Sword Quest 2: Tale of the Talisman: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

       

Sword Quest 2: Tale of the Talisman

United States

NGS Software (developer and original publisher); GT Interactive (later publisher)

Version 1.1c released in 1993 for DOS

Date Started: 31 December 2024

Date Ended: 7 January 2025

Total Hours: 8

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

       

Summary:

 

A decent DOS clone of Dragon Warrior (1986) for the NES, with ideas that go back to Ultima. The game features a single continent of 16 towns and about a dozen dungeons. In the quest to slay the Dragon King and retrieve his mystical talisman, the player must explore the land, talk to NPCs, search for treasures, assemble clues, and buy equipment upgrades. The iconographic view and keyboard interface work fine, although I had trouble discerning details in some of the icons. MIDI versions of classical music accompany town exploration and combat; sound effects are otherwise negligible or annoying. Combat is basic but challenging; as in Dragon Warrior, the land is partitioned into areas of widely varying difficulty.

    

*****  

    

Tale of the Talisman wrapped up at 8 hours, a couple hours longer than its predecessor. The reasonably short time investment leaves me feeling positive about the game. We've seen others with the same mechanics that stretch on for dozens of hours despite not having the content to justify it, but author Erik Badger avoids that mistake here.

       

I spent most of the time since the first entry circling the continent with occasional jumps (using the "Fly" spell) to the islands, finding towns and following up on leads. As I did, I started to get clues that invoked the L)ook command—specifically, places to search for treasure. NPCs would say to search the southernmost square in a particular desert, or the islands in a river delta, or 7 steps south of the stone circles. One clue said that there was a treasure 1 step south of every entrance to the temple (temple entrances lead to a small, safe dungeon with exits all over the world).

     

A key clue about hidden treasures.

     

Some of these treasures turned out to be caches of gold or magic items. A couple of them were magical amulets that healed me and disappeared. A couple were bits of information. Two of them raised my skill and dexterity to the maximum of 25. I assume there was a similar treasure that would have raised my strength, but I never found it.

      

Maximizing my skill.

       

The most difficult clue promised a pair of magical gauntlets. I spent almost an hour searching a dungeon for them before I re-read the clue and realized that it only said they were near the dungeon entrance, not in the dungeon.

       

Well, no one can get here without going through a dungeon. I'd say they're pretty safe.

       

Regular equipment never advanced. I had been stupid during the first entry by insisting on grinding in one of the game's most difficult areas until I could afford a long sword, full plate, and a large shield. No town ever offered anything better. But that just meant I could invest in magic items. In addition to torches, there are fire jars and magic darts—both offensive items that roughly replicate the "Injure" and "Lightning" spells. Magic wings replicate the "Fly" spell. They're so useful that their existence serves as a money sink throughout the game. Ditto the cure potions. It was until late in the game that I realized I wasn't saving these for some enemy that has a poison attack; rather, they fully restore hit points.

 

I felt there was one significant red herring. NPCs early in the game had suggested that I would need to know the names of all the towns in the world, and a lot of other NPCs seemed to exist just to tell me some of those names. ("Schmazniv and Borfleld are the worst dumps in the world. I never go there.") Eventually, I got a hint to find a magic compass behind the inn in Azdorvill. I nearly didn't find it because at first I didn't realize that "behind" literally meant behind the inn's graphic rather than just in the row of visible spaces behind it.

      

Note that I'm actually "behind" the building.

       

Anyway, this magic compass will tell you the direction to any city you type in, so if you missed a city during your explorations but an NPC told you about it, you can still find it. I had this idea that their first letters would assemble a code phrase that I'd have to use in the endgame or something. None of that ever happened. There really isn't any need to explore every city except to get the hints about the magic items, which aren't strictly necessary.

       

This was great, but you mostly don't need to worry about specific cities.

       

The author could also have done more with dungeons. Except as navigational passages through mountain ranges or under rivers (which cease to be necessary once you have "Fly"), there isn't much point to them. Except for the spellbook at the beginning of the game, no essential item is found in dungeons. Their treasure chests and jewel piles aren't lucrative enough for them to be worth existing for treasure. I ended up never even entering several of them on the eastern side of the map.

    

Because I over-grinded last time, I didn't have to do any grinding this time. Combat still remained oddly difficult, though. Even at Level 80, I might meet a Level 38 dragon that not only blocks my attempts to escape but also manages to kill me in four rounds. I think Level 80 is the maximum, but I could be wrong. Enemies go up to 100. If you're wondering here about my "Easy-Moderate" rating, it's because saving and reloading are so fast that individual enemy difficulty doesn't matter much in the long run.

       

A Level 42 spirit kills a Level 66 hero.

         

Spells weren't quite the help that they should have been, since I saved most of my points for "Heal" and "Fly." "Acid" does hundreds of points of damage and is a good way to end combat nearly instantly. "Freeze" paralyzes enemies for a couple of rounds. They both take a lot of spell points; even at Level 80, I could perhaps cast 3 or 4 of them.

    

The Dragon King waits in a cave on an eastern island, reachable only by "Fly" or one of the temple exits. In the towns, I got some dialogue that suggested that the Dragon King was the same being as the warlock that I faced in the first Sword Quest. However, nothing ever came of this revelation. When I met the Dragon King, he didn't gasp and say "YOUUUUUUU!" or anything.

    

Can't be the same guy. I'm just a jester.

     

The Dragon King attacks in a large room full of treasure. It's a tough fight, but a lot depends on luck. He's immune to "Freeze" but not to any of the other offensive spells or magic items. He can cast the same spells the player can, including "Heal," and his physical attack can damage over 200 points; I only had 325 maximum when I took him on.

        

Too bad I can only cast a couple of these.

      

But a lot depends on luck, including whether he chooses to use a particular spell and its damage. I had him hit me for 0 damage or cast "Acid" for 6 damage as many times as those same actions damaged me for 200 or 300 points. So I just had to reload a couple of times and get lucky. He had maybe 600 hit points. I killed him with two castings of "Acid" and then by using my magic darts.

        

There wasn't enough space in the inventory window to show both the compass and the talisman, so the compass had to break.

      

The subtitular talisman was on his body when he died. NPCs had informed me that when I had the talisman in hand, the kingdom's castle would reappear, and they had told me exactly where to find it. I walked to the location, entered, and immediately got the endgame screen. Golbe regained its capital; its army destroyed the rest of the Dragon King's minions; and the magicians of Zrofdomel kept their word and returned me to Ferd.

 

I don't think I took a dungeon combat screen last time, so here's one.

       

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

    

• 3 points for the game world. The story and main quest are a bit derivative, but the physical world is somewhat interesting.

      

My final map of the world. The dungeon entrance annotation is incomplete.

      

• 3 points for character creation and development. There isn't much to either, but development is at least rapid. Your grinding is definitely rewarded.

• 3 points for NPCs. They exist; they tell you clues about the game world; and they give you hints and side quests. One thing I forgot to mention is that key pieces of information are seeded among multiple NPCs, reducing the chance that you'll miss something important. Three NPCs told me about the location of the magic compass, for instance. Ultima could have learned a lesson from that mechanic.

         

At least I can spell "dismal."

     

• 2 points for encounters and foes. There are only about 10 enemies. Some are harder than others, but they don't act much like their respective types, and the idea of a "level 1 dragon" is relatively absurd. I give it a point for the ability to grind, however.

• 3 points for magic and combat. Basic, but it gets some credit for a few interesting spells and usable magic items.

      

The full spell list.

      

• 3 points for equipment. The game has a very basic hierarchical scale for weapons (6 items), armor (5 items), and shields (3 items). Again, the usable items are worth a point.

• 4 points for the economy. It has no complexity, but I always appreciate a game in which money doesn't lose its value. 

• 3 points for a main quest with a couple of side areas and optional character-building quests.

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I can't give it much for graphics because I couldn't really see them. I passed by cities numerous times because they didn't stand out from the landscape. Monster graphics aren't the worst I've seen but are still a bit amateurish (Badger advertised looking for a graphic artist in the game materials). Sound is best turned off lest you want to listen to 30 seconds of tones every time you cast a spell. (Players who like music will unfortunately miss a small selection of public domain works in MIDI format.) The only points I give here are for the easy keyboard commands and the thorough automap.

    

There's a town to my east.

     

• 4 points for gameplay. It's generally nonlinear and paced appropriately for its content, though a little on the easy side.

    

That gives us a final score of 30, nine points higher than I gave Sword Quest. It's a decent score for a shareware game. If I had Erik Badger's ear in 1993, I would have said "good start." I would have suggested several ways he could go to increase the complexity and immersion for the sequel.

   

The documentation lists several additional NGS titles in the works, including Realm Quest 1, which promises a party of 4 characters and the ability to fight up to 9 monsters at once; Mega Quest 1, another party game in a "huge fractal generated world"; and Dungeon Quest 1, a 3D dungeon crawler. Alas, Badger soon found that college left little time for programming, and he never finished those games.

       

GT Interactive ended up republishing his works (with some bug fixes and updates) and sold them in department stores, including Wal-Mart, which Badger says provided him with some nice income, but not enough to cover tuition. He went into telecommunications software programming. "If you have ever used a cell-connected device in the U.S., India, Korea, much of Europe, or most of South America," he says, "my code has most likely been involved in managing that connection."

    

In lieu of a shareware fee, Badger suggested a donation to Habitat for Humanity, so I'm happy to designate them "Charity of the Month." Please consider donating if you don't already subscribe to me via Patreon, in which case 20% of your donation will go to them anyway.