Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

Dr. Doom cameos to set up the next game.

         

Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom

France

Silmarils (developer and publisher)
Released 1993 for DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST; 1994 for Macintosh 

Date Started: 28 July 2025  

Date Ended: 4 September 2025

Total Hours: 20

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

      

Here I go for the second time in a row, trying to reconstruct what happened in a game I played weeks ago. My first screenshot shows the party in a richly-decorated room, taking something off a table. The best I can figure, this is the commander-in-chief's office, which we opened with the key that we got from Zeldy's neck. I believe the item that we're taking is an air amulet stolen from the temple on Zach's Island. No . . . wait. I guess we're taking an idol stolen from the temple, which we then returned to the temple, for which we were rewarded with the air amulet. Forgive me if I have something messed up there.

         

I never got to kill the commander-in-chief.

        

My next note is: "Tossed $40,000 worth of evening clothes in the trash." This seems to be about the Blue Velvet club. The first time we visited, we were arrested and tossed in prison, an event that simply repeated when we visited again. There's a hint somewhere in one of the taverns that the club expects you to show up dressed to the nines and wearing pendants, which was supposed to be a clue to spend $8,000 each on five sets of evening wear from one of the shops in town. I don't think I figured this out for myself. I wrote down that there were two places in which I used a walkthrough, and I'm pretty sure this is one of them.

         

Zuburan dons some fancy clothes.

     

Our attire let us join the party, which apparently led us to a sad old man named Olbar who gave us the map to the final island—his island, as he was one of the original companions in Crystals of Arborea. Only he didn't "give" us the map; he put it on the table for us to take. This is different from all of the other maps in the game, which led us to leave the bar thinking we'd received the map, throw away $40,000 worth of clothing, realize later that we didn't have the map, and have to re-buy the clothing and re-visit the club.

        

Look at that goblin gettin' all funky.

      

Before visiting the new island, we returned to Akeer's Island, as I felt that the amulet was the key to getting past the invulnerable air spirit. It was; the creature simply wasn't there. We fought our way through skeletons and mummies and some kind of lion-headed beast ("Paralyze" worked very well on him) and ultimately made our way to a series of prison cells.

        

Nice skirt, Simba.

     

A girl named Grimzel was in one of them. "Take me back to my father," she ordered. To get her into the party, I had to dump Yornh, the priest, which fortunately everyone else was cool with. Grimzel had pretty miserable statistics, but her spells at least replicated what I lost in Yornh (which didn't make sense to me, as she was a scholar, not a priest, but even as she leveled, she never gained the other spells that my scholar gained). She couldn't wear or wield anything useful, and I didn't really bother to equip her. For the rest of the game, I kept her in the back and just had her heal other characters.

        

I just now noticed that she's blind.

       

It took me forever to find a secret door that had to be opened with a button—a mechanic the game does not introduce until this point. A puzzle involved using the skulls we'd been finding to weigh down platters suspended from the ceiling by chains. We had to fight a guard dressed in blue (again, "Paralyze" was a god-send). I believe he was guarding a room with the last glass-encased bone belonging to Grimzel's father.

     

Bluer than velvet were his eyes . . .

      

We returned to Jon's Island, moving fast and frequently healing to avoid having to buy furs again. Yes, I had also thrown away those clothes, even though I should have realized I'd have to return. We put the bones on the five pillars, and with a resounding "Dwilgelindildong!," the druid Grimz was standing before us.

     

I hope the order doesn't matter.

      

I now had to make another space in my party. I tried expelling Grimzel, but Grimz wouldn't join without her. (And to make a full confession, none of my party members would countenance her expulsion, so I had to murder her just to see if Grimz would join without her.) Thus, with reluctance I gave up Karorn, my only good warrior after Zubaran. There was no way I was giving up Eliandr or Khalin's spells. I was way over-relying on "Change of Timescale" by this point. 

   

Grimz was about as useless as his daughter. He also promptly went into the back rank. He couldn't equip or carry anything, and he only came with four spells. Fortunately, one of them was "Fireproofing," which turned out to be vital for the endgame. I believe Grimz is the only druid character, and thus the only character with this spell. Otherwise, the player could skip a decent part of the game.

         

Grimz is smart but nothing else.

       

After we revisited the Blue Velvet club and properly got the map, we set sail for Olbar's Island. The only landing point immediately took us into the final dungeon, where the first foe was some kind of fire elemental, capable of blasting most of us to smithereens without "Fireproofing" refreshed every minute or so. Even with the spell active, he took a long time to kill. Only Zubaran and his Living Sword +20 were capable of doing any serious damage.

     

I haven't figured out the spell yet.

        

Not long after the fire elemental, we had to repeat the process with a dragon. I couldn't get the timing right on how often I needed to cast "Fireproofing," so I just ducked out of combat and saved every so often, reloading if anyone died. I should mention that Zubaran didn't need "Fireproofing," as he had the shield that Griml had enchanted. I started to wonder if a single character with that shield could just solo the game and skip a ton of content that involved finding the various pieces of Grimz. The problem is that unless you were prepared to return to Zach's Island a lot to rest and heal, you'd need a magician to cast "Change of Timescale" or at least someone to cast "Heal." Maybe the knight could do it. I don't think the magician, who can wield a shield, could do it on her own, as she can't wield a weapon powerful enough to do any damage to the late-game enemies in melee combat. It's possible I'm missing something, though. Could that "Invulnerability" potion substitute for "Fireproofing?" I never tried it and have no idea how long it lasts.

          

This dragon looks very uncomfortable.

       

We fought through skeletons, mummies, liches, some kind of crone with horse legs, and more lion-ogres, picking up piles of cash that we wouldn't spend. We had to find a few more secret doors and trigger several pressure plates to open the way forward. Finally, we made it to the door outside Shandar's chambers. Here, again, I needed a walkthrough. To open the door, I had to click on it with the parrot, which we had purchased ages ago. I think the rationale is that we had previously come upon an unnamed sorcerer practicing some kind of password, and the idea was that the parrot repeated the password. Why one of us couldn't have repeated the password, I don't have any idea, particularly since it's the same mysterious goofy word that I've been making fun of for half the game.

         

Is it possible that this word doesn't sound as idiotic in French?

             

With the baboon, mouse, and man-eating plant still unused in our packs (do any of them do anything?), we entered the final chambers. Shandar was a bit of a pushover, although I did have to keep "Global Psychic Protection" and "Fireproofing" going constantly. I nailed him with a bunch of offensive spells, moved in, and just had Zubaran hammer him until he died. He was capable of casting "Inversion," so I had to be careful that Zubaran wasn't hitting other party members instead of Shandar. I think this is how I lost Grimz at some point, but I didn't really care, since the final cut scene took over as soon as Shandar lost his last hit point.

     

Shandar hits us with a spell.

     

The unsatisfying endgame showed the fortress of Ishar from the outside as day transitioned to night. There was an absolutely pathetic volley of like three fireworks, barely visible. As the words "The End" appeared, an ominous cloaked figure wandered into the frame, his gaze fixed on the fortress. Or maybe he was just watching the fireworks.

 

This is the extent of the "fireworks."

       

The GIMLET is not going to be great for this one. I really didn't like anything about it except the graphics. I found the difficulty extremely unbalanced (admittedly, I contributed to that by over-grinding at one point) and the puzzles a bit too obscure.

       

The text and dialogue were either unnecessarily obtuse or poorly translated. For instance, if you try to enter the club before 20:00 or any of the shops after the same hour, a message comes up that says, "Shut up over there!!! Haven't you seen the time!?" I don't know what it says in the original French, but why couldn't it just say, "We're closed!"? "I think this place is bewitched" isn't really the clue that you need to cast "Exorcism." (Oh, yeah, we had to do that once in Shandar's place.) Did the translators not know the word "cursed," or were they trying to make it harder for the player? I have the same question about the "Ent Alarm" potion. There are countless such examples.

     

We were supposed to get from this that he was practicing a password.

      

Let's give it a go:

     

• 3 points for the game world. There's a bit of lore, but most of it is derivative of Tolkien or unnecessarily vague. Early in the game, I didn't really understand what the story was about. By the end, I did, but I still found it incompetently told, mostly through sparse, poorly-translated text.

• 3 points for character creation and development. I rather like the idea of selecting party members from NPCs, but the game ruins its own ideas here by failing to fully develop them. The "voting" system is just silly, and I didn't find any consequences whatsoever from the party affinity score. There's no point in having good and evil characters when there are no role-playing choices in the game. Character development is mostly important for the acquisition of spells.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. Most of the NPCs in the game offer a couple of lines of hints. The ones occupying the streets of the cities have no purpose whatsoever, and I later learned that they can simply be slaughtered with no consequences. I liked that you could have NPCs join the party.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. I never like games that don't name their enemies. The foes that the game offers have a decent number of strengths and weaknesses that require mostly spell solutions. I give a couple of points for the puzzles. I found a couple of them too obtuse, but a few were well-clued by NPC dialogue if I paid attention, and I always like when Dungeon Master descendants go beyond purely mechanical puzzles like levers and pressure plates.

     

The "skull puzzle" on Akeer's Island.

         

• 3 points for magic and combat. The game messes up its Dungeon Master roots by making the "cool down" period so short that you really just need one character to repeatedly attack. That leaves all tactics associated with spells, and I admit that the game offers a decent variety of these, requiring the player to carefully experiment to find the right tactics. The grid for assigning positions is unnecessarily complicated (or, to look at it another way, doesn't use its full potential). It really only matters whether the character is in the front rank or not.

        

Some of the enemies in Shandar's place. Note that I have all the spell panels open.

          

• 4 points for equipment. The system is all right. You have a satisfying number of slots among five characters, and it's pretty easy to tell what's best via cost and the name of the item. The reagent and potion system could have been better developed, for instance by allowing the player to mix potions before he needs them.

• 4 points for the economy. I can't complain that it runs out of utility. You need money for equipment, food, lodging, and even certain plot points. I ended the game well before equipping my party with all of the best stuff. But it's somewhat absurd that the only respawning enemies who drop gold are found on Zach's Island in just a couple locations, and it's ridiculous that you cannot sell items.

       

I could have spent a lot more time in here.

       

• 2 points for a main quest. I don't really see any side quests. There are a couple of ways to solve some of the puzzles, and I give credit for that in "Encounters and Foes," but there are no real role-playing choices to make in the quest.

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets most of that for the graphics, which offer more detail and artistic quality than 90% of the games in its era. However, looking over my entries for the first Ishar, I almost prefer its graphics for monsters. They were far more straightforward and less stylized. As for sound effects, it has a few, mostly in combat, nothing worth getting excited about. I do, however, give it some extra credit for its use of ambient sound, which we still aren't seeing in the average game. I was not a fan of the mouse-driven interface (it has some keyboard backups, but not many).

        

I love that Shandar took the time to decorate his dungeon with stained-glass windows of himself.

        

• 5 points for gameplay. I give it some credit for some nonlinearity, a small amount of replayability (trying different party members), a modest difficulty, and a short playing time.

   

That gives us a final score of 36. In years past, I would have said that it was on the cusp of what I call "Recommended," but as we get deeper into the 1990s, I think that the "Recommended" threshold has to be raised. I can't find the entry where I offered a more complicated formula, but it was something like the game year minus 1952, which would put the "Recommended" threshold at about 35 for 1987, but more like 41 for 1993.

     

I ranked the original Ishar at 38, which goes with my memory that I liked it a bit better, although the differences in specific GIMLET categories are slight enough that I may have just been in a better mood on that day in 2020.

    

I still don't know how we were "messengers of doom."

      

If MobyGames and Wikipedia are to be believed, Ishar 2 never had a North American release, which explains why Computer Gaming World never got to it. The magazine did offer a preview, in a larger article about European games, in the January 1994 issue. Calling the two previous titles "pretty grim" and "very continental in approach," it didn't predict good things from Messengers of Doom. MobyGames's round-up of reviews shows a lot of them, ranging from 54% in the German Power Play to 93% in the English CU Amiga. The average is about 80%, but wow is there a bifurcation, with almost all the German reviews below that mean and almost all of the English ones above it. The English reviews, particularly the Amiga ones, are predictably in love with the graphics ("among the most breathtaking seen on the Amiga" says CU Amiga), which I've already agreed with, but they're not, you know, everything, particularly when it comes to RPGs. The German ones are more in line with my own feelings, still praising the graphics but noting weaknesses in the gameplay and story. The one French review on the site, from the December 1993 Tilt, weighs in at exactly 80%, which I find refreshingly non-jingoistic. 

    

A modest review in the July 1993 The One (86%) has an important insight: "It's still very easy to lose the thread of the plot and end up wandering around without a clue as to what you're meant to be doing." This is exactly what I mean by the relative incompetence of the storytelling and game world.  

    

I put Ishar 3 on the 1994 game list, I guess mostly because it seemed silly to play two games in a trilogy and not the third, but I can't say I'm looking forward to more warm tears and ding-dong-dings. YouTube videos suggest that it has the same engine as Ishar 2. It appears to let you both import and create party members. The graphics seem mostly as nice as ever, but reviews appear to be even worse than for Ishar 2.

     

It's nice to have won a game. It's been a couple of months. I'm going to need you to be patient for just a bit longer, though. One calamity after another has rolled right into the busy opening month of the fall semester, and as you can see from the dates on this entry, I've been having trouble finding time to write about game sessions that have already taken place, let alone playing new games. Things always improve by Columbus Day. 

Daemonsgate: Miles to Go Before We Sleep

This session involved a lot of travel.

          

I deleted the temporary announcement, but hopefully you all saw the reason I haven't posted in over a week. I went to a conference and forgot to bring the AC adapter for my laptop. "One of my AC adapters," I should say, as I keep one at home and one at work, given that it weighs about seven pounds. Because I don't have to take it back and forth each day, I got accustomed to never having to pack it at all. The upshot is that I now have a third adapter, which will remain permanently in my suitcase. Now that I own more than $200 in adapters, I'll probably have to ensure that I get another computer that uses them when I'm ready to replace this Alienware monstrosity.

      

This entry may be a little clinical, as I'm reconstructing a session that took place nearly two weeks ago. I'll do my best.

     

Travels this session.

         

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.

    

We learned that the refugee, Alathon, was being held by the city's dictator, Hellast. Working with a revolutionary group, we infiltrated Hellast's palace and killed him. Alathon told us to meet him in Joruli Point and took off. We determined we could only reach Joruli point via a ferry from Dryleaf. The last session ended with us heading there.

          

From a later point in the game, daemons could be either of those things.

          

We were attacked as soon as we entered, by a party led by an assassin named Flea. "You have troubled my master for too long!" he screamed as he attacked. Thanks to all the buffing we did last session, we made short work of them. On Flea's body, we found his orders, signed by "Warmaster Edric," the same person who had been corresponding with Hellast. Edric told Flea that Gustavus had become "a thorn in the side of our mutual cause" and that he should assassinate both Gustavus and Alathon. Later, we were attacked by someone named Brutus who said that, "Flea was weak and failed in his task. I will not." He was incorrect.

     

As usual, Dryleaf had a lot of interesting-sounding buildings, some of which we could enter, some of which we couldn't, none of which seemed to have anything interesting. We stopped by an herb shop but balked at the costs of the herbs. I guess if I really want to explore herb lore, I'll have a perpetual money sink.

    

That's as much as a suit of armor.

        

An NPC named Hank the Tall praised our killing of Hellast and offered to join the party, but I didn't feel like shuffling items around to kick someone out. Plus, I'd spent all that time training them. Hank ended up chasing us all around town and even outside of town, begging to join the group. That made me more suspicious of him and strengthened my resolve to leave him behind. I can't think of any other game that allows NPCs to transition between towns and wilderness like this, though.

        

Boundaries, dude.

       

The people talked about a leader named Ragnik, who recently departed on a voyage to discover a "western passage to the eastlands." They anticipate that if he's successful, it will greatly improve Dryleaf's economy and status among the civilized kingdoms. They also mentioned rumors that "the mines at Cooltags Rest have been closed due to a huge daemon running free around the deep seams." 

      

We found a ship captain named East who agreed to take us to Joruli Point, but I felt that I had to check out Cooltags Rest first. That seemed like a side quest. Side quests are so important to my conception of a good RPG that I figured I couldn't let a hint of one go without at least investigating.  

     

Does "150 gold" look like interactable text to you?

        

From the game map, we found Cooltags Rest and entered. The town was all set up as if it supported the side quest we'd been given. We found the house of Johan Schultsmonger, the manager of the mine. We found the building that stored mine safety equipment, a warehouse (with a locked door we couldn't open), lots of mine tracks, and NPCs who talked about the mine. We followed the tracks to the locked entrance which did not offer "Pick" and "Unlock" options like most doors. We couldn't find a key or anyone who explicitly asked us to clear out the demon.

       

Maybe there is no side quest. Maybe they've already dealt with it on their own.

         

I figure there's an equal chance of three possibilities:

       

• There was a key somewhere that I didn't find.
• The side quest was never finished.
• This is actually part of the main quest and will become relevant later. 

      

I reloaded from Dryleaf, a bit dispirited, and found Captain East again. There, I ran into another problem. I couldn't figure out how to agree to her price (150 gold pieces) and pay her. It turns out that you have to click the words "150 gold" in the dialogue. There's nothing that indicates that. 

          

A nice cut scene on the high seas.

      

We sailed to Joruli Point, a town of magicians and scholars. It consisted of several small islands bisected by canals and connected by bridges. We learned that sailors had reported that all of the cities of Elsopea have been reduced to smoking ruins and that Tormis isn't expected to hold out more than six months. Dean Juliene, ruler of the city and author of the lore section of the manual, gave us an Enchanted Sword and a Dragon's Eye herb. The description of the Enchanted Sword doesn't mention what the enchantment is, and I don't know how it rates against our existing Elemental Blades.

    

We found Alathon in one of the university buildings. In a series of text screens, he filled us in on the origin of the demon problem: His master, Dorovan, head of the Order of the Eye, was experimenting with dimensional travel, hoping to break the monopoly that the Pilots' Guild had on this form of magic. Agents of the Pilots' Guild sabotaged the experiment, causing Dorovan to accidentally open a Daemonsgate (take a shot!) into "the dimension to which Alkat was banished all those aeons ago."

     

Well, I'm standing in a hallway, the eight individuals who make up my party awkwardly fused into one form.

       

Alkat appears in the extensive lore section of the manual. He was the leader of a group of demonic beings who invaded Hestor from another plane when the land was still ruled by reptilian birds called Kzzir. The demons destroyed the Kzzir, took over the world, and their descendants became the progenitors of the Elsopean Empire. Infighting within the ruling houses led to the creation of an enchanted blade that banished Alkat to another plane. The Elsopean Empire later collapsed and humans, their former slaves, replaced them. Alathon believes that Alkat has returned.

     

Part of Alathon's story.

      

"The only hope for this land is to find a way to close the Daemonsgate," he said. He thinks he can accomplish this if he has his master's notes, "which lie in the smoking ruins of Tan-Eldorith," the old Elsopean capital. "If you journey first to the Pilots' Guild and activate their teleportation device," he offered, "you should be able to get straight in and out of Tan-Eldorith without too much trouble."

    

I didn't know what he meant by the latter point, but I assumed we'd have to reach Tan-Eldorith conventionally first. It was a long way to the south, and we still had the same problem where we got attacked nearly every time we tried to rest. I tried to stop at cities and towns along the way to use their inns, but half the time I couldn't find an inn in the vast cities. Even when I found one, it took me longer than simply trying to rest multiple times in the outdoors.

          

You do not want to get "desperately tired" in this game. Then you can't rest at all because you'll have no energy when you're attacked.

       

The problem with resting outdoors is that you have to do it twice—once to rest most of the party, and a second time to rest the guy who had to take watch the first time. If you want to accomplish anything else in camp (hunting, foraging, training, magic), you might have to add a third cycle. With about a 50/50 chance of getting attacked every time you try, the process gets annoying fast.

        

This is a bad idea. If enemies attack, they'll slaughter us.

       

A lot of the enemies that we met dropped expensive loot, including reagents (blackheart, diamond dust, lightning seed), gems, and weapons called Doomblades; again, I don't know how they compare to the Elemental Blades. 

     

Daemons carry Doomblades, which get their power from the imprisoned souls of other daemons. It's like daemons have no ethics at all.

      

At a stop in Vorsai, where we couldn't find an inn, we wandered into the house of a Ludovic Grueber and found a book that teaches the "Spirit Lore" skill. The manual doesn't mention this skill, but I assume it's the same thing as "Daemonology," which will let us make Doom Blades for ourselves.

             

Arion adds "Spirit Lore" to his list of skills.

      

After a long journey, we finally made it to Tan-Eldorith and started exploring its buildings. We got attacked at almost every turn by parties of daemons, but it's a measure of how much difference my training made that even they weren't much of a threat. I soon got lost in the complicated city, full of walls and guarded gates, and I ended this session having not found Dorovan's notes nor the Pilots' Guild portal that will hopefully hasten our return. I'll cover more on the city next time.

         

Time so far: 19 hours 

Ishar 2: New Zach's City

We finally get some backstory.

        

I wanted to start this entry with a recap, and I realized that to write it, I needed to basically go back to the manual and act like I was starting over. Ishar 2 has one of the most obtuse stories of its year. If I were just a player, I'm sure I would end the game utterly confused and reticent about picking up Ishar 3. But my job as a blogger requires me to explain the game to you, which requires me to review notes and materials multiple times, trying to work out the confusion.

   

So far, the specific threat to the islands that make up Arborea is not explained. The titular Ishar is a fortress that the player conquered in the first game, now ruled centuries later by Zubaran, and in the opening cinematic, Zubaran was encouraged to flee his home by "Jon, Alchemist of Arborea," to deal with some unspecified threat.

     

I didn't have any images to go with this recap, so here are some barbarians I fought later on a mountain path.

       

• Question: Who the hell is Jon? Is he ever going to show up again?

• Question: Why do none of the islands in this archipelago seem to hold the castle of Ishar? Or, where is Ishar's island in relation to where the game has been taking place?

• Question: Why is the party called "Messengers of Doom"? We don't seem to be bringing messages to anybody. 

     

Maybe Zubaran knows more about what he's doing than I do. It feels to me like he's just been wandering around. There are, granted, plenty of RPGs in which the player goes a-wandering despite some ostensibly pressing threat, but usually those games give the player some kind of direction that the player is deliberately ignoring. Not here. As far as I can tell, Jon tricked Zubaran out of his castle.

   

The best I can figure, the "big bad" of the game is someone named Shandar. He's mentioned obliquely in the manual. An early tavern rumor talked about "Shandar's mob sneaking about the town." On the first quest, a dying woman talked about "myrmidons of Shandar," perhaps trying to sacrifice her. On Zach's Island, we found some monks sacrificing a young girl to Shandar, "High Priest of Chaos."

     

A giant puts the Theiss Titillation Theory to the test.

      

We also heard on Zach's Island that Zeldy, the mayor's daughter, had gone missing. The commander-in-chief of the city (higher or lower rank than a mayor?) charged us with finding her, but there are rumors that he's behind the disappearance. 

   

A big part of gameplay has just been finding new areas to explore. It looks like there are six islands, but the game requires us to find a map of each island before it will let us visit it. We found the map to Akeer's Island in the library on Zach's Island. We explored it for a while but got stuck when we couldn't pass some kind of invincible undead spirit. Fortunately, at the end of the last session, we found a map to Jon's Island. This happened when we gave 10,000 gold to a mage and he told us to release an eagle we had purchased. I don't know why we had to pay him so much for that.

       

Jon's Island had three landing points. We chose one at random, stepped off the boat, and immediately started taking damage from the cold. It turned out that each of the three landing points went to a different small map on the frozen, mountainous terrain, and in all of them, we needed special gear to survive. So we immediately took the boat back to Zach's Island and went shopping. I remember seeing a fur coat sale at one of the stores. I had to spend 25,000 gold to buy one for every party member.  

      

But not a real fur coat; that's cruel.

           

For some reason, the southwest dock on the world map led us to the northeast part of the island. We arrived in the dark, so you'll understand how I immediately took a step forward, fell off the mountain path, and died. On a reload, I was more careful. Almost all of the paths on the island are on the edge of mountains.

      

I don't know what kind of special power Khalin has.

        

From the arrival point, we could go east or west. I went east, and it wound its way around the mountain before dead-ending at a square with a cauldron on the ground. I was a little excited at this development, as a cauldron is necessary to make potions, and I was carrying a bunch of reagents for that purpose. If I'm not mistaken, the cauldron in Ishar was in a fixed location, and you had to make your potions there. I assumed that's what the sequel's manual meant when it said there is only one cauldron in the game. But I could pick this one up and take it with us, which was handier. More about potions in a bit.

   

The western path dead-ended at some kind of "snow-triceratops." He lasted a long time, but he didn't hit hard enough to be a serious threat. When he died, he left a horn.

        

Sorry, buddy, but those side horns were going to get you soon anyway.

       

We then tried the northwest dock, which deposited us on the southern part of the island. There were a number of battles with barbarians here, who dropped no money. I'll save myself from repeating this by just saying that no enemies anywhere on Jon's Island dropped any money, joining their counterparts on Akeer's Island. If you need to grind for gold in this game, your only real option is those bandits back on Zach's Island. This was particularly annoying because thanks to the fur purchases, I was down to only a few hundred gold pieces.

      

Anyway, the end of a path that barbarians were guarding was occupied by five pillars, and I intuited immediately that I would be putting those glass-cased skeleton parts on these pillars. I only had two of them at this point, though.

         

There are only 2 pedestals for, like, 149 more bones. 

         

In the other direction, we reached a dead end with an old, white-bearded man sitting cross-legged in the air. He wouldn't talk to us and didn't seem to want anything we had.

       

Levitating is 90% mental. The other half is physical.

       

A couple of large giants blocked the way to a sword floating in the air. It turned out to be a "Living Sword +20," or 5 points better than the magic sword I had most of the characters using.

         

Is it "living" because there are vines wrapped around it? That's weird.

       

The northeast dock brought us to the northwest part of the island. It was the most combat-heavy of the three areas, with multiple parties of frost dwarves (I'm making up these names, of course; the game doesn't tell you your foe's names) and giant vultures. We hit a "cursed" area, which like "Inversion," causes the party members to attack each other. The solution was to cast "Exorcism" in the area—thanks to commenters who helped with that and who figured out the "Inversion" issue last time.

          

You're people! How do you have no money?

        

While we're on the subject of spells, I tried "Change of Timescale" again when the characters got tired. I guess when I tried it in the past, I had become impatient and clicked us out of the spell before it was over. If you're willing to sit and wait a couple of minutes, it legitimately restores all of your hit points (better than a night's rest at the inn) and most of your spell points, including the points necessary to cast the spell in the first place, while no time passes in the real world. You can cast it in the middle of combat, even. It seems way too powerful, at once obviating inns, food, healing spells, and combat difficulty. In fact, if I had been willing to cast it more often, it would have obviated the fur coats, as I could have just restored our hit points whenever I wanted. Knowing that I had this spell in my pocket was responsible for some of my later choices.

    

One path kept going upward, and we eventually reached a point at which the party refused to go any farther. "We're all giddy!" the message said. I correctly guessed that the solution to the problem was a potion, but I didn't know which one. The manual gives you the recipes for potions but gives them all nonsense names (e.g. "Rhumxy," "Arbool," "Flukjl"). While some of the reagents are sold in stores, about half are rare or unique, so you don't want to do a lot of open experimentation.

         

"Mummy"?

      

We had found a bunch of sprigs of Edelweiss in the area—five exactly, in fact—so I figured the answer would have something to do with them. The manual lists only three recipes that use Edelweiss: "Arbool," "Mildong," and "Oklum." "Arbool" requires dandelion, and I had only found one sprig of that, so I ruled it out. I moved on to "Mildong," which requires Edelweiss and gargoyle's claws, the latter of which can be bought in several stores. The game requires you to drink the potion directly from the cauldron, so I had to mix five of them and feed them to my party members before I could see whether it worked. Fortunately, it did. (I had taken a save, of course.) On the other side of this area, we found our third bone-in-a-jar. 

         

Feeding a potion to a character.

      

Now stuck as to what to do next, I did a circuit of the places I hadn't fully explored. Nothing was new on Akeer's Island, but the exercise bore fruit on Zach's Island. On my return visit to the library, I found a book that I don't remember seeing before. It translates the names of the potions to their effects. Some quick notes:

    

• Schlounz (Physical Regeneration): I don't know whether this means health or the "Physical" attribute (which is like a fatigue meter). Either way, the potion is obviated by a party with a scholar capable of casting "Change of Timescale." Even without that spell, mixing all the reagents required seems a lot more effort and expense than just relying on healing spells and/or bread.

• Ghoslam (Psychic Regeneration): This would be more useful without "Change of Timescale." I tend to run out of magic faster than I run out of health.

• Clopatos (Invulnerability): I'll keep it in mind if I encounter a really tough combat. It uses all-purchasable ingredients. If you changed the party formation so that only one character was in front and fed him this potion, it could be the secret to victory. I just wonder how long it lasts.

• Bulkal (Anti-Paralysis): I'll keep it in mind if I ever get paralyzed.

• Mildong (Anti-Vertigo): If I hadn't figured it out, this was the obvious clue.

• Jablou (Ent Alarm): That's a bit of a mystery. I haven't met any ents. This one requires dandelion, so it's a one-time thing unless I find more.

• Humbolg ("Turbulent Priest"): That's a pretty oblique description.

       

Some of the potion translations.

      

The book had nothing to say about "Dzarna," "Kloug," "Gato," "Arbool," "Potaic," "Rhumxy," "Oklum," or "Flukjl," which are all given recipes in the book. I later experimented with them. I couldn't make "Arbool" or "Oklum," as they required ingredients I had already used. The others did nothing but poison the character I gave the potion to. I assume they're just red herrings.

       

When you play Ishar, you start to watch out for weird translations. Our discussion about "Change of Timescale" last entry is a good example. The translation doesn't always get things exactly right. "Turbulent priest" got me thinking. You could imagine a process by which "floating" in French might get translated to "turbulent" in English. (I'm very curious what the French version of the book has for "turbulent priest.") So I mixed up a batch of Humbolg, took it back to the floating monk, and found to my delight that I had been right.

      

Yub nub, m@#*(%@s.

              

He didn't do much—just waved his hand—but the game had already taught me what to check when something mysterious happens: the map. Sure enough, Thorm's Island was now open to me.

    

Thorm's Island was a large, maze-like map set in platforms and wooden walkways high up in the island's forest. As in many places, the graphics really took front stage here. Enemies included homicidal Ewoks, griffons, some kind of one-horned monstrosity, and a few armored men. Again, none of them dropped any gold.

        

You could have the courtesy of looking at us while you're fighting us.

          

Special encounters here really propelled the game forward:

       

• We found the fourth skeleton part—a hand in a glass case. 

• We found the body of Zeldy. Yes, the mayor's daughter was dead. That was a reversal of expectations. She wore a key around her neck. A tavern tale that we heard ages ago indicated that Zeldy had taken the "pig of a commander's" key with her. 

      

And here's yet another variation on the game's obsession with "Dw" words.

     

• We ran into a bearded tree. At first I thought it was a statue. Then I realized: "Ent." I fed him the "Jablou" potion, and he woke up long enough to give me a pendant.

      

I'm curious how he's giving us the pendant, and where it was in the first place.

       

• A hut was occupied by some elders sitting around a fire. They told us a tale of twin brother druids, Grimz and Griml, who opposed Shandar. "They succeeded in penetrating his castle, but were conquered by Shandar's power." Griml was turned to stone; Grimz was cut into pieces and his bones scattered over the islands of Arborea. Clearly, it's his bones that we have been finding. "They say an ancestral breeze could re-awaken Griml, and that Grimz could come back to life through his daughter, whom Shandar blinded and imprisoned in his fortress."

• We found the statue of Griml standing on a walkway, although when I first encountered him, I just assumed he was a mute NPC. As for the "ancestral breeze," we figured it out by blowing the horn we had received from the ice triceratops. When he came to life, he thanked us and said, "Give me a shield . . . It will protect you against the dragon's fire." I tried, but he didn't seem to want any of our shields, maybe because they're already enchanted. I'm planning to come back with a plain shield.

          

What dragon?

      

Most important, in another hut, another group of elders finally gave us some backstory on Shandar, and it's just delightful:

    

After the death of Krogh [ed. the villain in the first game], Arborea became a forbidden place for all the agents of chaos. Shandar took advantage of the arrival of great numbers of people from the Northlands and emigrated to Zach's Island. He started an illicit trade in hallucinogenic potions and soon became a rich and important person. Today, he owns the whole town and many worshippers make him the object of a demonic cult. His dream is to overthrow the throne of Ishar and take possession of the fortress.

    

The nebulous threat to Arborea is thus explained: a drug kingpin! 

    

So I have to find Grimz's daughter, then the last piece of Grimz, and then put him together back on top of the mountain. I'm not sure how that will play out, but I at least know where to go next: To the commander-in-chief's office, with the key I looted from Zeldy.

       

It's amazing how much better you feel about a game when the story starts falling into place. But it's still pretty weak on RPG mechanics. Combats have become trivially easy, so much so that I'm not sure it's worth taking the time to grind for the magical equipment (predominantly armor) that I don't already own. My characters are Level 19, but I stopped noticing the effects of leveling ages ago. I wonder if I can wrap it up in one more entry.

        

Time so far: 15 hours