Citadel of Vras: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

That verse / is all over the place with its meter and rhyming scheme / but what's even worse / is that I spent 15 hours on the game and only got this winning screen.

           

Citadel of Vras
Australia
Independently developed; distributed by Megadisc
Released in 1989 for Amiga
Date Started: 5 August 2018
Date Ended: 22 August 2018
Total Hours: 15
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: 24
Ranking at time of posting: 117/305 (38%)

     

Citadel of Vras started with a quest from the Galactic Federation of Planets to find the Talisman of Truth before the pirate Sarkov could get to it. By the time I reached the end of the game, I had essentially forgotten the framing story (referenced only obliquely throughout). This is par for the course with the Bard's Tale line, which has always been more about combat mechanics and inventory than story.
         

The game consisted of 3 levels of the Nigris moon, 1 level on Vras's surface, 2 levels in the ruins of Vras, and 3 in the titular Citadel of Vras, all with relatively convenient teleporters (with codes you have to discover) back to the Nigris base for shopping and leveling. Each level requires some amount of puzzle solving before proceeding to the next level.

          

Getting from the Citadel back to Nigris involved inserting a floppy disk into a computer and getting the code.

             

The three citadel levels each introduced a new demonic foe. Level 1 has the Demon of Greed, Level 2 the Demon of Fear, and Level 3 the Demon of Power. All are immune to psychic attacks and must be encountered multiple times. When you fight them, they inevitably kill one character, but combat with them only lasts one round before they take off. After a few such combats (and associated resurrections), you finally defeat them. If you haven't defeated them by the time you reach the last square in the level, they remain there and block you until you do.

           

The Demon of Greed attacks me in a random encounter.

Finally defeating the Demon of Power.

          

The other obstacles are mostly doors that require a special key or codeword. Usually, the codewords refer to lore within the game or its framing story, but occasionally (as we saw with the Thorium riddle), you have to bring in outside knowledge of mythology or science. "Red, Green, and ______," one door on Level 2 demanded, testing your knowledge of additive color models. At another one, you have to know that Jedi use the FORCE (though not in this game).

Monsters encountered on the last levels included Dark Jedi, Shambleaus (which drain levels unless you have silver amulets in the party), Galactic Grues, Martian Erms, Trimantars, and Light Worms (which blind you). Combats got progressively more ridiculous. Basically, after the second Vras level, any combat is capable of wiping out the entire party if the enemies get the initiative. You don't get any chance to react or prevent it. "Greet" or "Retreat" are horrible options because when they don't work, the enemy gets a free round and kills everyone. Every battle becomes a quick-draw in which either the party acts first and is able to kill or incapacitate the enemies while taking no damage, or the enemy acts first and the party is destroyed and must reload. I must have reloaded 100 times on the final three levels alone. 

           

Fighting a Sith lord toddler.

           

The game also became fond of life-draining traps such as pits, walls of fire, and corridors that sap hit points for no reason. Fortunately, I had spells like "Heal All" when things got too low. I also found healing crystals and energy crystals that, when in your possession, greatly increase spell and hit point restoration rates.

           

I lost far more hit points to these than to enemies.

             

On Level 2 of the Citadel, I encountered the pirate Sarkov, who died quite fast and had on his body a sonic key, needed to progress to Level 3.

           

Poor little guy. He doesn't even have any minions.

          

Level 3 was mostly just a standard maze of rooms and corridors. The compass went haywire and stopped working. Some of the doors required a blue diamond to open, and I only ever found two of them. I kept getting stuck and having to reload earlier saves to explore new rooms.

       

My map of the final level.

         

Ultimately, after about 25 resurrections, I defeated the Demon of Power. I made it to a final loop of corridors in which a pit, wall of fire, or hit point-draining square dogged me just about every step. A final door asked me what I sought, and I had to re-consult the documentation to recall that I wanted TRUTH. That brought me to the single endgame screen at the top of this entry. After that, I was returned to the Nigris spaceport. The party could re-enter the maps, level up, and keep playing if I wanted.

         

The final puzzle.

          

An interesting but mostly flawed effort. On a GIMLET, it gets:

          

• 2 points for the game world. The framing story is highly derivative of popular science fiction, as are the themes found during gameplay, which freely mixes lightsabers, sonic screwdrivers, and Vulcans. There's no consistency to the theme and few in-game references to the plot.

• 4 points for character creation and development. You get 5 slots for 6 classes. Creation is otherwise pretty RPG standard. Leveling up during the game feels rewarding because of the extra hit points, spell points, and attacks.

          

My final stats for my Lamian Elfin character.

           

• 0 points for no NPC interaction.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. Enemies are mostly goofy, but some have special attacks and defenses. Scripted encounters are sometimes interesting, at least graphically. The puzzles weren't challenging enough to be truly satisfying, but they punctuate otherwise-monotonous levels.

        

Special encounters like this didn't offer any options, but at least they broke up the game.

      

• 2 points for magic and combat. A boring Bard's Tale derivative in which tactics don't matter and (random) initiative is everything. The game entirely wastes its system of mental abilities, since most direct-damage abilities under-perform physical attacks. You basically need healing, resurrection, a couple of incapacitation spells, and a couple of navigation spells.

               

I only ever used a few of these powers.

          

• 3 points for equipment. You get one weapon, one piece of armor, and a variety of utility items. Weapon class and armor class statistics help determine effectiveness. Weapons have interesting names--towards the end of the game, I was wielding death rays and wearing shimmer fields--but are otherwise distinguished only by damage.

• 1 point for the economy. You need credits mostly for leveling up, and I always had plenty.

• 2 points for a main quest with no choices.

• 4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. All were adequate.

• 2 points for gameplay, mostly for its moderate length. It was otherwise very linear, not replayable, and not very challenging. Despite what I said about the insane difficulty of combat in the final levels, you can also save every step and reload when things go astray.

          

That gives us a final score of 24, which is admittedly the highest score out of Australia so far. The other two were The Stone of Telnyr (1990) and Dungeon of Nadroj (1991). I'm compelled to note that two out of three Australian games so far have featured the developer's name reversed in the title.
     

We only see a dozen more Australian RPGs through 2009 (and I'm not convinced that some of them, like 2008's Neopets Puzzle Adventure, are true RPGs), so I'm glad I had a chance to fully document a somewhat rare origin. I hope that the country eventually has a chance to develop its own traditions within the RPG titles instead of copying American RPG mechanics and popular culture.

            

The author offers whatever the opposite of "fan service" is.

          

As commenter 6530 helpfully pointed out, the game was reviewed in the January 1990 Australian Commodore and Amiga Review. It had been sent to Megadisc with a note that said, "Put it in your public domain collection or throw it away." Megadisc decided to publish it. The reviewer, Paul Campbell, uses the term "no frills" at least six times in his discussion of Vras, but he seemed to like it overall, failing to note any of the issues that I've discussed.

What's more interesting is that the article names the author as "Gyan Sarvagata," whereas the documentation that came with my download uses the name "Sarva Engelhardt," sometimes abbreviated "Sarv." The latter name is also given as the author of 1995's Sword of the Elder Isles, a strategy game that seems to have been inspired by Warlords. Deepening the mystery even further, an e-mail address in the "Read Me" file for Sword suggests that the author's name is in fact Lutz Engelhardt. It's possible that "Sarva Engelhardt" was a pseudonym for two people working together, but on the other hand, someone named "Sarv Engelhardt" wrote a letter to the same magazine in April 1991 looking for help finding the ninth tear in Drakkhen (I had the same problem!). Googling "Gyan Sarvagata" and "Sarva Engelhardt" produce no substantial results not related to this game, but there's a Lutz Engelhard living in Western Australia in the 1990s who would have been 47 when Vras came out. Meanwhile, "Gyan Sarvagata" seems to be a Hindu term meaning "knowledge pervading all things" rather than an actual name. My best theory is that Lutz Engelhardt used both of the other names as pen names and just switched in the middle of all this. Barring a visit from the man himself, I guess we'll never know.

Let's head back to our headliner now while I simultaneously try to figure out Die Dunkle Dimension.

UnReal World [v. 1.00b]: Won? (with Summary and Rating)

My "winning" character.

          

UnReal World [v. 1.00b]

Finland

Three Relaxed Byte-Biters (developer)

Released in 1992 for DOS as shareware

Date Started: 27 May 2018

Date Ended: 6 June 2018

Total Hours: 15
Difficulty: Moderate (3/5). Would be easy (2/5) except for permadath.

Final Rating: 38

Ranking at time of posting: 232/294 (79%)

UnReal World continued to offer enjoyable mechanics for the rest of its short length and moderate difficulty. I say "moderate difficulty," but of course any game with permadeath has unique difficulty considerations even if normal gameplay is quite easy. As it turns out, UnReal World is quite serious about its permadeath. After my priest died, I started taking copies of the save game every few levels. When my third character got killed--like the first, by a minotaur--I restored the backup and fired up the game again. This is what I got:

             

This game is hardcore.

         

Wow. The game doesn't just delete your character when you die; it actually stores the fact of his death in one of its files, so you can't just restore and reload. I couldn't figure out how it was doing it. I tried deleting the character from the "high score" file, but that didn't do it. I looked at all the files that had been modified at the same time the character died, but I couldn't find anything explicit in any of them. Re-naming the save game file did no good. I opened the save game file in a hex editor and re-named the character, but the game still saw right through that. The developers did not want people to cheat.

I'm sure I could have figured it out eventually, but I decided to move forward honestly. The game isn't so hard that you can't win without cheating, even with permadeath. As we'll see, there are few NetHack-like threats to your well-being. There are no spellcasting enemies, no dragons, nothing capable of stoning or paralyzing you. I think it even prevents you from dying from poison by setting a minimum hit point threshold, after which the poison wears off naturally.

I won with my fifth character, a dwarf hunter. Hunters have a reasonably easy time because as long as they can find a single tree, they can search repeatedly for food and healing herbs.

            

That one tree is going to cure my hunger and wounds.

           

I used the hunter's ability to self-heal to game the virtue system. When you level-up, you get bonuses for each virtue that you've raised over a certain threshold. You can slowly build these virtues by the way you act in the game (though I never did figure out how to build honesty), but the easiest way is by praying at an altar and sacrificing hit points. All I had to do was find an altar near a tree, and I could sacrifice my hit points, run to the tree to heal, and run back to the altar. Soon, I was getting the bonuses on every level increase.

           

Not "cheating" so much as "exploiting."

         

The dungeon consists of 18 levels, and they're not quite as random as the typical NetHack dungeon. In NetHack, you can theoretically find special encounters like shops, altars, and treasure zoos, but there's no guarantee that you will. Some games never generate a shop. In UnReal World, on the other hand, it seems that the same encounters and special areas will be found in every randomly-generated dungeon, just in different places. Some of the things I always found on the way down were:

• Copious altars and confessionals.

• A potion store-room guarded by a zombie alchemist

• An ancient library full of magic scrolls, guarded by several zombie librarians

• One level with a single tree and one level with a small copse of trees

• Beds for getting a better night's rest

• A room where all the doors close when you walk into it, but there's a pick-axe somewhere in the room and you can use it to get out

• A priest looking for a holy item; he gives you a salt jar if you find it for him

• An alchemist who will sell and identify potions

             

He's apparently from New Jersey.

            

• A mage who will identify wands and staves

• A warrior priest proselytizing about a god named Thunder 

               

Levels 6, 12, and 18 are special levels in which all the squares are open. Each has one of the three keys that you need to enter the Doom-Tower. Level 6 is a giant swamp full of "bloodsuckers" and sinkholes. Level 12 is a "Dryad Forest" full of wood nymphs. When they're near they can cause trees to smack you with their branches and weeds to trip you. It's a pretty easy level for a hunter, though, because he can just stop and heal whenever he wants.

          

Getting through the slightly-annoying Dryad Forest.

         

The monsters get really tough after Level 12, and I decided to avoid them as much as possible. Minotaurs, Olog-Hais, cave bears, and pythons are capable of pounding away more than half your hit points in a single blow. Two unlucky rounds are enough to kill you. I used the resources I had--Wands of Confuse Monster, Scrolls of Teleport, and so forth--to get around them as much as I could.  

             

One of the more amusing combat messages, as I battle a minotaur.

          

Level 18 is a weird level called "Emptiness," which is literally just a huge square of empty tiles except the one that has the third key. There are no monsters, traps, or anything.

Once I had all three keys, I returned to the surface and entered the Doom-Tower in the northern part of the outdoor map. The single tower level had about 8 doors that I had to unlock with the keys. There was another altar and confessional, and a bedroom with two beds.

          

The interior of the tower.

        

The center part of the tower had a winding corridor that ended in a single square. When I stepped in it, I got the message below.

            

A crummy commercial?

          

Huh? I have no idea what this message is referring to. There is no inn anywhere in the outdoor map. "NIGHT CAP" seems to be some kind of password, but I can't find anyone to give it to, and you can't just feed keywords to most NPCs anyway. Is it setting up a part of the adventure that was never built? Is it a tragic joke about how just because there's a big formidable tower in the center of town, there isn't always something valuable inside? I've no idea. I wrote to Mr. Maaranen, but no response as yet.

Lacking anything else to do, I guess I'm going to consider that a win. Obviously, the end--if that's what I experienced--is a bit of a let-down, but I'm not letting it detract from the things I liked about the game. A few things I discovered since last time:

            

• The game rewards you with experience for much more than just killing enemies. You get it for finding gold, successfully using (and identifying) magic items for the first time, finding traps, using your class's special skills, transitioning levels, and probably some other things I didn't notice.

• If you have a lockpick, you can use it to lock doors behind you and prevent enemy pursuit.

• You can find horses in the dungeon and ride them, allowing you to easily outrun enemies. You can't fight with melee weapons from horseback, but you can shoot missile weapons.

            

Mounting a horse.

        

• Like NetHack, you find fortune cookies that give you hints.

             

I think this is referring to an encounter where you open a barrel and there's a zombie inside.

           

• There's a potion that allows you to eat any item as if it was food. Late in the game when I was out of food and didn't have a tree nearby, I used the potion and ate an extra staff.

• If you find a flute, you can use it to charm snakes.

• You can climb up on furniture and jump on enemies like you're in WrestleMania or something.

               

Uruk-Hai would be a good name for a wrestler.

           

• Much like Ultima V, you can move items of furniture--beds, chairs, cabinets, and so forth--to block certain passages.

• The engine supports keyword-based dialogues with some NPCs but doesn't really employ it very well.

          

Following his prompting, I said "death to orcs," and he gave me a lamp.

          

There were a few things I disliked, principally the fact that when you get tired, you have to acknowledge the message every single move until you sleep. Also, you have to sleep multiple times successfully to stop being tired, and every one causes you to wake up hungry.

There were some game elements that I never understood. Here are a few:

               

• For a while, the game seems to be interested in assigning titles to the various character levels. You start as "Stranger in a Strangeland" at Level 1, then move up to "Coward," "Believer," and finally "Clergyman." It stops there no matter how many levels you attain. All classes get these same titles, which are obviously a bit weird.

• Every time you kill a zombie, you get this message: "You hear frightening, gruesome laughing echoing in the room! Human zombie screams as maniac. Some winged and horned creatures appear and catch the soul coming from human zombie's body . . . and everything is silent again." No other creature has a death message like this.

• You can get friendly monsters to follow you by speaking to them and using the "leadership" option. Once they start following you, they disappear, and the only way you know they're with you is that every time you invoke the "chat" command, the game asks whether you want to chat with your follower. I have no idea what they do for you. They don't seem to increase any statistics or act in combat. I carried an orc with me the entire game before letting him go in the tower. As he left, he complained that he didn't know why I'd dragged him all the way there.

            

Getting an orc follower. For some reason.

         

• No enemy in the game is capable of causing fire damage, and yet there are potions and wands of Resist Fire.

• One of the items you can find is a makeup kit, which does nothing for you but can theoretically increase the charisma of NPCs. Why?

• There's a "pull lever" command that's never employed.

• A "drink" command allows you to slurp from bodies of water, but there's no "thirst" statistic so no real reason to do so.

• Even though the random generation process can create disconnected areas in the dungeons, I never found a single secret door. I only got into the hidden areas by bashing through with my pick-axe.

              

Most of these points are probably answered by the fact that the engine was intended to support multiple campaigns, including some of greater complexity.

In a GIMLET, the combination of the engine and this campaign earns:

               

• 1 point for the game world. The backstory about the creation of the universe really has no relevance in the game itself, and the game itself tells no story.

• 5 points for character creation and development. The selection of 6 races and 6 classes offer a variety of approaches to gameplay, with each class (in particular) facing a different experience. Leveling up occurs frequently and offers relatively tangible rewards. The virtue system is under-developed but still an interesting addition.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. There are wandering NPCs who offer services, conversation, and the occasional side quest. I'm not sure I understood what all of them were about. Some will even join you but, as above, I don't know to what end.

            

An elf taunts me for no reason.

          

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are mostly D&D-derived standards, with few special attacks. I did like the way that some of them responded to specific objects: salt kills zombies, holy items turn skeletons, flutes charm snakes, and so forth. I also loved how you could look at them and get a sense of their condition and equipment.

• 5 points for magic and combat. The game has a typical roguelike's sense of tactics, with the addition of allowing multiple attack types (including shield bashing, which I didn't cover) depending on the weapon and each character's set of special abilities. Clerics, mages, and priests also have a small selection of spells.

            

Fighting with a two-handed sword.

          

• 5 points for equipment. In variety, it's not quite as good as NetHack or even Rogue. I think the engine supports magic weapons and armor with various pluses, but I never found any in this campaign. There are otherwise fewer types of wands, scrolls, and potions with fewer effects. On the other hand, any game that gives you a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, missile weapons, and separate armor slots for head, arms, hands, torso, waist, legs, feet, and back can't be all bad.

• 4 points for economy. It holds up pretty well, with the ability to buy items in shops, identify items with wandering NPCs, get specialized weapon training (I didn't really explore this), and sacrifice gold at altars for virtue boosts. There's even a casino, though I didn't spend much time there. On the other hand, you can get through most of this campaign without doing any of those things.

            

A wandering merchant saves me from starving.

           

• 2 points for quests. I was so disappointed with the end that I only give it one point there, but there are also a couple of NPC-based side quests.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface, mostly going to the interface, which like most roguelikes is easy to master. I thought the graphics worked reasonably well, but the sound was just bloops with the occasional unwelcome passage of music.

• 6 points for gameplay. A bit linear, but with an excellent sense of pacing and a lot of replayability given the randomization and different classes. More important, I like the difficulty level here. It has NetHack's permadeath, but much milder gameplay and a smaller dungeon make it far less punishing than the typical roguelike.

                    

That gives us a final score of 38, which doesn't sound very high but puts the game solidly in my "recommended" zone, and it beats every roguelike I've played so far except NetHack v. 3 (44), which had better character development, combat tactics, and the best approach to RPG equipment that we've seen so far in the chronology.

           

Kicking this door open conferred something of a bonus.

            

As we discussed last time, this is only the beginning of the UnReal World saga. Principal developers Sami Maaranen and Erkka Lehmus (with Jussi Kantola, they make up the original "Three Relaxed Byte-Biters") would continue to issue near-yearly releases all the way to the present day. (Incidentally, Maaranen was only 15 when the first version came out in 1992. This may be the first game I've played whose developer was born after me.) The official development history shows that the next major releases, in 1994, greatly expanded the wilderness and introduced a lot more survival elements, with skills such as fishing, foraging, swimming, and tracking. Instead of classic D&D-derived character classes, you play as a fisherman, hunter, legionnaire, or locksmith--although fantasy races (elf, dwarf, orc, etc.) are still present.

I'm not sure that the 1994 editions (v. 2.00b-2.03) still exist anywhere. The earliest I've been able to find after v. 1.00b is v. 2.09 from 1996. By then, the game had been fully stripped of its high fantasy themes, all characters are human (from different tribes), and surviving in a harsh world became the primary quest.

When I reach 1994, I'll take another scan and see if those versions have turned up; otherwise, we'll have to wait until 1996. Either way, I look forward to seeing how this unique and clever series develops.

Legend: Summary and Rating

           

Legend

United Kingdom

Mindscape (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS

Published in the United States as The Four Crystals of Trazere

Date Started: 7 April 2018

Date Ended: 21 May 2018 

Total Hours: 33

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 37

Ranking at time of posting: 221/290 (76%)

I really struggled over whether to quit this one. On the one hand, it was getting a little better. On the other, it was simply exhausting. Combats in Kilijan's Dark Tower became difficult enough that each one was a nail-biting fight to the death, requiring all my best tactics and spells, and even then I had to reload half of them. Most RPGs give you maybe 10 throw-away battles punctuated by the occasional significant battle. In Legend, none of the battles are throw-aways. A random encounter in a corridor you just cleared can absolutely destroy you, with enemies pouring in from all sides, a new one arriving to replace every one you've slain. I swear, some battles go on long enough that the game decides to generate a new random battle while you're still fighting the old one.

My inventory got so overloaded during the third level of the Dark Tower that I decided to make the journey back to the main map, with all of the random combats in between, to sell the excess goods, donate money at temples to restore luck, and level up. I did all of these things, then couldn't force myself to re-enter the tower and wind all the way back up. I sat on it for a couple of days. Finally, I decided I'd quit if someone else online had documented the endgame.

               

As far as I made it: the stairs going up to Level 4 of the Dark Tower.

            

My, has someone. Starting in November 2011, a YouTube member named Dzyu played the game over 102 videos, ending in May 2013. His videos were invaluable in documenting the endgame. (Another worthy LP series was started in June 2015 by FSSZilla, but as of her 83rd video in November 2017, she hadn't won.)

The Dark Tower turns out to be five levels. At the top, the player defeats Kilijan (who is immune to "Disrupt" and "Paralyze") and gets his magic staff, either keeping it or turning it in to the Ancient for a reward. Somewhere in the Dark Tower, the player finds a skull key that opens up Levels 3 and 4 of Fagranc. Once you clear those, you have to visit taverns to hear of the discovery of a "power gem" in the sewers of Balenhalm by some "ratmen." Balenhalm is a single large level.

Next up are two levels of Moonhenge in the northeast corner of the map. It provides the keys necessary to explore Levels 5 and 6 of Fagranc, which in turn provides the items necessary for the two levels of the Unshrine (which jumps around the map), where the party contends with Tetrahagael, the Chaos Lord. This is apparently an exceedingly difficult battle, as the Chaos Lord has magical protections (which you have to dispel), immunities, and very high hit point total. The Chaos Lord has the key necessary for the eighth and final level of Fagranc.

While exploring the dungeons, the party members also find the titular four crystals of Trazere, each of which boosts the defenses of one of the towers on the overland map. Between dungeons, the party has to reconquer cities seized by the enemy and provide gold to boost staffing at the towers.

      

This is the kind of statement that would make a robot's brain explode on the original Star Trek.

       

After delivering the fourth crystal, the party discovers that King Necrix himself is responsible for the evil taking hold in the land. ("Necrix" always sounded like a suspicious name.) The party must assault the king's fortress, fight up three levels, and slay him at the top. It took Dzyu over half a dozen attempts. Watching this part of the video gives you a sense of the complete chaos that is combat in this game. Even watching instead of playing, I can't tell what's happening most of the time. Spells are exploding all over the place, characters die in seconds. It's so crazy that in the fight where he finally kills the king, he doesn't even realize it for a few seconds.

          

A typical shot from the final battle.

            

Even after killing the king, Dzyu has enough trouble with the chaos beasts that he runs into an adjacent room hoping for better terrain, and in the midst of combat accidentally reads a sign--and unwittingly concludes the game. (To his credit, he recorded a final video in which he completed the combat before reading the sign.) He's clearly let down by the lack of denouement after so many hours ("I think I would have preferred at least some artwork"), but he remarks that he should have expected it given the sparsity of story throughout the game.

             

The winning screen.

        

The sign, of course, confirms Legend as a prequel to Bloodwych, the idea being that the Bloodwych now take over in the place of Necrix, reign peacefully for a while, and are then usurped by Zendick in the first game.

           

Dzyu's late-game spellbook.

       

Throughout the videos, Dzyu clearly enjoys the game for its spells. A late game screenshot shows his current recipe list, which I make out as:

1. "Missile-Disrupt-Disrupt-Disrupt-Damage-Damage-Damage." An all-purpose "blast the hell out of a targeted enemy" spell. "Disrupt" is more powerful than "Damage" but some enemies are immune to it, so I'm sure the goal here was to have a spell that would devastate anyone.

2. "Surround-Damage-Damage-Damage-Missile-Damage-Damage-Damage-Surround-Damage-Damage-Damage-Missile-Damage-Damage-Damage." This one is similar to my "fill the room with fire" spell, but jacked up to the maximum possibility.

3. "Heal-Heal-Heal-Continuous-Heal-Heal-Heal." The best I can figure, this immediately triple-heals the caster, then creates a square of healing magic in the room that other characters can walk or teleport into.

4. "Missile-Surround-Vivify-Heal-Heal." This allows the caster to resurrect any dead characters in a 9-square radius and then immediately heal them a bit.

5. "Regenerate." His only single-rune spell lets the caster regenerate quickly.

6. "Missile-Teleport-Speed." Allows the caster to send one of his colleagues to another place in the room and simultaneously give him extra attacks.

7. "Teleport-Regenerate-Speed-Antimagic-Surround-Teleport-Regenerate-Speed-Mystic Weapon-Antimagic." A kind of holistic pre-combat spell that gives each character the most important buffs and allows him to place himself anywhere in the room at the beginning of combat.

8. "Missile-Forward-Missile-Teleport." No idea. I'm guessing this was a solution to his last puzzle somehow. He doesn't have any of these mixed, which bolsters my hypothesis.

9 & 10. "Missile-Paralyze" and "Missile-Dispel." Both quick spells to affect a single target.

Analyzing some of the videos, "Teleport" is the real workhorse, and it makes sense that "Cloud" objects (rings, potions, wands, helms), which cast the spell, are vital to the party's success. They're the key to placing characters in strategic positions at the outset of combat, and to ensuring that the assassin is well-placed to use his backstabbing abilities. The spell also gets wounded characters out of combat and to healing squares.

My GIMLET combines both my experiences and what I observed in Dzyu's videos.

1. Game World. Neither the game world nor the story is well fleshed out, consisting primarily of allusions rather than real descriptions and sensible bits of lore. The game's "twist"--Necrix being the evil lord behind the invasion--doesn't really make any sense. Why didn't he undermine the "good" armies? Why did he send the party to Fagranc? It's too bad, because the connections to Bloodwych would be more meaningful if the story in either game made more sense. Score: 3.

2. Character Creation and Development. There are limited options during creation, and I feel that the number of levels achievable during the game (about 12) is a little low given the difficulty of combats. You have no choices while leveling up--you just get a random selection of stat upgrades. On the plus side, each of the four characters plays a pretty stark role. You can't just treat them all like fighters. You have to carefully equip and position them in ways that call on the strengths of their classes. I also like that the four classes--berserker, troubadour, assassin, and runemaster--are just a bit different than the standard fantasy RPG roster. Score: 4.

             

A late-game troubadour, from Dzyu's LP.

         

3. NPC Interaction. I'll give a point for a few people in the various towns, but really those are more part of the "encounters" or "economy" than true NPCs. Score: 1.

4. Encounters and Foes. As a somewhat non-visual person, it particularly annoys me when games don't name their monsters or use color to distinguish types or difficulty, and this game does both. The monsters in the game are a varied selection of humanoids and beasts, some of which do physical damage only, some of which are capable of magic, some of which have magical immunities and protections. I suspect it becomes important to note which is which, and I don't like having to fill notebooks with things like "bluish guy that looks like a minotaur--can self-teleport." 

The other aspect to "encounters" is the puzzles. I ran hot and cold, as I do with almost any game that features these sorts of mechanical puzzles (cf. DarkSpyre, Chaos Strikes Back). I thought some were too difficult and others offered the right level of challenge. They seem to get pretty crazy towards the endgame. Score: 4, but those who like puzzle-oriented games might boost this to a 6 or 7.

5. Magic and Combat. The magic system is obviously the highlight of the game, offering potentially thousands of creative combinations. I would love to have this type of spell system, maybe with a few more effects, coupled with a proper tactical combat system--either turn-based like the Gold Box games, or real-time-with-pause, like the Infinity Engine games.

The combat system actually offered in Legend has too few tactical options for non-spellcasters, is too chaotic and confusing, in too tightly-confined territories, with poor pathfinding and AI. It undermines most of the positives of the magic system. Score: 5.

6. Equipment. A positive that I probably didn't focus enough time on. Each character gets a variety of weapons, shields, armor, helms, gloves, boots, amulets, rings, wands, potions, and special items like the troubadour's various instruments. Upgrades are fairly regular. For regular weapons and armor, you can easily see their effects on your various statistics. For magic items, you have to experiment and study the effects (or take them to the Ancient for identification), but the totality of the items allows all characters to wield some magic and thus increases combat tactics. I also like that the available items in shops changed throughout the game, and that the treasures were randomized rather than fixed. Score: 6.

7. Economy. Another strong point. Between equipment, leveling, runes, reagents, donating at temples for "luck," and fortifying towers, money remains relevant until the end of the game. Score: 6.

8. Quests. There's a main quest with multiple stages, but I don't think there are "side quests." One of the stages, at least, gives you a single choice, but in general you're on a linear rail throughout the game. Score: 3.

           

You have to love "I shall kill you all myself . . . Guards!"

          

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. I rather like the oblique-angle graphics and the various dungeon scenes they create, and I didn't have any problems with the interface, which offers redundant mouse and keyboard options--with the exception of targeting (sometimes). Sound, on the other hand, is only serviceable, consisting of the "ding-ding-ding" of weapons while the same troubadour tune drones endlessly in the background. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. Here's where it all falls apart by hitting every element of the Unholy Quartet: too linear, too hard, not replayable, and above all, too long. I'll give a point in this category in recognition of the outdoor map, which allows relatively free exploration between the dungeons. Score: 1.

That gives us a final score of 37, just above my "recommend to check out" threshold, but not quite all the way to "good."

Anthony Taglione, responsible for both this and Bloodwych, is clearly a talented programmer with some good ideas. Both games started with a popular base (Dungeon Master in the case of Bloodwych) but brought their own innovations. Neither Bloodwych's cooperative multiplayer nor Legend's magic system have anything quite like it among their predecessors. But both games commit the fatal sin of not knowing when to quit. Neither 1989 nor 1992 was ready for 100-hour games; the hardware and software of the time simply didn't support enough content. Even today, I regard a game that requires 100 hours with a jaundiced eye, although I have no trouble with games that allow for that length. I trust you can see the difference.

Of course, even given any memory- and space-based limitations, this small series is still pretty paltry when it comes to actual story. And both games reward dozens of hours of gameplay with a single screen of text at the endgame. I would have shared Mr. Dzyu's expectation for at least some artwork, particularly since Legend featured an animated introduction.

Computer Gaming World overlooked this one, but Dragon got to it and gave them an uncharacteristically-low 3/5 stars, calling it a "decent effort" with an original magic system but "limited character creation," confusing combat, and an unintuitive interface. European reviews mostly ran in the 80s and 90s (though the German Play Time gave it a 56). Unfortunately, I can't quote any of them because the site I use to find full-text magazines from the period is down. Given the light standards of journalistic integrity that we've seen in most European Amiga magazines, it's hard to imagine that many (if any) of them made it to the end before reviewing the game, and I feel that the interminable length and abrupt conclusion are key parts of the game.

We aren't done with the world of Trazere. 1993 will bring Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire. Judging by the screenshots and game description, it is simply Legend with different maps, featuring a quasi-East Asian theme. In 1994, we'll face Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard, which appears to be an updated variant of Bloodwych. Those will be our last experiences with Mr. Taglione, as the other offerings from both him and co-designer Peter Owen-James are action and adventure titles (1993's Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1997's Alpha Storm).

We'll clean up a couple of 1988 offerings before getting to the next 1992 game, starting (maybe) with Seven Little Horrors, a bizarre German game from Motelsoft. I'm having trouble with the interface and have written to the publisher for help. If I can't figure it out in time for an entry, we'll move on to the easy-but-bland Talisman, a roguelike for the Atari 800.

*****

I was really looking forward to trying the first version of the long-running UnReal World. Released in 1992, version 1.00b is completely unrecognizable to a player of later versions, with a vastly different interface, different rules, and a high-fantasy setting (rather than real-world Finland). But I can't get it to run. I can run the character creation program and the world setup program, but the main program offers four options, each tied to a function key, and none of them activate. I've verified that the function keys work in DOSBox with other programs. If I can't get 1.00b to run, I have to wait until 1994 for the next major release.

Quest for Glory III: Summary and Rating

Note that the box character is explicitly the paladin.

          

Quest for Glory III: Wages of War

United States

Sierra On-Line (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 1 April 2018

Date Ended: 18 May 2018 

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty: Easy (2/5)

Final Rating: 46

Ranking at time of posting: 256/290 (88%)

Even if originally unplanned and somewhat interpolated between Trial by Fire and Shadows of Darkness, Wages of War is a worthy game that continues the series' admirable efforts to walk the line between heroic epic and whimsical fantasy. As I did with the previous games, I had a lot of fun playing it, as evidenced by my insistence on going through it 5 times.

However, I must conclude that while (to my limited perspective) it performs just as well as its predecessors as an adventure game, it does slightly less well as an RPG. I think this is less because of the game's approach and more because of the issue that a lot of games experience in which character development is less palpable the further the character gets from his starting skills. Here, any character who built his attributes and skills to near-200 in Trial by Fire can coast through the game, winning every combat and passing nearly every skill check without having to put in any effort. The only exceptions I can think of are "Throwing" and the "Agility" attribute, both of which must be developed to the mid-200s to win the warrior initiation rituals.

As for spells, the game seems to have completely forgotten the skill level attached to them. I guess "Flame Dart" and "Force Bolt" did more damage as my skill went up, but there was no threshold attached to successful uses of "Juggling Lights," "Fetch," "Reversal," "Open," "Trigger," or any of the puzzle-based spells. This was also true of a few non-spell skills like "Climbing" and "Pick Locks." It's important that the series not abandon skill checks because what makes the games such good hybrids is that knowing the solution to the puzzle isn't enough: you also have to have developed the skill to a high enough level to use it successfully.

My fighter was the only character to face a true challenge, starting with statistics lower than a veteran character coming from Trial by Fire. This allowed me to experience the changes in the combat system in a way that I couldn't with the previous characters. I think Wages of War's combat mechanics are the best of the series so far: It's clearer when you need to dodge or parry, and you can't just spam attacks. Moreover, the wizard is effective enough (and has enough mana points) that he can survive in combat entirely as a spellcaster.
            

Enemy movements help determine the best times to slash or thrust.

           

The poor thief limps into Shadows of Darkness having enjoyed no place to practice his skills. There are only two locks to pick (and the nose trick no longer works). There are a couple of places to climb, and one (the Anubis statue at the end) that you can climb repeatedly, but none of them seemed to increase the skill.

Finally, I'll note that achieving a perfect score is much more of an achievement here than in previous games. A lot depends on luck, and it's easy not to realize that you've missed a potential encounter. For instance, if you encounter Harami in the bazaar during the day and agree to meet him at night, you get 4 points. But if you encounter him first at night, you can progress with his side-quest, and yet you miss the 4 points.

Several points are dependent upon temporary dialogue options. For instance, you get 2 points for telling Kreesha about the leopard woman after you dispel her but before you marry her. So if you don't trek back to Tarna between dispelling Johari and marrying Johari, you can't get those 2 points. Similarly, you get 2 points by talking to Uhura about marriage after marrying Johari but before giving her any gifts. Other points depend on selecting the "correct" dialogue option while meeting with Rajah or the Laibon. If you try to cover everything, you may miss out on the point-giving option when he gets tired and kicks you out.

Finally, I think some of the points are just bugged. The walkthroughs I consulted say you get 3 for reading the bulletin board in the tavern, but I just tested it and got none. I also don't think my paladin got the points he was supposed to get for defeating the Demon Worm towards the end, nor defeating an ape man for the first time.

Since points don't affect the character's skill or power, it's easy to say that it's no big deal if you leave this game having missed 25 or 30 of them. On the other hand, points are important because they're the only way to tell that a player has experienced most of the game's content. As we saw with my "Bad Chester" experience, many of the actions and moments in Wages of War have no practical value in terms of the direction of the story. Giving gifts to Johari, helping Harami, participating in the Sekhmet ritual, playing the mini-games in the Simbani village, and most NPC encounters and dialogue options are reflected only in points. It's too bad they're not more practical. It would be cool if the number of points earned in each game was translated to a bonus pool of skill points that you could allocate at the beginning of the next game.

I expect Quest for Glory III to rate about even with II, which was a bit lower than the first one. I think the lesser RPG elements will be balanced by higher scores in game world and combat. Let's see.

1. Game World. For this, I can pretty much just quote Alex's final rating at The Adventure Gamer:
          

Tarna as a city and a land is an absolute joy to behold. Wages of War’s African-inspired setting was unique at the time, and remains so to this day. It’s an underused milieu, as evidenced by the popularity and aesthetic impact of Marvel’s recent smash Black Panther movie. Audiences, whether in movies or games, like to see things that they have not seen before, and Wages of War delivers.

          
But I also agree with Alex that the story is a bit weaker. Everyone is too-easily manipulated by the demons, whose overall plan really isn't that clever or original. Still, this doesn't detract too much. In general, Wages of War offers almost everything I'm looking for in this category. Score: 8.
           

I didn't talk about it much while playing, but the documentation perfectly complements the game setting. At the same time, so much exposition is delivered in-game that the documentation is almost optional.

         
2. Character Creation and Development. I continue to admire Quest for Glory's skill system, and the satisfying way that attributes and skills increase as you use them. Some of them are delightfully unintuitive, such as the way intelligence increases when you perfectly-time a dodge or parry. (I still have no idea what "Luck" does or how it goes up.) The increases are regular and rapid enough to be satisfying, but you still have to grind (which isn't necessary) if you want to reach the end with perfect scores.

Perhaps most important, the series is a rarity in offering tangibly different experiences for different classes, to the extent that I had to replay it several times to see all the content. The differences among classes seem to grow more stark with every new game in the series. In So You Want to Be a Hero, the differences amounted to a couple of side-puzzles (that anyone could engage in if they had the skills). In Trial by Fire, each class had a side quest but mostly followed the same path. In Wages of War, class choice makes fairly significant changes to the story.

My primary quibble in this category is what I discussed above: the lack of necessity of character development, particularly if you import a character from Trial by Fire. And in some ways, the series seems to be losing its grip on the importance of skill level to success. Score: 6.

3. NPC Interaction. As usual, we have a great cast of characters here with individual personalities and interesting back stories. More so than the previous games, each character has different dialogue "trees" for different points in the game, so it's very easy to reach the end without having spoken to everyone about everything. The need to click on yourself to explore various "Tell" options was disconcerting at first, but it ultimately added to role-playing, as did the time limits imposed by certain conversations. I have to tell you, though: I miss the need to take notes and type the dialogue options. All the clicking made it too easy to go too fast and overlook key bits of information. Score: 7.
           

Even this guy had a whole dialogue tree.

           
4. Encounters and Foes. I found the enemies less imaginative in this entry. Almost all of them could have come from Dungeons and Dragons but with different names. (In particular, why name a charging lizard-beast something as bland as "dinosaur"?) The puzzles were a bit too easy, as usual, and mostly involved having the right item rather than doing the right thing. However, there were occasional multi-stage puzzles that offered a satisfying challenge, including the thief missions, the wizards' duel, and the endgame sequence. Score: 5.

5. Magic and Combat. Slightly improved. The combat control panel is easy to master, whether you're just fighting or switching between physical attacks and spells. It's clearer when you should time dodging, parrying, and attacking, although the monsters aren't hard enough for it to really matter. The wizard can engage in combat solely as a wizard, and spells like "Calm" and "Dazzle" do what they're supposed to do pre-combat. I like that good throwers can take down enemies with daggers and stones. But the system remains mostly optional, with too little in the way of tactics, for a very high score. Score: 4.
              

6. Equipment. Pretty weak on the RPG side. The paladin gets a weapon upgrade, and the fighter can if he becomes a paladin. Other than that, weapons and armor remain what you started with. Almost everything else is a puzzle item except for the pills. Score: 2.

          

Does anyone know why my thief carried this thing around for the entire game?

        

7. Economy. Unfortunately, quite bad. Some easy improvements in this area would have affected the whole game. The problem is that you start with as much money as you need to get through the entire game. This leaves no incentive to fight for gold, for the thief to steal the chests in the two huts, or even to engage in the "bargaining" mechanic. It also encourages you to make a single trip through the bazaar and buy everything at once instead of prioritizing--and returning now and then to get new dialogue options with the NPCs. When the economy is too generous, there is basically no economy at all. Score: 1.

8. Quests. There's a solid main quest and several character-based side quests reflected in points rather than story outcomes. As I covered in my experience with "Bad Chester," I was disappointed that so few of the options really mattered in the endgame. I feel like a few tweaks could have made this better: if you didn't give the gifts to Johari, or help Harami, or free Manu from the cage, or even meet Yesufu, they simply don't show up. The player then has to overcome more enemies than if he had his full contingent of sidekicks, and may fail if he doesn't have enough pills. (This approach would have made the economy more relevant, too.) This also would have forced the player to pay more attention to Sekhmet's prophecy and fulfill its various clauses. Ah, well. Score: 4.

              

I don't think I previously offered this cool shot of all my companions fighting their doppelgangers.

          

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. The VGA graphics are really the best we can expect with the technology of the era. They look beautiful and evocative, and they make great use of the setting and theme. I particularly love the way the overland map is framed as if you're looking from high atop a southern mountain, with trees in your immediate periphery. 

            

I like this shot of the Lost City with my thief surrounded by corpses of ape men. He had to kill one every time he came down from the Anubis statue, and he was trying to build his "Climbing" skill.

           

Sound effects were fine. The disagreements that I have with most players about music are only going to get more hostile as the quality of music compositions increases over the years. As I've noted repeatedly, while I can appreciate the effort that went into the game's score, I still don't want to hear it all the time. This is true in other aspects of life, too. Take any of my favorite songs--Louis Armstrong's "Potato Head Blues," Louis Prima's "Just a Gigolo," Sarah Vaughn singing "For All We Know"--and put them on in the background while I'm trying to concentrate on something else, and I'll ask you to turn them off. To me, background music is like a background television show or a background movie: it distracts from, rather than adding to, the foreground. This is why my GIMLET doesn't include music in this category.

Taken by itself, the music here (credited to Rudy Helm) is superbly composed. It's approached as a true score rather than just a bunch of individual melodies, which means the same motifs are used across multiple songs, but with different tempos, harmonies, and keys to represent different settings. Alex linked to a YouTube video containing the full-length versions of all of the game's songs, and the entire "album" clocks in at 90 minutes. Several compositions follow classic sonata-allegro form and others seem inspired by Debussy's orchestral impressionism.

I turned it all off while I was playing. You know what I preferred to continual background music? When I walked up to Baba Yaga's hut in Hero's Quest and there was like a six-second leitmotif and then it stopped. So I apologize to composers and video game music lovers everywhere, but this is going to be a constant issue and there's no point getting on my case about it with every game.
          

I preferred the text parser to the point-and-click interface, although I admit that the latter has uses for targeting. I remain impressed with how many individual screen objects had a "look" description attached to them; I couldn't have clicked on more than 25%. But I had all kinds of other problems with the interface, including an "Action/Special Items" menu that refused to stay active, an inability to coax my character off the edge of the screen, and crashes to the desktop every half hour or so. I realize that some of these are likely to be emulator issues, but I have to rate what I experienced. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. I'm sure I said the same things about the previous two games: a little too linear, a little too easy, and a little too short--but only a little. The series continues to get major points for "replayability." Score: 5.

That gives us a final score of 46. Hmm. That's actually 4 points lower than Trial by Fire, which I didn't expect. It appears that a couple of slight gains (game world, combat) were overrun by several losses (economy, quests, interface, gameplay). As always, I trust my current opinion more than 4-year-old memories, so we'll leave it at that. The difference is a small one. (For readers unfamiliar with my scale, I should point out that a score of 46 puts it in the top 15% of games I've played on this blog.)

            

The ad emphasizes the right sentiment, but boy does it use the wrong screen shots.

        

The Adventure Gamer's score came in the other day at 68, which was two points higher than Trial by Fire and the same as the original Hero's Quest. (And keep in mind that they're more generous overall.) This bolsters my opinion that it's equal to its predecessors as an adventure game.

I guess my own GIMLET contributes to the idea that Wages of War is the least of the series (assuming that I rate the next two games higher), but I still think Matt Barton goes too far in Dungeons and Desktops when he says that "most fans of the series regard it as pedestrian at best." I would think that most fans, like me, would regard even the least Quest for Glory better than the average game of the time. Contemporary reviews don't offer any suggestion that the series has dipped. Jeff James's review in the January 1993 Computer Gaming World is unabashedly positive, lauding the "exotic new landscape" of Fricana, the "sumptuous hand-painted graphics," and the soundtrack. The only "blemishes" he found were a few bugs and the frequency of enemy encounters. (Alex mentions the latter, too. I didn't find the frequency to be so much overly-frequently as bafflingly variable. Sometimes I'd cross an entire screen of savanna with no encounters, and other times I couldn't walk more than an inch between them.) In his conclusion, James explicitly calls Wages of War the best in the series so far. This is echoed in the April 1993 Dragon, which starts out by saying, "This is by far the finest of the Quest for Glory adventures."

(I've long passed the point of finding new ways to make fun of Dragon for giving nearly everything 5/5 stars, but for the first time, I've forced myself to read several full issues, and I think I realize the reason: they rated everything. They didn't limit their "Role of Computers" column to RPGs. The same issue that has the 5-star Quest for Glory III rating also rates several adventure games [King's Quest VI also gets 5 stars], Battle Chess [5 stars], and @#$%ing Miner 2049er! No wonder actual RPGs always seem to jump out as cream-of-the-crop.)

In a time too far ahead to try to estimate, I'll determine if I agree or disagree with the other common assertion that fans find Shadows of Darkness (1993) the best in the series. I don't know how much longer I'll be doing this, but I can guarantee I won't stop before then.