Elvira II: Won!* (with Final Rating)

I don't like the sound of that last bit.

Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus
Horror Soft (developer); Accolade (publisher)
Released 1991 for DOS; 1992 for Amiga, Commodore 64, and Atari ST
Date Started: 20 June 2015
Date Ended: 04 July 2015

Total Hours: 21

Reload Count: 44 (mostly from trying alternate solutions to puzzles, not death)

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: 34

Ranking as of Game #349: 238/349 (68%)

If nothing else, Elvira II helped me clarify why I'm a CRPG addict and not an adventure game addict. Although I value puzzles in RPGs--the occasional riddle, mystery, inventory puzzle, or navigation puzzle--I don't like games that are all puzzles. I don't always want to have a puzzle on the board, waiting to be solved. Rather, I want my puzzles to be punctuations after moderately-long periods of dungeon crawling and tactical combat. This probably explains why I'm not a huge fan of Dungeon Master-style games, where unsolved puzzles tend to rack up pretty fast.

As I wrapped up last time, I was preparing to navigate out of 6 levels of catacombs so I could grab some items of makeup and then navigate back through 6 levels of catacombs and fool the evil sorcerer into thinking I was his apprentice. As I had done with the mad scientist's assistant, I studied the picture that looked like a wizard's apprentice and dressed up in the appropriate garb, hat, and facial hair.

This was fun the first time.

        
Fortunately, it occurred to me to take all the makeup items back with me, in case I'd made a mistake, because I did. I forgot the fake nose. If I hadn't brought everything, I would have had to trek up and back again, and that probably would have killed my interest in finishing the game. (Later, though, when it became clear that I missed some fish bones needed for a "buoyancy" spell, I did have to trek down four levels again.) As it was, they were pretty annoying. Frequent traps pop up in your path, so you can't get into a rhythm where you're constantly moving forward, because this happens:

     
Instead, you have to pause after every step to make sure there isn't a trap ahead, and if there is, you have to click on it and "avoid" it.

      

Anyway, fooling the wizard just made him go away, allowing me to proceed into the small chamber beyond, where I found Elvira!

          
Or, at least, I thought so. The visage of Elvira turned into an acid-spitting demon. Once I dealt with it, I recovered the Indian's war lance.

It turned out that each of the three major areas--the "stages"--culminated in an encounter with "Elvira," followed by the recovery of one of the Indian's magic items. The first two times you find Elvira, she turns out to be a fake and you have to battle the creature that's taken her visage. The third time, it's the real Elvira, and after that until the end of the game, she appears in your inventory(!).

The caverns of Stage 1 were as large as the catacombs, but only four levels. They were crawling with giant mosquitoes, ants, grubs, and other vermin, but I clearly was supposed to have visited this area first, because I was way overpowered for them. Most of them died in a single blow with combat set to "berserk" mode. Occasionally, they poisoned me, but red mushrooms in the area were capable of creating the "antidote" spell.

The encounters in the dungeon were punctuated by rooms full of crystals and mushrooms that I could use to make helpful combat and healing spells. I ended up using hardly any of them because I had already conquered the place where I would have needed them most--the catacombs in Stage 3.

At the apex of the level was a giant spider and spider web. The spider was unkillable, I think, but I was able to evade him by trapping him behind an elevator door. In his web, I found a version of Elvira that turned into a hideous wasp-woman and the Indian's magic tomahawk.

Okay, enough of that.

Clearing the area meant finding a key to the elevator, and I had to look up a spoiler for that one. It wasn't obvious to me that a couple of pixels on an image of a dead man wrapped in a spider's web held a necessary item, or that I would need to use the "Telekinesis" spell to obtain it rather than simply cutting it out of the web. There are quite a lot of puzzles in the game that are like this.

Do you see anything obvious to try to take?

During my explorations of Stage 1, I maxed in level (10) and experience (9999). Even though I took multiple passes through the catacombs, I still think it was a bit too easy to hit the cap well before the end of the game.

Fighting a giant worm. Note all the crystals and mushrooms in my inventory.

With Stages 1 and 3 clear, I had to return to the haunted house at Stage 2 and figure out what I hadn't finished there. It turned out I had to bring Frankenstein's monster to life by casting "Summon Storm" on the house's roof and letting it strike a copper rod I inserted in a barely-visible slot. Again, I was relying on a walkthrough at this point.

The storm brought the monster to life, but what ensued was the most annoying puzzle of the game. Basically, you have to do two things with the monster: remove his headband, scalp, and brain, and get him away from the door that he's blocking when you first find him. This means that you have to animate him long enough to get him to walk a few steps from the door, but then stop him (by pulling out his brain wires) before he has a chance to kill you. The timing is hard to get right, and if you don't realize there's a door behind him in the first place, it's easy to put yourself in a "walking dead" scenario by taking his brain before he's moved away from the door.

Disassembling the monster.

Behind the door was, in my case, the real Elvira, along with the Indian's magic bag.

I don't suppose I could just leave her here?

I took all of the magic items to the Indian and he, one by one, in a series of identical animations, infused them with magic power.

You'd think a man of such ability could find a better job than janitor.

I now had all the items I needed for the summoning and binding ritual to kill Cerberus, described at length in one of the library's books, but I needed a holy man to draw the pentagram, and that meant resurrecting the dead cleric. Fortunately, now that I was at Level 10, I could mix the "resurrect" spell. I'm sure the ingredients were among the library's many tomes, but I just tried various mixtures of likely-sounding items (brain, heart, spleen, holy book, holy water, etc.,) until I got it right.

Trying various items to mix the "Resurrect" spell. Note Elvira sitting there in my inventory (second from the left). Could I have used her to mix a spell?

With the cleric revived (no word on how a clearly-Catholic priest felt about being resurrected via arcane arts), he took my chalice full of blood (I honestly can't remember where I got it) and went off to the parking lot to draw a pentagram. At this point, relying on the instructions in the book and a little help from the walkthrough, I completed the ritual necessary to kill Cerberus: light a series of 10 candles around the pentagram, use the magic bag to summon the beast, cast "Bind Demon" at him, throw the Indian's spear at his head, and hack his heart with the tomahawk. It took me a few tries to get it right because he kept killing me while I was trying to find necessary items in my inventory.

You'd think he could just do #2, but he just says "I don't perform that mumbo jumbo sort of religion."

The endgame animations were pretty good, and it's worth watching the video below of the entire sequence. Note the constant music. I played the game with sounds turned off on my computer; how long would you have been able to last with music like this playing incessantly?

Like the first game, this one ends with Elvira beckoning you to your ribald reward.

I'm not sure I like the look of that dagger.

I hope that the folks at The Adventure Gamer get to this one eventually, because I'm curious what they'd say about it from an adventure game perspective. I thought that some of the puzzles were rather obscure and illogical, and that there was too much screwing around trying to make sure you had the right inventory items in each situation. Add to this a number of "walking dead" situations (avoided in my case by breaking my rules and looking at spoilers), and I'm not sure it performs well as an adventure game.

On the other side, the role-playing aspects were under-developed. You do get notably stronger with each level-up, but the dungeons are long and boring and the combats bereft of anything you might call "tactics," so for me the role-playing elements were somewhat unwelcome. They mostly just padded the time.

It might score higher in a GIMLET than the first one just because it has more elements, but I can't honestly say I enjoyed it more. Let's see.

• 6 points for the game world. This is one category that's notably better than its predecessor. It makes good use of horror movie tropes and characters by having the sets literally come to life. Elvira felt more like a standard fantasy game in Elvira's clothes; this one felt closer to a horror RPG.

• 3 points for character creation and development. Definitely better than the first. You get noticeably stronger as the game progresses and you gain experience and level up. I like that you get experience for a variety of actions and puzzle-solving, not just combat. But there are no meaningful character choices throughout the game; even the initial selection of "profession" is staggeringly unimportant.

• 5 points for NPC interaction. Between Elvira, the Indian, Frankenstein, and the sorcerer, there are a handful of NPCs with dialogue options, some of them even involving a small amount of role-playing (e.g., whether to insult the Indian by asking for "fire water").

Elvira's interpolations were usually unwelcome.

• 5 points for encounters and foes. A variety of monsters undone by a lack of true strengths and weaknesses, plus puzzles that tended on the too-tough side. Balancing this were some occasional puzzles different than anything I've seen in a CRPG or adventure game. I like the use of spells as puzzle-solving tools.

• 4 points for magic and combat. The combat system is arguably worse than the first game, but either way it's just a click-fest. I did like aspects of the magic system, such as being able to create "Fireballs" from a combustible material. This would be a fun dynamic in an open-world game where items replenish. Here, because there were so many "walking dead" scenarios, I was reluctant to fully exploit the magic system. I could have gone the entire game without running out of "Herbal Healing," for instance, but there was only a single item available to cast "Telekinesis." Good thing I didn't waste it.

Killing a giant mosquito, like everything else, is just rapid clicking.

• 3 points for equipment--a handful of weapons and armor. The game gives you no clues as to the damage or protective value of the items you wield and wear.

• 0 points for no economy.

• 2 points for the main quest, which offers only one outcome and no player choices.

Tossing a spear at Cerberus to win the game.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are lovely, but the relentless music is unbearable and makes it impossible to enjoy the other sound effects. And I can't excuse the all-mouse interface. If a game is going to feature long series of mazes, I want to be able to move through them with the arrow keys.

A well-rendered giant spider chomps me to pieces.

• 3 points for gameplay. I like the non-linearity during the central acts, but I'd say it's just a little too hard and quite a bit too long.

That gives us a final rating of 34, a little higher than Elvira but not enough to cross into "recommended" territory. Elvira II is definitely a better RPG than Elvira, but being a "better RPG" doesn't count for much if you're still not a good RPG.

I've run out of ways to make fun of Dragon giving everything 5 out of 5 stars, but they did it again here. You'd think a magazine focused on role-playing would recognize that Elvira II had some definite weaknesses in this area, but instead they offered a review that could have doubled as an advertisement: "From the opening screens, you'll be on the edge of your seat trying to rescue the beloved Elvira. This is a 'must' purchase."

Scorpia offered a more sober look in the March 1992 Computer Gaming World. Her primary problems are the "walking dead" scenarios: she was unable to complete the game because she'd used a crucifix needed to ward off a vampire in a spell; even if she could have gotten past this, she also used the matches needed to light the candles on a "Fireball" spell (which I also did; thankfully, I had VK to warn me). She also mentions the Frankenstein one. The entire second half of her review, in fact, is taken up with complaints about this specific issue, and I can see why. I was also happy to see that she complained about the music. On the other hand, she goes on for a while about a lack of save slots, which baffles me a bit. The game allows 48 different save slots in an era where the default is usually one. I only used 6 slots, but I grant you I tend to be overly conservative about this.

I'll tell you this: I wish there were more horror-themed RPGs. To that end, I'm going to be happy to give the Horror Soft/Accolade team another chance with Waxworks, coming up in 1992. Judging by the screen shots, it uses the same engine as Elvira II, but perhaps it improves elements of the gameplay. Either way, the setting looks pretty cool.

That will, alas, be Horror Soft's last game. The company renamed itself Adventure Soft in 1992 and produced the Simon the Sorcerer series but never tried again with an RPG. Of the three primary developers on Elvira II--Alan Bridgman, Michael Woodroffe, and Simon Woodroffe--only Simon Woodroffe seems to be active today, with some 2010s credits on action games produced by Sega. Michael Woodroffe last shows up as managing director of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005), and Alan Bridgman last contributed to Simon the Sorcerer 3D (2002).

My acquaintance with the Mistress of the Dark was brief, but I can't say that breaks me up. It's time to finally get serious about Antares.

****

Further reading: My series of posts on Elvira: Mistress of The Dark from early 2014. YouTube user Lemm has a 3 hour and 20 minute LP that takes the game from beginning to end, and as a bonus you can check out Javier Juan Castro Sanchez's compilation of all of the game's death scenes.

Elvira II: Gonna Search and Find that Preacher Man

This dead cleric might be a good candidate for a "Resurrect" when I'm able to cast it.

I liked the first one better. Elvira, aside from being about Elvira, was a decent adventure game that offered some sensible, moderately-challenging puzzles, cool graphics, and an interesting setting. Its RPG elements were introduced a bit ham-handedly, but it seemed to understand that and it didn't overemphasize them. Elvira II tries to go too far as an RPG for a game that isn't an RPG. One section, in which I'm currently mired, has a six-level dungeon crawl, which would normally be a nice RPG nod in an adventure/RPG hybrid, but not when you're so restricted in combat tactics and afraid to cast most of your spells.

That doesn't sound very much like someone who wants to be rescued.

Since the last post, I've explored most of Set #2 (the House of Horror) and I think most of Set #3 (It Came from Beyond the Grave). I haven't been able to fully explore anything, because inevitably I run up against some puzzle I need (or think I need) a higher level or some unfound reagent to solve.

My favorite puzzle was in the haunted house. In a basement room, I found a mad scientist who yelled that I wasn't his assistant and ordered me out. Since the game offered the dialogue button in the room, I figured there must be some way to talk with him. Later, in the hands of a corpse, I found some stills of the various movie characters, and I realized their costumes and makeup were identical to the items I found in the second-floor offices. I chose the one that looked most like a lab assistant and applied the right set of facial hair, a wig, teeth, and a lab coat.

Pictures of the cast of the various films.

Checking myself in the mirror as I apply the items. Looks like I still need eyebrows and teeth.

When I was wearing the "disguise" of the film character, the mad scientist talked to me, though the only thing I got out of it was a poison potion that I don't have a particular use for.

Maybe I was supposed to choose one of the others. I only had a recipe for a poison.

This dynamic became my least favorite puzzle in Set #3. I battled all the way down six flights of catacombs (more on that in a minute) only to find a wizard who attacked me (and turned me into a frog) after noting that I didn't "look anything like his assistant." Clearly, I have to dress up as another character again--the only problem being that I left all the costumes and makeup six long levels above me. I have to drag myself all the way back to the top and all the way back to the bottom again.

 
That's the major problem with this game. For every satisfying puzzle, there's one that grossly tests your patience. Most involve dying in some horrific manner before you even know there's a puzzle to be solved. To take one of many examples, there's a series of rooms among the 6 levels in the catacombs on Stage 3. Each of the rooms has a chest, and most of the chests are trapped in some way. Until you try to open the chest (or, in some cases, leave the room), there's no way to tell that there's a trap to be solved (I couldn't get the "Detect Trap" spell to do anything). You just have to let it kill you, then reload, and then try various things to keep the trap from going off. In some rooms, that means closing the chest after you open it; in others, you have to move some ornamental weapon on the wall or move the chest itself.

Another example: simply entering one room causes you to fall asleep and wake up to some buxom ghost leaning over your bed:

But the ghost soon turns into D. W. Bradley's worst nightmare and kills you:

The only way to survive this, that I could find, was to have "Courage" spell active before entering the room, but of course you'd need to die at least once to know that you had to do anything before entering the room.

And yet another: Stage 2 culminates in a vampire attack in the house's attic. There's no way to anticipate it; you just walk up a ladder and within seconds you're dead with a couple of puncture wounds in the neck. Once you know the vampire is there, you can plan for it (the solution involves using a tuning fork to vibrate and shatter a window, letting in sunlight and killing the vampire--I had to look it up), but it takes at least one death to know it's there.

A satisfying animation accompanies the vampire's immolation.

         
I like that a lot of the puzzle solutions depend on the right spell; I don't like that you face such draconian limits on some spells. It's much better than the first game (although the first game, being short, could be restarted without a lot of pain), but still problematic. There are only a few spells you don't have to worry about running out of; for instance, "Ice Dart" and "Healing Hands" require no ingredients and there are dozens of ingredients to use for "Fireball," so you're mostly set there. "Fire Resistance," on the other hand, requires fire extinguishers, and I've only found two. Together, they made 4 spells. "Mindlock" requires a padlock; I've only found one, and it only made 1 spell. I counted at least half a dozen locations in the catacombs in which both of these spells would have come in handy, and not being able to cast them ("Mindlock," in particular) meant I had to leave a lot of potentially-useful items behind.

(Someone's going to say that "Brain Boost" allows you to mix more spells than normal and I should have used that more often. Great, but I only found a couple of items capable of mixing "Brain Boost" in the first place, so I couldn't use it every time I mixed spells.)

As the witch dies, her eyeball comes popping towards me. I need it for the "Fear" spell. This has been the only witch in the game so far, so I hope I don't need more than one "Fear" spell.

       
The limited availability of some spells isn't the only problem with the magic system; another has to do with the amount of time it takes spell points to regenerate. In an earlier post, I said it was 22 seconds per point, but I must have mistimed it then, because it turns out to be closer to a minute. When I was exploring the catacombs, my spell point maximum was around 42, and I could easily burn them all in 3 or 4 combats. That meant I had to let my character stand still, twiddling his thumbs, for almost an hour sometimes. There were a few potions that allowed me to bypass the waiting period, but not many. It was like playing Bard's Tale III again.

Combat never got any more interesting, although I did learn that a status bar to the right tells you how much damage you're doing. This allows you to experiment with different areas of a foe and figure out where he's most vulnerable. Skeletons, for whatever reason, are most vulnerable on the legs.

A skeleton hacks at my weakened character while I click on his legs.

The catacombs in Stage 3 offered the most RPG-like experience of the game so far. There are six levels, mapped on roughly a 20 x 20 grid, full of skeletons, rats, ghosts, and little troll-like creatures. I haven't made a determination as to whether there is a fixed number of these enemies or if they respawn. Between killing them and finding various treasures (healing potions, attribute-boosting potions, weapons), this area has offered the most character development of the game.

Attacking some little troll thing.

Ghosts come screaming along the corridor, do a ton of damage as they pass through you, and move too fast to attack. Only having the "Courage" spell active keeps them from hurting you.

It still isn't good. The limited combat system isn't fun enough to support as many combats as the game throws at you. Like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, there's no information about the relative damage levels of weapons, so I don't know which of the many items I've found--two swords, an axe, a hatchet, daggers of different descriptions--do the most damage. And there's an incredible amount of randomness in combat; a skeleton that kills me in one blow might miss me four times in a row on a reload.

The dungeon is full of traps that you have to click on and "avoid." Otherwise, this happens.

I made it to the bottom level without having to map, but now I need to go all the way back up to the top level and get the various makeup items to impersonate the wizard's apprentice. I can't seem to find my way out without mapping, so I'm settling in with some graph paper. I always get irrationally angry when adventure games want me to map corridors. I have no problem doing it for RPGs, but RPGs are what I'm addicted to. Having to map in an adventure game feels like someone who isn't your boss telling you that you have to work late.

Lots of other miscellaneous notes and encounters.

• The haunted house had a library with about 15 readable books making up almost 50 pages of text. I dutifully screenshotted every one. It's a lot to read, but there are clues to defeating various monsters, as well as a process for binding and killing Cerberus in there.

One of the many, many book pages.

• One of the books had a long screed about the "Resurrection" spell, which I won't get until Level 10 (I'm currently Level 8). I've found a couple of bodies that I might want to cast it on; the most likely candidate is a slain preacher in the Stage 3 chapel.

• I'm wearing a hodgepodge of armor right now: the security guard's jacket from the beginning of the game, a helmet and gauntlet from a suit of armor (I couldn't take the breastplate, alas); a pair of boots found on one of the bodies in the pantry; and a shield taken from a chest in the catacombs. The game does a poor job indicating what's currently equipped.

• The game is inconsistent as to how items are used. For instance, there are a lot of keys in the game, and you might use one by clicking on it and choosing "Use," but in another place, you use it by physically dragging it to the lock, and in still another, you use it by clicking on the thing you want to open and choosing "Unlock." To fill a test tube with water, I had to click on the water and drag it to the tube.

• Choosing AdLib for sound did indeed provide some basic sound effects, but there's no way I can play with that jarring music score playing incessantly.

• I keep encountering a bug where my icon gets stuck on the "attack" icon permanently. This wasn't so bad at first, but then it got stuck on "inactive attack" permanently, and I couldn't fight anything. I had to reload an earlier save.

• This game is going to suffer in my GIMLET for not allowing any keyboard controls. Navigating 6 levels of catacombs by clicking the navigation buttons with a mouse gets old very fast.

• Nudity in several places in the game--just not anything that anyone would want to see. I believe TVTropes calls this "Fan Disservice."

• I still can't figure out how to get this key. You wouldn't think it would be too hard to outsmart a fish. Can't I just smash the tank? (Apparently not.)

At this point, I really have no sense of the endgame. I guess I'm supposed to be recovering those magic items for the janitor, but I haven't found any of the three so far. The various puzzles in the three stages aren't manifestly leading to anything yet, or opening up any clear plot points. Then again, I haven't finished fully exploring any of the stages yet.

As much as I'm ready for the game to be over, I can't stomach the thought of two more runs through the catacombs just now, so you might see me start on Antares before wrapping up this one.

Hours so far: 12
Reload count: 29

Elvira II: A Funny Feeling Up and Down My Spine

Indeed. Who garnishes a head with cucumber slices?

One thing that adventure games do better than the typical RPG (at least in this era) is to create a greater sense of place. Where RPGs might offer hundreds of squares of repetitive, featureless corridors, culminating in an encounter that is more likely to be presented textually than graphically, almost every screen in an adventure game is carefully-composed, thoughtfully placed, and somehow important to the plot. When you find an exception--the western courtyard with the guard barracks in Quest for Glory comes to mind--it's a bit jarring.

Elvira's office. As you might expect from the character, it's a bit of a mess--and there are at least three bottles of hairspray visible.

          
This means that finding and unlocking new areas in an adventure game is more exciting than in an RPG. You know that each new area is going to reveal a bit of plot, or a key item that you need to solve a puzzle in an earlier area. The problem is, it's also a little exhausting. It's a bit like watching a frame-by-frame shot of a complicated film, having to study the mise-en-scène for several minutes to make sure you picked up each important element. I'm ready to call it quits after three or four new screens.

Especially when so many end up like this.

          
If you were to describe a typical RPG to someone with no experience--miles of featureless corridors or landscape, filled with dozens of meaningless combats and loot-collecting, punctuated by some key encounter or battle every 30-60 minutes--it would probably sound terribly boring. And yet, it's what I'm addicted to. Adventure games are nearly the opposite of this--every screen important, some puzzle constantly on your mind. To me, a good hybrid strikes a balance between the two. Again, I think of Quest for Glory with its tracts of forest or sand, full of random combats, in between puzzle locations. Elvira II is satisfying what little adventure game craving I possess but not my RPG craving.

After last time, I started over from the beginning and replayed up to the basement, where this time I saved before going into the boiler room. The demonic hand seems to be unavoidable, but there's a "copper rod" in the basement that I presume I'll need later, so finding some way to block it must be a puzzle.

The guy sitting on the floor in the basement turned out to be a Native American janitor who greeted me by saying, "I warn them not to build studios here. Now great Evil will befall." He went on to explain that a Mighty Evil spirit has stolen his magic and captured Elvira, and he will sacrifice Elvira to gain her power and ultimately take over the world. To defeat the spirit, I somehow have to recover the janitor's spear, tomahawk, and magic bag--and maybe a peace pipe, although that might just be a metaphor.

The dialogue system isn't bad. We're not seeing dialogue choices like this in most other RPGs of the time. But it has a way of killing dialogue after a couple of trees, forcing you to start from the beginning. Also, if you say something to insult the janitor, like "you need a good shrink," he refuses to talk to you, which I assume is a bad thing.

Up on the second floor, the elevator took me to the studio offices, which consisted of a set of rooms that you might find in a typical movie studio: a computer room, a makeup room, Elvira's office, a director's office, and a personnel office. Each room had just a ton of items to view and collect, which I'll talk about in a second, but not much in the way of the main plot.

Perhaps the most fun room was the makeup room, where a series of mirrors allowed me to view myself, with the appearance changing depending on what I was wearing. A makeup kit nearby had an assortment of fake mustaches, beards, wigs, hats, glasses, and other accessories, and it was briefly fun putting on a variety of items and watching how the portrait changed.

The PC stops to play dress-up before remembering he's on a quest to save his girlfriend.

During this period, I figured out the game's approach to inventory. Basically, as you click around a room and identify objects, they appear, one-by-one, in the "room's" inventory, accessible from the icon in the upper-right of the screen. Next to it is your own inventory. By dragging items to either of the buttons, you can change what the room contains versus what you're carrying.

This room has a plant, some books, a picture of Elvira, a couple of coffee mugs, a spoon, a water bottle, a stool, and a book.

As you pull items from the room, they disappear from the screen. If you remove items from your inventory, they'll re-appear on screen as long as you're putting them back in the original room. If you drop items picked up in other locations, they won't appear on the screen--just in the room's inventory.

Since many of the spells (more on that anon) use random items picked up in the environment, I adopted the expedient of grabbing everything, hauling it down to the first floor, and dumping it in the room that splits into three studios. This required multiple trips, as you do have a weight limit. But I figured it would be best to have everything in a central place where I might need it.

During the explorations, I did find one reference to the first game: "a postcard with a picture of Elvira's castle in England on it." Since the image of my character in the mirror (and on the death screens) looks a little bit like the PC in Elvira, I can only conclude that the PC from the first game became Elvira's boyfriend and accompanied her back to the states.

The British PC begins to regret his choice.

The office area also delivered the game's first combat, against a witch. I couldn't win it the first few times, but at least it introduced me to the system--which is worse than in the original game. In Elvira, you would wait to see the direction of the attack, parry, and then make your own thrust or slash depending on your assessment of how the enemy was defending. In this one, there's no defense at all. You just click on an enemy's body part with the sword icon, wait for a cooling-off period, and click again. Meanwhile, the enemy is attacking you and you have no way to dodge.

A witch attacks me while I shoot "Ice Darts" at her.

I guess the specific body part targeted makes a difference, although I wasn't able to find a weakness for the witch. And since you get no feedback on how much damage you're doing, it must just be a matter of trial and error. The only thing you can adjust is your overall approach to combat in four categories: "Normal," "Defense," "Fierce," and "Berserk." From the manual's explanation, this setting not only affects your own attack speed but also the enemy's, so all it seems to do is to make your victory or death more rapid. I guess I have to experiment more to be sure.

A later fight against a giant mosquito. When the sword icon is white, I can attack. When it's black, I have to wait.

After a few deaths at the hands of the witch, I decided to explore the spell system in more detail. It's similar to Elvira in that you have to "mix" spells before casting them, and the spells appear as inventory items once mixed. Unlike the first game, you can mix spells yourself, and the spellbook uses a variety of items found in the environment rather than just herbs. You cast them with your own "power points" (which regenerate slowly between castings, about 1 every 22 seconds), and your character level limits what spells you can mix and cast.

Some of the components required to mix spells are obvious. "Summon Storm" requires a barometer, for instance, and "Resist Fire" requires a fire extinguisher. Others are open to interpretation. "Protection" requires a "metal band," which I took to mean a ring, but it turned out that a soda can worked okay. "Detect Trap" requires "any shaped glass"--I had success with an ashtray. A couple of Level 1 spells--"Ice Dart" and "Healing Hands"--require no ingredients; you can keep casting as long as your spell points hold out. A few spells require two reagents, such as "Lightning Bolt," which requires "an amethyst and anything fork-shaped."

The first game has me a bit paranoid. There, it was possible to get into a "walking dead" situation by using items for some spells that you really needed for others, or by wasting spells in some combats when you needed to save them for different ones. Here, for instance, I sacrificed a silver four-leaf clover charm for a "Luck" spell, but now I'm worried that I really needed to save that item for its silver.

Mixing the "Courage" spell with a bottle of gin. Shame to waste the gin. Note that I have "Brain Boost," "Breathe Underwater," "Luck," "Unseen Shield," "Ice Dart," "Protection," and "Healing Hands" already mixed and in my inventory.

There are an awful lot of spells--37!--and I assume some are needed to solve puzzles, so I'm probably going to adopt a conservative stance on casting. Since "Healing Hands" doesn't require any ingredients--just waiting for points to recharge--I'd rather take damage in combat and heal it later than cast a "Fireball" that I really needed to save for a puzzle.

Back to the plot. The only place to go having explored the office was one of three studio doors. I started with #1. When I opened it, a vision of Elvira paid me a visit.

That's worded so badly I can't even tell if it's a double entendre.

The area led me into a series of tunnels in which I was attacked by giant insects. I didn't last very long. It was a bit traumatic watching a mosquito slowly drain my blood while I futilely attacked him with a knife.

I decided to briefly explore Studio #2. Here, the cameras were pointed at a "screen" of a haunted house.

Only at this point did the game's schtick become clear. In the manual, Elvira's letter mentioned that the studio was shooting three films: Kiss of the Spider, House of Horror, and It Came from Beyond the Grave. Clearly, what's happened is that the sets have come to life, allowing me to walk beyond the screen and experience their plots and perils. As I said in the last posting, this is a much better thematic use of the Elvira character than the first game's castle.

As I entered the House of Horror, Elvira's image appeared and told me that I'd need my brain more than my weapon here, which was welcome news. I figured I could build up some more experience levels on this set before attempting set #1 and the witch again.

The mansion was a stereotypical haunted house. A dining room contained a head on a platter, another head in a cupboard, both of which kept causing me to faint. I took a clue from the presence of wine bottles everywhere and cast "Courage," which worked on the head on the platter but not the one in the cupboard. (I spent some time fiddling with my knife to see if I could cut the head to get the brain, a spell component, to no avail.) From the latter fainting, I kept waking up in a pantry full of dead bodies and no way out. An image from Elvira said I would have to "warm up" before I could leave, but any spell that could have accomplished that was above my current level.

Gruesome.

A study off the first floor held two suits of armor holding halberds. I expected to get attacked by them, but they just stood there and let me take the helmet off one of them. A second exit was blocked by a "ghostly figure" holding the door shut; I assume I need "Turn Undead" for him, but that requires a brain, which I have not yet found.

How?

In a small room off the study, a desk drawer held a prayer book, which I need for the "Unholy Barrier" spell, or perhaps as the solution to a puzzle. This is harder to tell than with generic items like bottles of wine and shaped glass. A second drawer held a padlock, needed for "Mindlock," which "protects the spells already memorized from being destroyed." I assume I'll need that at a specific point later in the game where something wipes my spells.

Behind a picture in the room was a wall safe which requires a key to open. The key seems to be at the bottom of a nearby fish tank, but I can't find a way to break into the fish tank and get the key. "Ice Dart" doesn't break the tank and "Underwater Breathing" doesn't help in any way. I'll think on it some more.

Maybe I need another rock to smash this glass.

A variety of rooms on the second level. One was on fire when I entered and burned me to death. I have the fire extinguishers needed for "Resist Fire" but not the necessary level (5).

You'd think I would have sensed this from the outside.

A bathroom had a sink full of blood and a bunch of toiletries to pick up, but no puzzles that I could see. A room with a couple of tea chests held a book of matches, which I reasoned were the "combustibles" I need for "Fireball." I hit Level 4 right about this time, so I mixed up a couple, returned to the pantry, and cast it. The resulting rise in temperature summoned a guard who killed me. I'm kind of sick of losing every combat in the game. I could try casting "Protection" before more of them, but I haven't found any more of the required "metal bands," and I don't want to waste a spell I might need later.

That's where I leave off, with plenty of the mansion and the other two sets left to explore, and the unsolved puzzles piling up in my notepad.

A few other notes:

• Unless I have something configured incorrectly, the only sound in the game is a relentlessly up-tempo soundtrack that I can't tolerate for more than a few minutes. I quickly checked out versions of both DOS and Amiga gameplay on YouTube and didn't hear any sound effects there, either. This is a major step back from the first game, where there were neat combat sounds and other assorted effects.

• The game's approach to rewarding experience is a bit odd. You gain 4 points for every new square you step on, plus varied points for picking up certain items and interacting with the environment. But you get at least 10 points for every spell that you cast. A smart player would mix up some "Ice Darts" right away when the game starts and cast one every time the power points get back to their maximum. Leveling up gives you an increase of 1 or 2 points in a bunch of attributes, plus more hit points and power points.

• A "motion tracker" in the lower-left corner is supposed to warn you about nearby enemies, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't do anything at all.

• The beating heart in the upper-left was a good idea that really has no purpose given that there's no sound and the hit points tell you everything you need to know.

I'm finding Elvira II to be quite a bit harder than the first game, both in combat and puzzles, and I may take a break for a more classic RPG before my next post. Fortunately, readers came through on all my conundrums last time, and I now have working versions of Antares, Dragon Slayer for the PC-88, and Quest for Tanda. In the meantime, no hints on this game, please, unless I've obviously done something wrong or made an incorrect assumption.

Hours so far: 4
Reload count: 9