. He gives me POR VAS.

• Quest 10: A "good sextant." Again, I have it. I give it to him reluctantly for ZIL LUM.

• Quest 11: The skull of a fallen hero.

• Quest 12: Reach the "seventh level of attainment." He warns me this will require me to "complete nearly the entire campaign here."

    

Ultima fans will note the similarities with the syllable system introduced in Ultima V. WU ZU is a 100% healing spell. ZIL FLAS makes the word "poof!" appear, but I can't tell anything else that it does. The same thing happens with RIM FA and POR VAS. (I try them all next to the magically locked chests and next to enemies, but they don't seem to do anything.) ZIL LUM gives me a set of coordinates, I think? They change depending on what level I'm on and change in between castings on the same level. Perhaps they're the positions of NPCs?

          

The results of ZIL LUM. I'm not sure how to interpret this.

     

None of the people on Levels 1 or 2 told me about any NPCs on Level 3, so I'm excited that I'll find some monsters there. I do, and I also soon find that around monsters, I want to ratchet those CPU cycles back down again, as if you don't input an attack command every second or so, the enemy gets a free attack. Combat is otherwise a simple matter of hitting A)ttack and a direction. You and the enemy simply trade blows until one of you is dead, although enemies also tend to just wander away from combat before it's over. They also don't seem terribly interested in you when you're in their areas. You have to deliberately walk up to them to initiate a battle. 

     

Fighting a skeleton.

       

Death sees you resurrected in front of Lord Baldwin with, as far as I can tell, no penalty to inventory or experience. I never quite trust that.

   

Rather than exhaustively explore each level at this point, I just use B)link to get a quick sense of them and to copy an enlarged version of each automap into my notes.

    

• Level 1 is the arrival level, with Lord Baldwin's mansion.

• Level 2 is a civilized level, with three large caverns, multiple NPCs, and the greenhouse.

    

The automap of Level 2. For the record, I can't tell the difference between "Paths" and "Grass" or among "Lava," "Exits/Entrances," "People/Monsters," and "You."

       

• Level 3 is a single, open cavern full of hostile snakes, bats, and skeletons.

• Level 4 is a maze of smaller caverns and passages with a large lake in the northwest corner. There are hostile ghosts and demons with devastating attacks.

      

The blown-up map of Level 4.

     

• Level 5 has four medium-sized caverns connected by thin passages. As per previous intelligence, hostile spirit demons roam the halls.

• Level 6 has a single open cavern with a lake in the middle. Rivers with bridges run to the edges of the level from the central lake. There are trees and bushes growing here in abundance, and friendly NPCs rather than monsters. A deep green background gives the sense of a forest.

• Level 7 is also lush and verdant, the lighter color giving a sense of plains or farmland.

• Level 8 looks graphically like Level 7, but the map shows it to be more structured, with a complex of buildings in the center surrounded by a "moat" with several bridges. Something in the northwest corner looks like it could be an exit to the outside.

     

A)ttack only works on Levels 3-5, so I guess there are probably no enemies on the other levels. I'm not sure if there are any NPCs on Levels 3-5. 

      

The game adopts Ultima's ordinal classification system for wounds even though it also shows you the exact values.

    

I want to make character Level 2 before I quit, so I spend some time grinding on Level 3, with the idea that I'll return periodically to Lord Baldwin for healing and to check whether I'm ready for advancement. The problem with this plan is that the program is bugged so that Lord Baldwin doesn't actually heal you when you ask for healing. His healing also doesn't restore mana, and neither does waiting or moving around. So when I was out of spell points and low on hit points, I had to quit the process. I guess next time, I'll finish exploring the friendly levels and get some more resources.

   

Time so far: 3 hours

Betrayal at Krondor: RIght to Roam, Part 1

The party's travels during this session.

      

This session begins in Chapter 3 of the game. The Moredhel (evil elves) are amassing to the north, and Sir James, Owyn the apprentice mage, and Gorath the rogue Moredhel are trying to figure out their plans. It's clear they've purchased the services of the Nighthawks, a guild of human assassins. We went to the city of Romney to meet a contingent of the king's soldiers, only to find them all slaughtered in the Black Sheep Tavern. Evidence shows that the Nighthawks arranged for the soldiers to get intoxicated to make the killing easier. The killers inadvertently left behind a spyglass and a silver spider. We're now looking for the Nighthawks' headquarters, and we've determined that our next clue is in Cavall Keep.

    

Cavall Keep is two towns to the north of Romney, but I'm going to get to it the longest way possible, pushing the boundaries of this open-world game.

     

First, though, we clear up a few things from the last session. We accidentally broke the quest chain by finding an NPC on the road before we finished the quest for Joftaz in Silden. I fix this by returning to Silden and burglarizing the house with the stolen pouch, then returning it to Joftaz. (Thanks to Wild Juniper for the hint.) He tells me that he sold the Silver Spider to someone who looked like a Nighthawk, bound for Krondor on a ship. On the matter of the Spyglass, he suggests I seek out the trader, Abuk, who I encountered last time. 

   

Meanwhile, commenters suggested that there might be more to the Silver Spider and Spyglass than just quest objects. This turns out to be correct. The Silver Spider will add poison to a weapon, and the Spyglass helps you find objects in the immediate area. Right away, we find a locked chest we'd missed, although it just has a suit of standard Kingdom Armor. 

      

This comes in handy a few times.

      

We next run up the road to Romney, fighting a Nighthawk ambush on the way, to tell the Duke we convinced the head of the Ironmongers' Guild to return to the negotiating table. As the Duke gives us some coins and a key as a reward, he introduces a new word to my vocabulary: "One day the enfeoffed of the Kingdom will cross swords with the Guilds and it is not likely to be a bloodless affair." The "enfeoffed" are the serfs of the feudal system--those given land based on the promise to work it for a liege.

       

With now a reason to visit Krondor, I head south and west along the road. We check places we've already explored on the way back through, but I won't bother relating all of the "we've already been here" messages. I'm also not going to relate every chest we open, every skill book we buy, every night we camp or stay at an inn, every time we repair our items, every item we loot and sell, or every time we make some money singing for our supper. I will mention that we go from 2,615 sovereigns to 1,127, almost entirely because of a new staff.

     

Owyn still doesn't get a lot of praise, even when he makes money.

    

Let's get on with it:

          

• The first new thing we discover is a pair of Pantathians--serpent men--on the road to the Oracle of Aal. They are hard. Their spells absolutely lay waste to the characters. They always get to act first in combat, so my only hope is to surprise them with multiple buffs. They have a lot of hit points. In six tries, the best I'm able to do is one Pantathian dead, one fled, and two of my characters in the single digits for hit points.

          

A Pantathian takes Gorath out of commission.

       

• At the Oracle of Aal, I find that Owyn can ask about the murder in Romney. The Oracle will only tell us that one of the two objects we have "indicates a murder you may not have realized has taken place" and that in determining where to go next, "the brass Spyglass will guide you to your path." That would suggest we can ignore the Krondor lead. But of course we don't.

      

I'll be the judge of what I "truly wish to know."

     

• In Malac's Cross, we stay for a couple of days at the inn to recover from the Pantathian battle. Owyn earns more in barding than the room costs. In the Temple of Ishap, Abbott Graves offers some insight into the Silver Spider: It costs a great deal of money, so the person who used it must have been wealthy. Furthermore, he probably has connections with Kesh, where the spiders are made. We also spend 20 sovereigns for a lecture on tactics which increases our "Assessment" ability.

     

I have this screenshot of the innkeeper complaining about students at the Temple of Ishap, but I don't remember that anything came of it.

       

• Five Nighthawks attack us on the road between Malac's Cross and Darkmoor, and I surprise myself by defeating them, although it leaves us battered (about half-health). Their gear loads up our inventory.

• In Krondor, we stash some quest items in James's room. We speak to Katala, who says that Pug and Arutha have been acting secretive lately and aren't telling her anything. She also says there's been an outbreak of Quegian Fever at the ports. James gives her some messages for Arutha.

• Several battles with pirates that don't give me much trouble. 

      

I have no sympathy for any of you feculent maggots.

      

• Three fairy chests at some point: "It flies without wings, strikes without beak, teeth, or talons. It has no eyes in its pointed head, but it can kill birds in flight" (ARROW). "They feel no pain, no sorrow, no greed. They have no anger, no hatred, nor need" (THE DEAD). "The strongest chains will not bind it; ditch and rampart will not slow it down. A thousand soldiers cannot beat it; it can knock down trees with a single push" (WIND). I don't think I found anything special in any of them.

• In Tanneurs, which we have never visited, we find an abandoned house with a Horn of Algon Kokoon. It turns out to summon a couple of hounds who assist in battle. I bungle a trap north of Tanneurs, and James suffers serious damage.

      

Still can't figure out what I was supposed to do here.

     

• We make a disastrous side trip to Sethanon. With all the buffs and spells at my disposal, I'm unable to defeat groups of multiple shades. After five or six tries and a lot of wasted time, I reload. 

     

Still can't do anything with these guys.

     

• The town of Eggley is mostly vacant and abandoned. A guy named Devon tells us what happened. During a recent annual festival, a key figure was killed before a ritual could be completed, leading the townsfolk to believe that the village is cursed. They've relocated to other nearby towns.

• We're attacked so many times by pirates and Moredhel between Eggley and Questor's View that it starts to get really old. Owyn is left near-death. We leave so much good equipment on the road that it physically hurts. This game could seriously use more shops more often.

      

The most infuriating message in the game.

     

• A trapped chest yields a Tsurani light crossbow and a note indicating that the Moredhel are still searching for Gorath.

• In Questor's View, we finally unload some equipment. In the tavern is a guy named Grimm who never laughs and none of our options get him to laugh. A week at the inn does virtually nothing to get Owyn off death's door. We need a temple.

      

Over the next few hours, I start to get seriously annoyed with the game, because we can't walk 5 steps in any direction without getting slaughtered by Moredhel or Black Slayers. In fact, there are two of the latter stationed just outside Questor's View, and they're so good that we can't seem to exit the town in any direction without triggering them. I begin to wonder how we got into the town in the first place. It's my fault for adventuring without enough herbs or potions or whatever, I guess, although I don't remember the last time we found a place that sold any of those things. Earlier, I said that I liked the weight and realism that came from taking wounds and poison and such, but the game could have perhaps been a little more forgiving. Getting knocked out in combat practically cripples you for the next four hours--real time.

         

I'm also a bit irked that surprising enemies hardly ever works, and that many of them can't be surprised because they don't exist in the environment until you wander into their patch of ground. Gorath is always stopping the party to warn us of danger ahead, but other than putting some oil on our swords, there isn't much that you can do with this intelligence. 

     

Enemies lie in wait as we approach a bridge.

      

• Eventually, we break through to the south. In Sarth, we spend basically half of what we have on a Lightning Staff for Owyn. I don't even really know what it does--just that it's better than the regular wooden staff I already had. It has 40 "uses." I guess we'll see what it does in combat. We also spend a fortune getting Owyn back on his feet. Of course, this just cures his "near-death" status; it doesn't actually heal him. So naturally we're attacked by rogues on the way out of town, and Owyn is immediately knocked out again. On a reload, I try the new staff, and it casts a lightning bolt spell on one enemy. It's okay. Maybe not worth 1,200 sovereigns.

       

Owyn's new staff helps take out the Black Slayers.

     

• We take the road all the way down to Krondor and then back north again. This makes sense if you look at my map. We're in much better shape when we reach Questor's View again, and this time--with a combination of luck, buffs, and spells--we prevail against the Black Slayers. One of them has Dragon Plate Armor, the best armor we've seen in the game so far. 

• Chests on this route that I opened in previous chapters remain emptied.

• We find a random shop northwest of Questor's View which has the first herbal packs we've seen in a while. We buy a lot.

       

Owyn freezes an assassin.

      

We're attacked a lot as we head north, by bandits and Moredhel. I use the occasion to experiment with spells. I also note that Owyn's new staff makes him a player in melee combat, although it naturally isn't the best use of him.

     

• "Fetters of Rime" (1-20 points). Damages and freezes opponents for a few rounds. Very useful, especially since you can cast it at a low cost if you want.

• "Flamecast" (1-20 points). Casts a fireball that damages the targeted creature most but also does ancillary damage to anyone within 2 squares. Unless enemies are in the right formation, I'd rather use the points on "Fetters of Rime."

       

"Flamecast" damages one guy for a lot and a second guy for a little.

      

• "Despair Thine Eyes." Reliably takes one mortal creature out of action for a couple of rounds. Great low-cost spell, but I don't think it works on undead or magic creatures like the Pantathians.
  

• "Steelfire" (10 points). Causes a blade to do extra fire damage. I only cast it for the purposes of experimentation. It works very well, enhancing the power of melee attacks. But I think I'd rather spend the points on "Fetters of Rime." 

      

James's "Steelfire"-enhanced sword does extra damage to a bandit.

       

• "Invitation" (1-10 points). Pulls the target forward. Usually, I want to keep targets away. The only time I've used it is in a trap encounter when I pulled an enemy into the trap.

• "Hocho's Haven" (7-14 points). Shields a target from damage. I have to experiment more to see how useful it really is. I'd rather take an enemy out of action for 6 rounds for the same number of points.

• "Gift of Sung" (1-20 points). An armor spell. See below.

• "Skin of the Dragon" (4-20 points). "Invisible armor," the description says. I always have trouble prioritizing defensive spells over offensive ones, especially when you cannot cast them before the battle begins.

        

Moving on, we find that combat is slowly getting easier. Or perhaps we're just fighting easier enemies.

    

• Not much happens until we reach LaMut, where the barkeep in the tavern tells us a long and complicated joke that depends on understanding Tsurani customs and mores. We don't understand it. But it might be what's necessary to make Grimm laugh in Questor's View--if we ever get back there.

• The dude that Gorath killed in the game's prologue is still lying on the ground at the start of the game.

     

Most bodies disappear between chapters. Not this guy.

      

• In Yabon, Owyn still doesn't want to visit his aunt.

• A guy living in a house, Jeremy, wants us to find a box just west of Hawk's Hollow and return its contents. He'll give us a skill book. I think I've met him before. I just didn't do his quest.

• South of Tyr Sog is new territory for me. I'm immediately attacked by four Moredhel with three dogs. 

     

I don't like killing dogs.

     

• The city of Loriel has nothing going on. Except for one shop, all the buildings are closed.

• South of Loriel, we're attacked by a new enemy: giant spiders.

           

I'm not sure the game needed these.

     

• Hawk's Hollow is barely worth visiting, but we do find Jeremy's chest to the west. It is trapped, but I'm used to casting a trap-detection spell before opening chests. The chest has emeralds and a few doses of Redweed Brew. We return to Jeremy, yell at him for not telling us about the trap, and take from him a skill book called Thiful's Bird Migrations. Despite the unpromising title, it increases every skill by about 5 points. That was certainly worth it.

         

It takes each character 16 hours to read. Any idea why it increases every skill?

       

After returning to Jeremy, we're at the crossroads east of Tyr Sog again. Whether we go north or east, we're in brand new territory. This session has been largely about re-exploring ground we covered in previous chapters, particularly Chapter 1. I look forward to seeing what the next session has to offer, and I'll draw conclusions about the game's open-world approach then.

      

Time so far: 30 hours