Daemonsgate: Sic Semper Tyrannis

 

I would think that should be C.D.R. or W.J.D.

        

It was really tough getting back into Daemonsgate after (unintentionally) not playing it for a couple of weeks. The disorientation started as soon as I loaded the game. I had ended the last entry saying that I couldn't get past some guards and couldn't find the Laughing Heretic. When I loaded it up this time, I was standing in the Laughing Heretic. I don't remember how I worked it out.

    

So, to remind us all of the plot: An army of demons has come boiling out of the southern nation of Elsopea and has surrounded the free city of Tormis. The captain of the guard of Tormis (my lead character, Gustavus) was charged with sneaking out of the city and finding his way to the city of Atteia, where it is rumored that an Elsopean refugee has arrived. The thinking is apparently that this refugee might know something about the source of the demon horde and how to stop them.

   

Upon arriving in the city, we learned that the refugee, Alathon, is a "guest" of the city's dictator, Hellast. Searching for allies, we learned of a faction called the Warriors of Light. To find his group, we were instructed to go to the Laughing Heretic and say "Incontinence" to the owner, because that's a word that every innkeeper wants to hear.

          

BONK! "Ha! That never gets old!"

         

The innkeeper, a hooded man named Erina, told us to walk through an illusory wall in the inn's northwest corner. There was a guy standing on the other side, and he confirmed that Alathon was being held captive in "Hellast's private quarters." But before I could enter the dialogue screen, a guard, identifying himself as a member of the sacrepolitz, arrived to arrest us. He knocked us out with smoke (this was narrated in text form, along with the screen at the top of this entry), and we woke up in jail with most of our inventory items, including weapons, missing.

      

That's an interesting mix of languages.

           

Fortunately, there were some thieves' tools on one of the beds in the cell, so we were soon out of the cell and creeping through the complex. This was the first of many situations this session in which I was trying to avoid getting into a fight. It's not too hard. Combat is triggered by some combination of the enemy's proximity and his facing direction, so as long as the party moves far enough away, or behind him, we're usually all set. Walls and furniture can conceal enemies, though, so there's no perfect method.

           

But who left the tools?

       

There were dozens of other cells in the prison, mostly empty, and the ones that weren't had generic NPCs. I will now go into one of several diatribes that I imagine will occupy most of the text in this entry. There's nothing wrong with generic NPCs if they're in generic places. Whether I'm playing Ultima IV or Skyrim, when a guy standing by a town's gate with a pike turns out to be a generic guard, I have nothing to complain about. I don't expect everyone milling around the town square to be unique. When a guy is in a prison cell, on the other hand, there should be a reason for it. Otherwise, what's the point of NPCs? Ultima established the rules here: If you find a druid hanging out in the middle of a dark forest, or a mage at the bottom of a dungeon, or a bard locked behind six consecutive doors, they all turn out to be interesting (sometimes vital) NPCs with something to explain their presence.

            

Then you have games like Morrowind, which I otherwise love, where you encounter an orc in the middle of a Daedric ruin, and he has nothing to say except generic orc stuff. When you're exploring a remote or unusual place and you realize, "By Grabthar's hammer! There's someone else here!," he ought to have a story. I'm not saying he has to spill it; he can be secretive, or cagey, or even hostile. But he shouldn't be generic. This is not a mistake that the Infinity Engine games ever made—nor, for that matter, Oblivion or Skyrim, but that nonsense is all over the place in Starfield, so Bethesda clearly hasn't learned its lesson.

        

Just a reminder of what combat looks like.

         

We found our items in an office in the northwest corner and had to maddeningly pick them up one by one (the game offers no other option) and redistribute them among party members. I had to fight two battles on the way out. I got past the first one but had to flee from the second (which fortunately removes the enemy from the screen). When I got back to the Laughing Heretic, the leader of the Warriors of Light was gone, and I never heard another word about the organization.

        

I don't know who that guy was, but he just watched us pick up our things.

      

I then set about trying to find the entrance to Hellast's palace, which took a while. The city is realistically large, but realism isn't a virtue when you're exploring a top-down city with a limited view window and no map. It's worse than Disciples of Steel, which had a similar problem. There are multiple nested sets of walls, lots of generic buildings that you can't even enter, narrow alleyways, and places where it's easy to trap yourself without realizing there's only one entrance or exit. More important, and related to the issue I discussed above, you run into all kinds of interesting-sounding locations—embassies, moneylenders, banks, guilds, a city council chambers, a courthouse, city archives—and yet none of the have anything interesting happening or anyone interesting to talk with. The author worked awfully hard to create a large world and then populate it with mostly nothing, excepting the few NPCs and locations that propel you to the next quest.

     

You wouldn't know it to look inside.

        

I got attacked frequently as I walked around and almost always lost a party member in the subsequent battle. I suppose I could roll with that, but I've been reloading instead, since the game doesn't seem to offer copious NPC replacements nor any method of resurrection. ("If the character is dead," the manual helpfully explains, "it is assumed that the rest of the group dump his or her body in a ditch.") Eventually, I was fed up.

   

I returned to the Laughing Heretic and spent about two months there. I had the party spend 18 hours a day practicing their skills and 6 hours resting. Most of them started with specialties in one-handed edged weapons, but a couple of them didn't have that, so as soon as Gustavus reached "Master" rank, I had him train the others. This is because so far, the only weapons I found that can be enchanted are one-handed edged weapons. Eventually, I got everyone to "Master" in that plus some ancillary skills like Cyless's "Scouting" and "Survival," although I don't know how important either are. I had some characters reach "Master" level in skills like "Throwing" and "Brawling" just because I needed something for them to do while other characters caught up. 

     

 I just want to know how Gustavus managed to practice "Leadership" in a hotel room.

         

I got Arion to "Master" in both "Herb Lore" and "Elemental Lore" and then began to explore the magic system. The game offers three forms of magic: herbalism, elementalism, and daemonology. None of them allow you to cast traditional spells in battle. Herbalism is about making potions, and I only explored it long enough to realize I didn't have enough reagents. Elementalism allows the mage to enchant weapons with various effects. Daemonology, which none of my characters have, also allows for enchanting weapons, but also amulets, which can be broken in combat to release the demon.

    

If you spend 6 hours on elementalism, you get to choose the elemental bound to the weapon. First, you choose the type: light, darkness, air, earth, fire, or water. Then you choose the level: minor, small, weak, average, powerful, and gargantuan. The manual doesn't bother to tell the player what earth enchantments do. Water increases the chance of corroding the opponent's armor. Air weapons "reduce the chance that [the] weapon has of being fumbled," which has not been a problem so far. Darkness weapons inflict both regular damage and fatigue damage. Light weapons are effective against undead, which I have yet to face. Fire weapons simply increase damage. 

     

The elementalism screen.

      

The only mechanic that I actually trusted to be implemented was fire, so I had Arion enchant the two Adamantine Swords with gargantuan fire elementals. I tried to enchant the "Enchanting Sword," but the game just said that Arion didn't possess anything that could be enchanted. Once enchanted, the Adamantine Swords became "Elemental Blades"; you have to examine them to see the specific type of enchantment. 

      

I feel bad for the fire elemental.

      

In terms of skill development, it's possible that I'm done for the game. "Master" is the highest level you can get, and you can only get it by doing stuff in camp (reading, practicing, or learning from a master). It doesn't increase during combat. It was very artificial for me to do it all at once like this, but it was going to be artificial no matter what. In a game with no time limit, why not do it all at once at the beginning? Still, this is about the dozenth British game that fundamentally misunderstands how character development is supposed to work in an RPG. Frankly, only Anthony Crowther (Captive) and Anthony Taglione (Bloodwych, Legend) have gotten it correct.

       

After all of this skill-building, combat did become noticeably easier, although I still had to be careful to remove characters from the fracas once their hit points got too low.

   

I finally found the entrance to Hellast's palace and had to fight several parties of guards on the way in. Hellast was in a chamber in the southwest. "May I ask what you interlopers are doing?" he demanded before calling his guards. The resulting battle was relatively easy.

      

This session is just full of 1989 references.

       

From his corpse, we looted a letter that suggested a larger conspiracy, with Hellast promised a reward by the minions of someone named "Alkat." The note was signed by "Warmaster Edric."

    

Alathon was imprisoned in a pentagram in the next cell. "We cannot stay here and talk," he said. "Meet me in Joruli Point, and I will explain all." Then he disappeared. I should note that the game called him "Alathon" on one screen and then "Dorovan" on the next. This is notable because the back of the box gives the subtitle of the game as Dorovan's Key.

      

Could I just meet you at the bar down the street?

      

We fought our way out of the palace, rested for the night at the Laughing Heretic, and then left the city. The game map shows Joruli Point on an island quite far to the north. The city of Trade Town was just across a channel, and I figured there would be some kind of transport there. But before heading up the coast, I returned to Tormis to sell looted equipment and buy more Adamantine Swords so that all of the characters could have Elemental Blades. I ended up having to buy several more than I needed, because apparently there's about a 20% chance, even at "Master" level, that the mage screws up and breaks the sword while trying to imprison a gargantuan fire elemental in it. This left me without much money. I bought some food and a little bit of armor, but I had to save most armor upgrades, as well as reagents for potions, for later.

 

A couple of miles to the north or south would have been less effort.

             

We left Tormis and headed north. I had to go pretty far east to ford a river, and I mis-guessed the distance to the coast on the other side, resulting in my running into the far northern Wall before reaching the coast. I had to return to the southwest to find Trade Town. There, I learned from an innkeeper named Ari that there are three towns near the Wall, collectively called the Campps: Hajak, Rowche, and Slime. Hajak is the unofficial capital of the area, ruled by an unofficial king named Svien McDoogal, who keeps a fragile peace between the Clans. The game is best when it's building lore like this, but so far it's done a poor job integrating that lore into meaningful gameplay.

      

Again, the comparison to A Song of Ice and Fire is uncanny.

      

I also learned that there's no transport to Joruli Point from Trade Town; instead, I have to go to Dryleaf to the south.  

   

I poked around Trade Town a little. As usual, it was far larger than it needed to be and had intriguing-sounding buildings (the headquarters for the Northern Rangers, the gaol) turned out to have nothing interesting but a few things to loot.  

       

Miscellaneous notes:

     

• Among things that don't seem to have actually been implemented is equipment damage. If you look at any piece of armor, for instance, it tells you that it's in "good condition." You can buy an armorer's kit, ostensibly to repair armor. But there's no mechanism (unless I'm missing something) to do so.

• And while we're on that subject, a "fletcher's kit" is also something that you can find or buy, but there is again no way to invoke it.

        

Aron's current skill levels.

        

• There are two skills that Arion has, "Meditation" and "Magic Sense," that the manual doesn't even mention. 

• I trained everyone in "Missile Weapons" and gave everyone a bow, but arrows cost so much money (1 gold piece each) that it might be a while before I avail myself of the skill. It's also a pain to swap melee and missile weapons in combat. 

• When you pay for lodgings at an inn, an inventory item called "Lodgings" appears in your backpack. It disappears when you camp at an inn. It's kind of an awkward way to do things, but I suppose you can regard the physical item as the room key or something. 

• The game crashes frequently when exiting dialogue screens. 

• If I place the characters under computer control in combat, Anvil flees every time.

• It took me a while to realize that when you want to buy something in a shop, you're not interacting with the NPC at the counter; you're interacting with the shop itself. Thus, you can access the "Buy/Sell" menu even when no NPC is visible.

• The combat icons are primitive and pixelated, but the author did take the time to program blood spurting from the little icons when they die. I'll try to capture it next time.

    

The resting and practicing turned this session into a lot of gameplay hours but without a lot of plot progress. Hopefully, now that I've made the investment, things will happen faster.

    

Time so far: 14 hours