Sandor II and Daemonsgate: Summaries and Ratings

 

My most recent loss.

        

My current Wordle "win" percentage is 97%. I hope we can all agree that's not some kind of flex. Wordle is an easy game. Occasionally, you get into the kind of trap depicted above, but that certainly doesn't happen often. I thus occasionally indulge the fantasy that if I just win enough games in a row without losing them, the wins will overwhelm the losses to the point that my win percentage rounds to 100%, and then maybe I'll get a personal call from the president of MENSA or something.

    

I realized during my hiatus that I'd been thinking about my statistics in the right-hand column (sorry, mobile users) the same way. These days, it takes about 35 wins to nudge the "won" percentage a point higher, but some part of me has been looking forward to the day when it rounds to 100% or is actually 100% because I've gone back and finished the ones I've lost. Either plan is folly. If I never lost another game, my wins would round to 100% (just for games that have a winning condition) at Game #9950. As for going back and winning the rest, there's no way in hell I'm taking the time to win Moria, let alone Angband and BOSS: Beyond Moria too.

   

In fact, the thought continues, I've been thinking about those statistics all wrong. Higher isn't better. They're already too high. There's no way that 9 out of 10 games deserve to be played all the way to the end. I am old enough to start to make out the reaper's shadow in the distance, and yet I chose to spend the equivalent of seven working weeks on Fate: Gates of Dawn?! When I've never played the original Fallout or Wizardry 8? I should be pumping up those "loss" numbers, not trying to reduce them. I don't want to go back to the way things were during my first year, but I think from now on, until my win/loss ratio gets down to 85/15, the burden of proof is on the game.

   

So let's rip off that Band-Aid and get started. I'm going to soft-pedal the GIMLET for these two games. If you want to see the specific scores, you can go to my ratings spreadsheet; here, I'm just going to discuss the strengths and weaknesses and final score.

         

       

Sandor II: Kotalan und die drei Schwester'n

"Sandor II: Kotalan and the Three Sisters"

Germany

Motelsoft (developer and publisher)

Released 1991 for Atari ST

Date Started: 27 May 2025  

Date Ended: 20 October 2025

Total Hours: 15 (not won)

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

            

Summary:

 

The third RPG from the German developer Motelsoft, Sandor II puts the player once again in the land of Sandor, where an evil wizard named Kotalan has kidnapped the daughters of King Salinos. A single pre-created character must assemble a party and ride to the rescue. Top-down overland exploration contrasts with first-person dungeon exploration, with themes and mechanics cribbed from several popular American titles. A relatively linear narrative leads the party from city to city, dungeon to dungeon, finding objects necessary for the next step, often by solving some kind of riddle or mechanical puzzle. Combat takes place on a tactical grid, likely inspired by 1980s SSI titles. Sound is scant and annoying, and the graphics and interface are a confusing mess, somehow regressed from the original Sandor.

 

***** 

 

Between the two games I'm wrapping up today, I feel worst about Sandor II. I'm not really "stuck" in it. If my mother's death hadn't forced a hiatus in the middle of the game, I probably could have finished it. My perception is that it's fairly nonlinear geographically but linear narratively, with each dungeon offering a clue or item necessary for the next dungeon, all the way to the presumable end. It was the same approach that the developer used with Magic Tower I: Dark Stone Ritual (1992).

   

Motelsoft is the kind of low-budget developer that its name suggests, but it's competent at analyzing the best elements of beloved commercial RPGs and combining them in interesting ways. I've said before that I think SSI's Shard of Spring (1986) and Demon's Winter (1990), two of the more under-rated games that I've covered, inform the core mechanics of Sandor and its sequel. But there are also elements of Pirates!, Dungeon Master, Phantasie, and probably a few other titles. Like Origin, the company never uses the same interface twice, which I also find admirable, particularly given their prolific output. Sandor II offers decent character development, inventory, puzzles, and backstory.

     

I kept looking for the "Visit the Governor" button.

     

But the game is a slog for three reasons. First, the combat takes far too long for the limited combat mechanics that the player is afforded. I believe Dungeon of Doom (1980) was the first game to use a tactical grid. Other notable appearances are in Tunnels of Doom (1982), Galactic Adventures (1983), Ultimas III-VI, and of course the Gold Box series. I've never articulated this in so many words before, but I've come to believe that a developer shouldn't waste a player's time with a tactical grid unless it offers enough tactics and environmental features to make the battle truly tactical. In other words, if you can't meticulously target the radius of a "Fireball" or make enemies come to you one at a time through a narrow mountain pass, then why don't we all just save time and fight our battles from a menu, thanks.

     

Oddly, the combat interface from the original Sandor was more attractive.

     

Problem #2 is the all-mouse interface, my objection to which many of you do not share or understand, so you're going to have to imagine the complete lethargy that overtakes me when I open the game and start clicking my way around the menus. Even if you regard the mouse as an acceptable tool, you must recognize that some interfaces are not well designed for it. To wit:

   

• Good use of a mouse interface: Exchanging an item of equipment by dragging it from one character and dropping it on another.

• Bad use of a mouse interface: Clicking on "Camp," then clicking on "Give," then clicking on the name of the character giving the item, then clicking on the item, then clicking on the name of the character receiving the item, then clicking "Okay."

   

The final straw is the one I'd rather not admit. I think part of me worries I'll get slapped with a Title VI violation. I'm just sick of stopping to translate. It's a complete momentum-killer. Understand that I'm not blaming the game for being in German. Both the authors and the audience were German. But it does prevent a brisk experience when I constantly have to stop and switch to a translation window. And before I get a bunch of comments suggesting other options, trust me, I've tried them. Anything that presumes to speed up the experience brings an equal number of speed bumps and other problems.

      

Sigh.

     

Issues #2 and #3 come together to create, I suppose, a fourth problem: I just find the game really confusing. I keep missing menu options, misinterpreting riddles, and finding items that don't seem to directly translate, and that I lack the cultural context to evaluate. Look at the riddle discussed here, for instance. It's discouraging to have to constantly stop and get help from German readers. This is all going to come up again, of course, but hopefully when it does, I won't be trying to get momentum after a long hiatus.

     

This screenshot has no particular reason for existing here.

        

In the GIMLET, pretty much every category registers in the 3-4 range except for NPCs (there really aren't any, aside from some "encounters") and graphics, sound, and interface (all poor). I gave a 5 to character creation and development. Everything else is "not bad but not outstanding," the kind of message that the final rating of 33 is intended to send.

   

Motelsoft will have plenty of additional chances, of course. Projekt Terra (1991) is still on my backlist. Escape from Ragor (1994) was selected for my 1994 list. There are 15 other titles, all the way to 2006.

 

****** 

         

      

Daemonsgate

United Kingdom

Imagitec Design (developer and publisher) 

Released 1993 for DOS 

Date Started: 4 August 2025   

Date Ended: 20 October 2025

Total Hours: 26 (not won)

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

        

Summary:

 

This ambitious title has the player take the role of Gustavus, the guard captain in the city of Tormis, which has inexplicably been surrounded by besieging demons. Gustavus must assemble a party of allies, flee the city, discover the source of the invasion, and end it. The game features a continuously-scrolling, top-down world, much like Interplay's two Lord of the Rings games (and the later Infinity Engine) games, plus real-time-with-pause combat not unlike MicroProse's Darklands. The world of Hestor is a detailed, compelling place, informed by a huge chunk of lore in the manual, a background video, evocative maps, and multiple cinematics. Thousands of NPCs contribute to this lore. Alas, the developer's ambitions are sunk by tedious gameplay, including enormous cities (with no automap), an extremely long main quest, a confusing interface, and a character development system that encourages the player to front-load his grinding and coast through the rest of the game. 

 

**** 

      

Abandoning Daemonsgate is part-choice, part necessity. I can't get the next plot point to trip. Internet sources, including comments on my last entry, say that when I entered Pestur's Gate, someone was supposed to show up and direct me to meet Councilor Pestur in one of the inns. I can't make this happen no matter what, and if I meet Councilor Pestur in the town offices, no keyword I feed him advances the plot. I could reload an earlier save, do the more recent stuff, and try again, but that's where the "part-choice" comes into play.

       

Even as I leave the game, I love details like this.

     

It's so disappointing. As I covered in my first entry, the backstory and materials for Daemonsgate are wonderfully compelling. The interface, which is otherwise a bit of a mess, has some strong features, including an in-game encyclopedia that slowly builds as you talk to people, detailed descriptions of all items, and a party that slowly grows by convincing NPCs to join you. Unfortunately, the development team was too small and their ambitions too large. So many things don't work that I started keeping a long list.

       

• There are dozens of items in stores that seem to serve no purpose, hinting at game mechanics never implemented: lanterns, armorer's tools, fletcher's tools, flint and steel, chalk, and so forth.

• About half the time you try to leave a conversation with someone with the ESC key, the game crashes.

• NPCs often say things that suggest they were meant to be in different buildings or in different towns, or offer dialogue that seems to belong to other NPCs.

       

We are not in a guild.

      

• NPC dialogue has a constantly-growing list of keywords, most of which the NPCs have no reaction to.

• Taking a boat trip resets your preferences for music and sound effects.

• Shops routinely buy and sell something other than their signs indicate.

• Whenever I examine my food inventory, no matter how much food I have, the game says I have 7 days' worth.  

     

Those are some dense fruit loaves.

    

• When you pay for lodgings, you get an object called "Lodgings" in your inventory which sometimes, but not always, goes away when you rest.

• The towns, while evocatively designed and filled with details, are so large that it's nigh-impossible to find anything. 

• The game requires a mouse to select commands from menus. The placement of commands on menus doesn't make any sense, and one menu has only one command. The words are small enough that it's easy to select the wrong ones. There are insufficient keyboard backups.

• Inventory management is a confusing, unintuitive mess.

• Character development is entirely player-driven through training and practice sessions in camp. The player is highly motivated to just get it all out of the way early in the game.

• It is too easy to acquire the best inventory or near-best inventory early in the game.

• The above two factors trivialize the combat system. 

• You can avoid combats anyway by entering and then escaping. Even fixed enemies disappear when you do this. I suspect that this can break the game in places.

      

At 26 hours, I was probably only a third of the way through the game. Judging by a couple of resources, I would have spent at least a few weeks (real time) running around the continent, finding the five temples in the five "Skull Mountains" and activating the "Matrix Configuration," which would trap any further demon arrivals in Elsopea. Finding each temple involves a host of sub-quests, doing favors for local rulers. 

     

I think I found the right inn.

      

Returning to where we last saw Alathon, we would have discovered that he had moved on, prompting a long chase and several more sub-quests, culminating in the discovery that Alathon was dead. His spirit, trapped in a bottle, would have told us that to close the titular gate, we would need a Lore Master (Alathon himself) and a powerful Daemonologist. We would have picked up the Daemonologist in Dryleaf after doing a favor for him.

   

The next phase would have led us to the tomb of Karadith, a hero from the game's lore, and the recovery of his sword, the only weapon capable of slaying the daemon leader Alkat. Finally, we would have returned to the city of Tan-Eldorith, gone through the gate to the demon world, and destroyed it from that side (here's a video of that). We would have gone to Alkat's citadel, killed a bunch of sub-bosses to get various keys. ("This last level is VERY BADLY DESIGNED!" says a walkthrough that mysteriously ends abruptly with that sentence.) We would have confronted and killed Alkat, triggering the endgame cinematic. Even though we would have destroyed the gate, Alkat's death would have "torn a hole in the void," sending us to a mysterious place, and setting up the backstory for Daemonsgate II.

       

Confronting a demon earlier in the game.

             

The GIMLET comes to a 38, which in earlier years would top my "recommended" threshold, but which by 1993 is either on the line or just below it. This score is bolstered by its strongest category, particularly the game world (8), with which I find no fault except a lack of change based on player agency. NPCs and equipment both get a strong 6; the rest of the scores are 2 or 3, lowered by factors like the ones I described above: no character creation, a weak development system, confusing combat, no magic beyond creating things in camp, a poor interface, and tedious gameplay. 

 

Alas, poor reviews killed any chance for that sequel. In an April 1994 Computer Gaming World review that I could have written myself, Bernie Yee says that the game is "composed of good elements, but in their overly ambitious attempt to create a huge and complex world, the designers failed to integrate the good parts into a great whole." He laments the lack of any kind of automap, which a game with cities this size really needed; he calls the graphics "mundane" and "uninvolving"; and like me had problems with the interface. 

     

The knowledge base, offered by many games in the current era, was one of the game's best innovations.

        

MobyGames's round-up of reviews shows a median in the 60s, the lowest a crazy 15% from the Czech magazine Score: "Daemonsgate is rubbish. Its poor presentation and poor execution are perhaps surpassed only by its impossible story and lackluster gameplay." The best score, at 94%, came from the January 1994 Electronic Games: "A role-player's dream . . . complex and masterfully done." The author would disagree with the multiple items on my list: "The only thing really missing from the game is a good auto-mapping function." The German ASM, in June 1994, provides the average take: "While the story behind the game is certainly interesting, by the time you've encountered the first scrap of truly relevant action, you've already lost interest three times over."

     

The game's lead designer was Nigel Kershaw, whose only previous experience had been a board game called King's Table: The Legend of Ragnarok (1993). Daemonsgate may not have been successful, but it didn't seem to affect his career: he has remained in the gaming industry for the subsequent 32 years, most recently at the Liverpool-based Wushu Studios. This was his first and last RPG, however. (It was also Imagitec's last RPG; its subsequent offerings were almost all action and racing games.) I made tentative contact with him over the summer and really hoped to get some more background from him, but he stopped responding to my messages. Perhaps he didn't care for my first few articles.

    

As I suspected, that hurt a bit, but perhaps with these two games behind us, I can get some momentum and wrap up 1993 before we wrap up 2025.