Phantasie II: Summary and Rating

    

Phantasie II

United States

Winston Douglas Wood (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)

Released in 1986 for Commodore 64, Apple II, and Atari ST; 1987 for Atari 8-bit, FM-7, PC-88, PC-98, and MSX

Date Started: 21 January 2017
Date Ended: 11 February 2017

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)

Final Rating: 39

Ranking at Time of Posting: 193/238 (81%)

Ranking at Game #455: 377/455 (83%)

[Ed: When I originally wrote this posting, I thought I couldn't win because I couldn't find the final monster. Later, I did. An addendum at the end of the posting has the winning information.]
     

Well, I can't win Phantasie II. Something is askew with my game and I can't figure it out. (My best guess is that I started playing an existing game by accident instead of re-initializing the first disk.) As much as I like the game, I've decided it's not worth fretting about. I got most of the way to the end and enjoyed myself along the way. These last few days have delivered an object lesson about obsessively playing every CRPG to its conclusion, and it wouldn't be worth the time to re-scout every inch of the game for what I missed, or to start over with new characters.

The problem is the missing Beast #1, the "giant constrictor," theoretically the easiest of Pluto's eight minions. He's supposed to be wandering the overworld somewhere, but I've gone over every square in the overworld, the underworld, and the dungeons, and he's just nowhere to be found. I've otherwise cleaned out every dungeon, slain every other beast, collected every other amulet, and acquired the Orb, so that's "nearly won," at least.
     

I have everything I need to win except Amulet 1.

    

Pluto's Smallest Castle was, despite its name, a fairly large castle with eight separate entrances. Seven of them led to an unwinnable battle with Pluto (oh, I'm sure he's killable with enough levels and luck, but I didn't have the patience to try). But a scroll alerted me to use the western entrance and look for a secret door, leading to the rest of the cavern network. There, amidst multiple battles with demons and devils, I defeated Pluto's Giant Wyvern.
     

In Pluto's castle.

     

One odd encounter had my party following a troll throughout the dungeon until he finally gave us a scroll. We then had to beat our way back through half a dozen monster parties. But the scroll outlined a path through the lava to Pluto's Menagerie, so it was worth it.
    

Making my way across lava.

    

Pluto's Menagerie was also swarming with demons, devils, giants, dragon kings, and high-level spellcasters. Even though I stocked up on magic potions before visiting, I had to retreat a couple of times, which was annoying because it involved hiking across two screens of lava to the nearest town. A long, winding corridor packed with encounters led to a teleporter with six numbers, each leading to a different section of the Menagerie.

One of them led to Beast #8, the most difficult of the lot, the Demon-Dragon. It took me about 10 tries to kill him without losing most of my party, and even then the best I could do was two members killed. (Fortunately, I have the "Resurrection" spell.) He had more than 350 hit points, got about 10 attacks per round, and did more than 50 points of damage with each hit or breath.
     

This demon-dragon isn't taking any of my $#@*.

     

That was as far as I could go. I found the way to the Ice Dragon, but without all eight of the beast amulets, the game said I was too scared to approach.

In general, the late game featured a lot of battles with individual, high-level enemies like cloud giants, dragon kings, high demons, and high devils. They might have one or two allies, but there are very few large parties. "Fireflash 4" becomes the most important spell; a player would be extremely hard-pressed to win without it. By the late game, both of my clerics, my mage, and my thief were capable of casting it. I let it do a lot of the work, gulping potions when my spell points got low.

Judging by what walkthroughs tell me and what I can extract from the text on the disk, if I had been able to acquire all 8 amulets, I would have been able to approach the Ice Dragon in Pluto's Menagerie. Although the game gives an option to attack, the game apparently has the party think twice after hearing a threat from the dragon. If you choose to talk to the dragon, you have the option to try to feed him gold or "the weakest party member," but he's not interested in either. If you feed him the Orb, he crunches it down. Somehow, destroying the Orb destroys the evil possessing the dragon, and he gratefully flies away.

Filmon teleports the party out of the dungeon to his hut and confirms that destroying the Orb broke the curse on Ferronrah. He then tells of Nikademus's forces marching on a continent to the north, presumably Scandor of Phantasie III, and invites the party to continue their adventures in the sequel.

In a GIMLET, the game earns:

• 5 points for the game world. The backstory and lore aren't as expansive as other titles, but it's well-plotted, tightly-written, and generally free of plot holes or logical inconsistencies. The in-game scrolls, the manual's backstory, and the physical features you find in the landscape all work well together.

• 3 points for character creation and development. It's fantasy boilerplate. I generally forgot about the skills--they play a passive role in the game. The first and third titles had some needs for particular races and classes, which this one didn't, and I generally forgot I was role-playing gnomes, monsters, and halflings. Leveling slows down markedly in the second half of the game.

    

My character aged 9 years during the course of the game.

    

• 4 points for NPC interaction. Named NPCs play a key role in the game and impart information about the lore of the land and the quest steps. There are no dialogue options, but there are some encounter options with these NPCs.

• 5 points for encounters and foes. In their strengths and weaknesses, special attacks and defenses, the enemies of Phantasie II are only average compared to other games of the era. The titles do a better job with the miscellaneous role-playing options, encounters, and small puzzles that you get while exploring the dungeons. They don't quite rise to the level of good role-playing--most options are either "good" or "stupidly evil"--but they're a start.

• 4 points for magic and combat, basically a Wizardry-derived base with animation, but the animation adds a layer of tension and fun. As with Wizardry, the developers did a good job tightly controlling magic use through limited spell points. A little too much rests on just a couple of spells, though, and physical attacks become undervalued in the late game.

    

Battling one of the bosses.

    

• 4 points for equipment. You only have weapons, armor, shields, and potions--no accessories--but the distribution mechanic is fun, and I like the way that the items are randomized in the world, not found at fixed locations. The series suffers from a lack of special or "artifact" items.

• 2 points for the economy. Save for potions (which are cheap), the store is mostly wasted--you start with a decent set of equipment and find the rest. You're either saving every gold piece for training (early game) or running into the maximum value for the gold variable (late game).

• 4 points for an interesting main quest with some randomization (which sank me, unfortunately), multiple steps, and even some small "side quests" (killing Pluto, rescuing Filmon's friends).

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The first two are era-tolerable but nothing special. I didn't care for having to scroll around menus when there was a perfectly-good complete keyboard in front of me. I'm rating this category for the C64 version, so mentally increase it a couple of points if these elements are notably better on your preferred platform.

    

The Atari ST version was more colorful and elaborate. I wish I didn't hate the emulator so much.

     

• 5 points for gameplay. Although there's a natural order to the dungeons, it's mostly non-linear, and you're encouraged to visit some of the dungeons multiple times. I wouldn't call it "replayable," but the pacing and difficulty are right on the money. 

    

Wow. Without even looking at my reviews for Phantasie and Phantasie III, I managed to land on the exact same score of 39 that I gave to the other two. This raises the question of why Phantasie III didn't earn a higher rating given that it added several new elements. (I did rate it higher for combat, where most of the elements are found). Looking over my review, I think I failed to realize that the three titles were intended as a trilogy, building on the same story. Instead, I thought that the developers kept using Nikademus as the villain because they lacked imagination. I also apparently thought that the third game dragged a bit. Still, I won't worry about a few points. 39 is a pretty high score for any era (so far). 

I'm debating whether to subtract points for whatever bug failed to bring me the encounter with Beast #1 so I could win the game. Normally, I would, but I can't find anyone else talking about the same problem, so I'm going to have to assume that I just messed something up.

In these early days of limited graphics, storage, and processing power, the best that a game could do was sketch the outline of a dungeon and prompt your imagination to fill in the rest. I don't have any issue with that--I enjoy it, in fact--but a lot of titles do a poor job of developing the skeleton of their worlds. They don't provide enough walls on which to imagine the paintings and curtains. Wireframe dungeons are fine, but they're best when they have a logical structure, a theme, and occasional atmospheric messages to tell you what's happening. (Of the 3D games, The Bard's Tale does a poor job with this; Wizardry does better; Might & Magic does it best.)

This is where the Phantasie games excel. The dungeons aren't a random configuration of rooms and corridors: the developers gave some thought as to the layout of castles and dungeons. A palace is going to need bedrooms, kitchens, servants' quarters, and a dungeon, for instance, and they designed it accordingly, giving each room a name and maybe even a paragraph of text as you entered. When you meet monsters, it's not some random hodgepodge of bats, priests, zombies, and goblins all traveling together. You fight kobolds and orcs in the kobold village, insects and vermin in caves, and demons and devils in the Netherworld. In other words, the series pays attention to setting the same way that a good tabletop RPG module might.

It makes sense, of course, that developer Winston Douglas Wood was a veteran of Dungeons and Dragons and RuneQuest campaigns. According to a 2013 interview at RPG Codex, he was a sophomore in college when he began working on Phantasie, and he was in graduate school by the time it was published. This was an era in which SSI, lacking a lot of RPG experience of its own, readily published titles submitted by independent developers such as Tom Reamy (Galactic Adventures) and Chuck Dougherty (Questron). Ultimately, none of these independently-developed titles (including Phantasie) had the staying power of SSI's internally-developed games (Wizard's Crown, Pool of Radiance), which built upon the company's wargaming expertise.

As the various ports above indicate, Phantasie became very popular in Japan, leading to the Japanese-exclusive Phantasie IV, which I unfairly brushed off at the end of my Phantasie III review. I assumed it had been developed by an unscrupulous Japanese company taking advantage of the name. In fact, Wood says in the interview that he designed Phantasie IV himself, although Japanese programmers at Starcraft wrote the code for the PC-88, PC-98, and MSX. There were vague plans to port it to western PCs, but its release corresponded with the decline of the classic Phantasie platforms like the C64 and the Apple II, and by that time Wood was deep into his "real" profession working for his father's pipe network analysis software company, of which he is now a co-owner.
     

Phantasie IV clearly shows the series lineage, but it has little squiggles instead of actual text for game options.

    
Wood developed one other title for SSI--Star Command (1988)--and designed Starfire (1994) for StarCraft (another Japan-only title). At the time of the RPG Codex interview, he was working on and off on Phantasie V, but that was almost 4 years ago, and there doesn't seem to have been any news since then.

In the interview, Wood suggests an uncertainty about the game's legacy. While it's true that third-person games largely won the interface struggle (at least until the late 1990s), you can see a clear homage to Phantasie in some of the diskmag titles we looked at in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In both combat and exploration, John Carmack's Dark Designs trilogy (my reviews start here) could easily be mistaken as having been written by Wood. I suspect that the author of the two Legends of Murder titles was also a player. And of course we saw an adaptation of the character ranks and character leaping in Legend of Faerghail.

As I said when I started this series, I'm glad I had a chance to return to the Phantasie universe and look at it properly, not just in the rushed way that I covered I and III and everything else during the first two years of blogging. They are stand-outs among 1980s titles and still fun in any decade.

****

Update: based on some commenters' messages, I decided to run around on one of the wilderness maps and give myself one more try to find the first beast, the giant constrictor. I found him almost immediately. He was so easy I forgot to take a screenshot of the fight.

When he was dead, I had the last amulet. One by one, I had my characters examine them and gain their associated "beast runes."
    

 
With the eight beast runes, I returned to Pluto's Menagerie. I had to slog across dangerous lava, healing myself as I went, and fight about a billion combats against fixed monsters in the dungeon's hallways.
   

Combat with a cloud giant and minions.

Eventually, after exhausting most of my spell points and potions, I found my way to the dragon's cave again.
    

This time, the game didn't tell me I was too scared to face the dragon. I walked up to it and fed him the Orb.
    

As noted above, the dragon flew away after destroying the Orb, saying that the curse was lifted. Filmon teleported me to his hut and confirmed the same, then led me outside for a victory party in which each of my characters was introduced and the crowd cheered.
   

I assume it said "from Gelnor" if you used an imported party?

The final screen has Filmon setting up the third game.
  

   
No change to the GIMLET, but a reasonably satisfying ending. I'm glad I don't need to carry it as a loss.

****

Martian Dreams may or may not be the next new game. I need a stretch of time at home when I don't need to close my computer or kill the emulator to make sure the saving/crashing problem doesn't recur. The next time I have 3 or 4 days off the road, I'll play it.

Realms of Darkness was coming up on the list, but upon examination, it appears to have been released in early 1987 rather than 1986.

Phantasie II: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Killing the fabled "snake-dragon."

    
Told over 15 scrolls, the story is this: Nikademus conquered Ferronrah as part of his conquest of the world. To prevent armies from being raised in Ferronrah that might pose a threat to him, and to prevent external armies from coming to support Ferronrah, he put a curse on the island that greatly weakens anyone who attempts to enter or leave the continent. Normal men die. Supermen become normal men--which is what presumably happens to the imported party from Phantasie when they get kicked down to Level 1. It's fun to see this common trope actually get integrated into the story.
    

The scrolls describe how the capital city was destroyed by Nikademus. Here it is.

    
The curse is contained in some way in an Orb. It used to reside in the old royal family's Summer Palace, but when Lord Wood tried to invade Ferronrah from Gelnor and nearly got away with the Orb, Nikademus moved it to a Netherworld dungeon. To end the curse on Ferronrah, I have to find the Orb and destroy it. The only way to destroy it is to feed it to Pluto's Ice Dragon, and to approach the Ice Dragon, I first need the amulets from the 8 other Beasts of Pluto that Pluto set roaming the world just to be a dick. (Pluto, god of the underworld, is supporting Nikademus in a way that the third game fleshes out.)
   

I have gained an eighth!

  
The beasts are:
   

• The Giant Constrictor, an enormous green snake. According to the "Book of Beasts" (one of the scrolls), it can be found "in any of the planes at any time and place." I haven't found it yet, which is starting to worry me.

• The Winged Devil. I encountered and killed it in Filmon's hut (more below).

• The Undead Snake.

• The Demon-Fly. Both the Undead Snake and the Demon Fly were said to occupy "small desert islands" on the material plane. I had to search around the surface world until I found them, but I was able to kill them both.

• The Wyvern.

• The Green Snake-Dragon. Both the Wyvern and the Snake-Dragon roam the Astral Plane between the two levels of the Netherworld. They must be summoned by a spell. I received the spell in one of the Netherworld dungeons, but when you cast it, it only has a small chance of summoning one of the boss creatures and a greater chance of just summoning a random encounter. It took about 15 castings and a lot of fights, but I killed both of the beasts.

• The Giant Wyvern.

• The Dragon-Demon. Both of these latter two creatures are somewhere in the Netherworld and I haven't encountered them yet.

    
The beasts I've encountered so far have been relatively easy to kill, particularly since I acquired "Fireflash 4" and multiple characters have it. This workhorse spell can do 100+ damage to a single enemy, and hardly anyone survives more than a couple of castings. Each character can only cast 3 or 4 of these before needing to rest in an inn or town, so you can't spam them, but they're the obvious choices for boss-level creatures.
    

The "book of beasts" scroll lays it all out.

    
Since the last entry, I've explored three more dungeons. Filmon's hut was the first. It was full of insectoid enemies which did me little good because they leave no money. There were also a lot of encounters with "dark dwarves," slightly overpowered enemies who have more than 75 hit points and do over 20 damage in melee attacks. A few random encounters with them were enough to send me out of the dungeon and back to town to restore health and spells.

An easy button/lever puzzle opened the way to Filmon. The famed sage forced me to fight a king cobra and a bunch of lesser snakes "with sticks" (mechanically, this simply meant stripping me of weapons and zeroing my spell points) to get his advice. I found it was easier to kill them with rocks. Annoyingly, my weapons remained stripped until I got back to the nearest town to re-equip them (you can only equip items in town through the "distribution" mechanic), which made tough going for a few random encounters.

Anyway, Filmon told me about the Orb and the Netherworld and asked me to look out for a couple of heroes named Pelzer (a gnome) and Pedaloe (a halfling) that he'd sent ahead of me. These two NPCs show up at Lord Kilmor's funeral in Phantasie III. He also recommended that I look for the Book of Beasts.
    

Meeting one of the more famous NPCs of the series.

    
Filmon's place was the last surface dungeon, so I headed to the Netherworld via Senog's Laboratory and started hunting for the Impling Hatchery, a dungeon described in one of the scrolls. The Netherworld is kind of annoying because the only convenient town to rest, heal, train, and so forth is Black Moor, and exiting Black Moor automatically transports you back to the surface world. I had to avoid using it. There are also places where you have to walk across lava and take a bunch of damage.
   

No, you can't swim around it. If you try to enter the water, the game just yells at you, "The River Styx!"

    
The Impling Hatchery was full of imps, as you might expect--annoying little buggers who have a way of casting "Slow" and "Sleep" every round. Last post, I talked about how a lot of my melee attacks get nerfed to 1 damage, and I discovered that this always seems to happen when my characters are under the effects of the "Slow" spell. "Slow" is supposed to reduce frequency of attacks, not damage. In such cases, I've reverted to throwing rocks.

The Hatchery delivered me the Book of Beasts, the spell to summon beasts in the Astral Plane, and the code ("66") to get from Senog's Laboratory to the second level of the Netherworld. It also had a collection of 12 pools that did a variety of positive effects (experience, gold, equipment) and negative effects (poison gas, lost gold).
    

Kill the jedi!

    
Early in the game, the Oracle in the kobold village had said to find the Book of Beasts, visit Filmon, do what he said, and return to the Oracle. Now that I had the Book, I went back to Filmon, but he had nothing new to say and he made me fight his cobra with sticks again. I then returned to the Oracle, who also had nothing new to say. I wonder if I broke something by doing it out of order.

I returned to the Netherworld and used "Transportation" to get me to the only other town on the first level: Deathport. It was steps away from the dungeon that turned out to hold the Orb. This dungeon was a series of caves connected by teleportation pools, and I had to fight a lot of imps and devilish creatures. I found and freed both Pelzer and Pedaloe from the dungeon, and I emerged with the Orb.
    

Killing him would have created an awkward moment at Kilmor's funeral

     
It was only after this dungeon that my funds finally caught up to my training. All my characters are now Level 12 and have enough money to train to Level 13 when it happens. I'm even hitting the maximum gold cap of 65,535. Other than training, there's really not much to spend money on.
    

Preparing to fight Pluto. Even three castings of "Fireflash 4" didn't help.

    
I started to explore the second level of the Netherworld. The only dungeon I've found so far is Pluto's Smallest Castle, and every time I enter, I get attacked by Pluto himself, who has over 300 hit points (I know because I've hit him three times in a row with "Fireflash 4," and he won't die) and gets about 12 attacks per round. I haven't been able to survive him. But it looks like there are multiple entrances.
     

This is Pluto's "smallest" castle, according to the scrolls.

    
Believe it or not, I still find the combat system a lot of fun. Perhaps the only exception is when I'm trying to get somewhere on land; there are far too many random encounters on the overworld maps. In the dungeons, they're spaced out just right, and (saving Pluto) are of challenging but not impossible difficulty.

Combat begins with a pre-combat round in which you can "beg mercy," "threaten," "greet," "fight," or "flee." Since fighting is the only way to get experience, gold, and equipment, that's my default choice, but experimenting shows that "greetings" works about a third of the time--sending the monsters away with no fight--and "beg mercy" works almost all the time, albeit at the cost of all the gold you're carrying. "Threaten" hardly ever works and "flee" gets you out of there maybe half the time, but if it fails the enemies get a free round of attacks.

In combat, enemies face you in up to three ranks, and each character has options to attack, cast a spell, parry, or toss a rock. There are several different types of attacks. "Thrust" does a single powerful attack that has the best chance of hitting, and I've learned you need it for some of the more agile creatures. "Attack" does two less-accurate, less-powerful attacks, but I find that it's a good default. "Slash" does three inaccurate, weak attacks and I don't think it's worth it. "Lunge" is the same thing as a "Thrust" but it aims at the second rank (only fighters can do this). The thief is presumed to use his agility and stealth to dance in and out of the enemy forces, so he can aim his thrusts or attacks at any rank. Any rank can also be targeted with "Toss."

The most plentiful group of enemies will always occupy the first rank and the next-most plentiful will occupy the second. So if you're attacked by 4 kobolds, 3 orcs, and 1 troll, that's the order in which they'll appear. Only the first two enemy ranks can attack the characters, although the third can cast spells if they have them. If you wipe out two of the kobolds in the first round, the next round will have the 3 orcs in the front rank, followed by the 2 kobolds and the troll in the second and third ranks, respectively.

"Fireflash" spells--the most damaging--always hit the rear rank first and work their way in.

These rules come together to create a number of different strategic scenarios. If I'm facing two ranks of kobolds and an ogre, for instance, I probably want to keep the ogre in the third rank, out of melee range, until I kill him. Kobolds only do about 1 damage per attack, and they miss a lot. I can endure their stings while my characters toss rocks at the ogre (along with my thief's ability to attack the third rank) until he's gone. But if I'm facing two ranks of orcs and the ogre, the story is different. Orcs do more damage than kobolds and I can't just ignore their attacks. I might try to line up just the right series of attacks and lunges to make sure I wipe out both ranks of orcs at the same time, bringing the ogre to the front rank all at once and allowing all my characters to attack him in the next round.
     

This isn't a bad situation. The bees and centipedes, while nothing to shrug off, will prevent the undead snake from hitting me in melee range. I should concentrate spells on it until it's dead, being careful not to wipe out either of the first two ranks until then.

     
Sometimes the most difficult enemy will be in the second rank, a situation that always sucks. Let's say I'm facing 4 kobolds, 2 master rangers, and an orc in that rank order. The master rangers are my top priority, but I can't hit them with spells like "Fireflash" until the orc is gone. I might have all of my characters throw rocks at him except my mage, who casts "Fireflash," trusting that I'll kill the orc before the mage acts.
    

That guy in the back looks menacing, but he's a pushover. The spellcasters in the front ranks are my priority here.

    
There are, of course, additional considerations associated with the variety of buffing and mass-enemy spells like "Confusion" and "Sleep." The one thing the game lacks is a strong mass-damage spell. The four levels of "Flamebolt" are supposed to serve that purpose, but I find that even "Flamebolt 3" (I don't have level 4 yet), which is supposed to do 1-31 points damage to each enemy, routinely does only 1 or 2 points and never seems to do more than 5. The manual warns that "some of the effect is absorbed by armor," so I guess most of my foes just have really good armor.

Assuming I can find those last beasts, I can't imagine that finishing Phantasie II will take more than one more entry, but I've been wrong before.

Time so far: 17 hours

Phantasie II: Dragon and Princess

The game comes down firmly on the side of "torture doesn't work." In this case, a tortured guard is giving me directions to a trap rather than the real princess.

    

For some reason, I thought that Phantasie II would only take a few hours. I must have been influenced by my Phantasie coverage, in which I won the game in three postings. Sometimes I forget that I summarized and elided a lot during my first 6-8 months of blogging. It's a little painful to read those postings today.

Not that I'm complaining--the game remains fun. It's far less linear than I expected. I thought I remembered Phantasie and Phantasie III ushering you from dungeon to dungeon in a obvious order, discouraging you from getting off the path by generating difficult monster encounters in places you weren't supposed to explore yet. Even if that memory is correct, Phantasie II is the exception. Not only was it unclear where I should go after the first dungeon, it doesn't really seem to have mattered. I had received a quest there to find the "Book of Beasts" in the Netherworld and bring it to Filmon the Sage. I haven't found the book or the sage yet, despite exploring two more dungeons and four more maps.

    

A machine in the laboratory brought me to the Netherworld, using a code obtained in the first dungeon.

   

The game opened up quite quickly. For my second dungeon, I explored Senog's Laboratory, where an ancient wizard had reportedly found a way to access the Netherworld. I went there because some scrolls I'd found in the first dungeon had talked about it. Laid out like a castle, the laboratory did ultimately lead to a portal to the Netherworld, which I entered, immediately finding a new set of screens, towns, and dungeons. At the same time, I acquired the "Transportation" spell, which allows you to teleport from town-to-town, much sooner than I expected. Between the portal and the spell, the entire game world was open to me within the 6th hour.

   

My brief foray to the Netherworld. For some reason, entering and exiting that city returned me to the upper world.

    

The opening screens in the outerworld had shown me all features, towns, inns, and so forth. As I explored, I found some screens partially or completely obscured, as I had remembered from the other games. None of the outdoor monsters have been unusually hard, at least not since my characters topped Level 4.

     

The "Monster Reveal" spell tells you the relative level of monsters in your area. Level 6 is the highest I've seen so far.

   

Scrolls continued to fill in the story. A previous scroll had described how Nikademus executed Ferronrah's royal family, but a new one said that the princess was still alive and being held in the Summer Palace. Since the Summer Palace had held the Orb (the object of the main quest, it seems) until Lord Wood's invasion, the scroll suggested that the princess might know something about the Orb.

   

I feel like I've heard this story somewhere...

    

I found the palace west of the town of Llithfaen, which I had reached somewhat randomly by testing the "Transportation" spell. It's possible I was here a little early. I had to retreat back to the town only twice in my explorations of Senog's Laboratory and I never died, whereas the Summer Palace took me 7 forays and 2 reloads.

    

Your first dragon in any game always feels like a major milestone.

     

The palace had a few role-playing encounters in which I could kill, torture, or just walk past sleeping guards; I tried torturing once just to document it, and I got directions to a false version of the princess rather than the real one. There were a number of tough spellcasting monsters in the dungeon plus one encounter with a dragon that nearly wiped me out. There were a lot of nice weapon and armor upgrades, too.

    

It's not like this aspect of an RPG has reached its zenith here, but I still appreciate these frequent encounters and choices during dungeon exploration.

     

The princess was found in a torture chamber amidst the remains of slain innocents. She said that to destroy the Orb and break the curse on Ferronrah, I would need to feed the Orb to Pluto's ice dragon, which I can only approach if I have obtained the "eight beast runes."

    

The princess is, fortunately, not in another castle.

    

This quest sounds similar to the rings I had to obtain from the Black Knights in Phantasie. I assume I'll encounter these "beasts of Pluto" in the Netherworld.

    

The third game made it clear how the planes work in the Phantasie universe.

      

As I battled creatures on the overland and dungeon maps, a few combat quirks became clear. First, my fighters seem to do only 1 damage an awful lot of the time. I don't know what the underlying math looks like, but it's almost as if when the game says a weapon does 1-16 damage, in truth there's a 50% chance it does 1 damage and a 50% chance it does 2-16 damage. Some creatures seem to be almost immune to physical damage and always take only 1. I seem to remember that from the other two games, and I essentially had to have every character casting "Fireflash" by the end. (Fortunately, almost every class can eventually acquire it.) Monsters may also have resistances against particular weapons.

    

At that rate, this battle is going to take a long time.

   

I have no problem relying on magic, but I don't remember having so few spell points in the other two games. At Level 7, my wizard only has 13 spellpoints, enough to cast a high-level spell like "Fireflash 3" only 4 times. My two clerics only do slightly better, with 15 and 16 points at the same level. There are potions that restore magic points in the dungeon, fortunately, because the only alternative is to leave and sleep in an inn.

In general, I need to do more experimentation with spells. I always have trouble convincing myself to cast buffing spells if I can't cast them before combat (as in the Gold Box games). Once I'm already in combat, I have difficulty favoring a spell with effects that I can't directly see (e.g., "Strength," "Confusion") over those that do direct damage ("Mindblast," "Fireflash"), or that offer an immediately-visible effect ("Sleep"), or even a physical attack.

I started having a lot of success with a slightly-odd combat option that's new to this game--one of the few things that didn't exist in the original Phantasie. The first game had no missile weapons; the third had a selection of slings and bows. This one has an unusual halfway point in which any character can hustle up a rock and throw it at any rank. The thing is, I'm finding that these thrown rocks are more accurate and do more damage than melee weapons in a lot of cases, and you can use them to target enemies in the third rank who normally can't be hit (or hit you) in melee combat. If you have a troll in the third rank and a bunch of worthless kobolds in the first two, there's no reason not to pelt the troll with rocks until he's dead before mopping up the kobolds.

   

Seems like a weird way to deal with a demon, but whatever works.

   

My big problem right now is a lack of money. If I had to start over again, I'd eschew the monster classes and focus on better charisma. The difference is huge. My gnome fighter with 17 charisma had to pay about 1,000 gold pieces to go from Level 8 to Level 9; it's going to take my sprite thief with 11 charisma 15,000. I'm chronically under-funded. I suspect my characters could all level up 2 or 3 more times, right now, if I just had the money. The only silver lining is that training costs seem to cap at 15,000 no matter what. They're not just going to keep getting worse and worse.

    

That is not enough gold to pay for the training available for that much experience.

    

I still enjoy the process of distributing items and getting weapon upgrades. Everyone got things like halberds +3 and swords +2 from the last dungeon. The game's ranking is sometimes odd; I have trouble believing that cloth +2 which protects against 3 points of damage outranks regular splintmail, which protects against 8. 

Miscellaneous notes:

    

• The game can only hold the map of one dungeon at a time, it seems. So if you need to return to an earlier one, you have to explore it anew. This isn't entirely a bad thing; you can re-acquire some of the best items and treasures.

• I have no idea why the game bothers to ask if you want to take the items that you find. There's no downside, since there's no encumbrance system. The worst that happens is you end up selling them.

   

I don't even know what it is. Why would I say no?

    

• Even if I kick the emulator into "warp" mode, it takes a long time to transition from towns and dungeons to the world map. I guess part of the reason is that it's saving each time.

• Each town has a "mystic." Even though I feel like I've accomplished a lot in the game and hit a few key plot points, the mystic keeps telling me that we're novice adventurers and our score is 0.

     

What do you want from me!?

    

• I can't help but wonder why there's a large, unused black area on the combat setup screen and what the developers might have originally intended for it. The DOS version of the first game doesn't have this.

  

The C64 version of Phantasie II.

Compared to the DOS version of Phantasie.

    

It's hard not to compare the two games I'm playing at the same time. I wouldn't mind if Fate's dungeons were more like Phantasie's: just the right size, with combats somewhat infrequent and each one challenging enough that you have to pay attention. Fate, in contrast, has ridiculously huge dungeons and you either sleepwalk through combats or fail to note that a single "bane giant" has appeared among all the rabble, and you get one of your characters killed in the first round.

As I close this session, I just found a scroll in the town of Ferron that describes Filmon the sage. It indicates that I should find him south of the city I'm currently in. Maybe finding him will get the mystic off my back.

   

Time so far: 9 hours

Phantasie II: The Same Thing All Over Again. Good.

Solving the first quest.

     
We often moan about how capitalism overtakes quality in art, but sometimes I wish the best developers would show a bit more avarice. Take Bethesda. Now, I realize that The Chosen Elite of RPG players have passed down from on high the declaration that Skyrim "sucks," but as I shall never be cool enough to breathe their rarefied air anyway, I don't mind admitting that I rather enjoyed it. I certainly put more hours into it between 2011 and 2016 than any game I played for this blog.

It's been over 6 years since Skyrim and it will probably be another 3, at least, before we hear word of The Elder Scrolls VI: Akavir. I've read article after article saying that Bethesda doesn't want to rush development; that they want to make sure they can use the latest technology to get it right. I'm sure that between the engine and the content, it will take thousands of hours and cost a billion dollars, and I admire them for it, but here's the thing: if they'd spent the last five years releasing half-assed titles re-using the Skyrim engine, I would have bought and played them happily. A new story set in Cyrodiil with no spoken dialogue and re-used assets from Oblivion? Shut up and take my money. An interim Fallout title set in Death Valley where the only environmental graphics are sand? I'll pre-order it today. Last year, when the Skyrim "special edition" came out, upgrading the least important parts of an RPG, I looked for any excuse to buy and play it. All they would have had to say is, "We changed a few lines of dialogue here and there and added a couple extra steps to a few side quests" and I would have bought it on the first day. "We changed it so you can kill Jaree-Ra" might have been enough.

In short, if I really enjoy the interface and mechanics of a game, I have no problem with the developer re-using it for some new content--as long as the content is good. As in, re-using the Gold Box engine to tell an original but compelling story in the Dragonlance universe, not re-using the Ultima VI engine to tell goofy stories that don't make any sense in conjunction with the rest of Ultima canon, or even reality. More developers need to be like Ubisoft: churn out Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed: Revelations while we're waiting for Assassin's Creed III. Be as shameless as Sir-Tech, with five Wizardry games using the same engine, or SSI, with like 15 games using the Gold Box engine, not like Rockstar, with 7 years between Red Dead titles.

Yes, I know many of you disagree. You're the types of people who say they have no problem waiting until 2028 for Winds of Winter because "it will be better if it isn't rushed." You like Star Wars but you think Disney's production schedule is "putting money ahead of Lucas's vision" and you "don't see why we have to have a new movie every year." You're everything wrong with everything.
     

Why is "leave" not an option?

     

Here's Phantasie II--a game so like Phantasie that the developers just packaged it with the first game's manual. They didn't even bother to give it a subtitle. The only thing different about its title from Phantasie is the "II." It's like they're saying, "Literally what you're going to get is Phantasie, but a second time." And that's fine. I'm having a great time with it. I'll bet that back in the day, reviewers complained that it was "just like the first game." I want to know what they say at Thanksgiving dinner when they ask for seconds on turkey and mashed potatoes. "It's a little disappointing, ma. It tastes just like the first helping."

As I noted in my first post on Phantasie II, the original Phantasie was Game 15 on this blog. I knew I liked it, but I didn't realize how good it was until I'd played like five dozen other games from the same period and found none of them approach it on the GIMLET. 
    

     

What I particularly like is the default difficulty. Forcing myself to avoid using save states is the best part of this experience. It creates a tension that I haven't felt since Wizardry and the first Might & Magic titles, and I wish more modern games gave you the option to only "save in town" or something similar. I understand that "survival" mode in Fallout 4 does something like that, and I'm looking forward to a replay once the memory of my last trip fades.

But it did make the beginning of the game slow-going. I guess characters imported from Phantasie have enough experience to start at around Level 3. Newer characters, having to work their way up there, need to retreat from the starting dungeon after every few successful combats to make sure they don't lose their progress. Getting my own new characters to Level 3, I must have made about 12 forays from town to dungeon, 4 of them resulting in death and reloading.

Another thing I appreciate--although I suspect I won't by the end--is the slight delay in combat as you watch each character's turn come up and then his action execute. There are actually two delays. First the character icon jumps, and you have a second before the game tells you whether you hit or missed. If you hit, there's another delay before it tells you how much damage you did, and if the enemy died. These slight delays (and their associated sound effects) impart some of the tension-and-release of a tabletop RPG with its rolls of the dice*. If I ever want things to move faster, there's always "warp" mode in the emulator.
    

But for how much?!

   

(*I know this because I recently got some more experience with tabletop RPGs. I'm waiting for a good occasion to work it into an entry.) 

I even like the weird way that the game approaches inventory. Every character has a weapon, a suit of armor, and a shield. Sometimes you find better items in the dungeons, but you don't get to equip or evaluate them right away. Instead, once you get to an inn, you go through a process of "distributing" items to the party members. Every item gets thrown into a pool. The distribution screen shows you who can wield each item, and you choose who gets it or whether to sell it. By default, the distribution screen sorts in order of the quality of the item (damage or protective value), so you distribute the stuff on top and sell the stuff on bottom. While it's mildly annoying to have to redistribute everything just to equip a few new items, the interface works excellently for this approach. I just wish there were more item types, like rings and cloaks and belts. I think Phantasie III expanded the number of wearable slots this way. 
    

Distributing items after a long exploration session.

     

I had forgotten a couple of things about exploring dungeons. First, I thought that all dungeons were contained on a single screen. Either they never were, or it differs by platform. Here, the kobold village extended south across two screens.

Second, I had forgotten about the little dots. They're how you know that the room has a special encounter. Could be a combat, could be an NPC, could be treasure; you don't know until you step on it.
    

An NPC gives me a tip. Note that there are several special encounters in this area.

    

Finally, when you leave a dungeon, the game asks if you want to save your progress. Basically, you get to choose if the dungeon respawns. This allows you to hit beneficial encounters multiple times--but of course also the many combats in between.

   

The first dungeon here, just steps from the opening city of Pippacott, was the "kobold village." Swarming with orcs and kobolds, the various structures in the village included an armory, barracks, kitchens, and houses for captains and the chief. A "detention area" held several special encounters, including a dwarf who rewarded me with 1,000 gold pieces, a gnome who screamed "47!" before running off, and an imp who wanted 1,000 gold pieces to tell me a secret. That last encounter was a bit obnoxious because the only options were to pay the imp or fight him, the latter option putting me in battle with multiple imps, each of which was capable of killing some of my characters in one round. I had to reload and just not visit him.
     

Slowly revealing the kobold village.

    
A couple of treasure rooms, including one protected by numerous traps I had to disarm, held several equipment upgrades. Some stairs led to a "second level" (really just a room on the main level) in which various slimes and giant ants prowled a garbage pit.

The dungeon held two more scrolls. One of them filled in the recent history of Ferronrah, describing how Nikademus destroyed the capital, executed the royal family, and put a curse on the island that causes anyone entering or leaving to be "greatly reduced in mental and physical capabilities." In the game's lore, he did this to prevent the continent from raising an army and going after him; functionally, it explains why characters imported from Phantasie lose almost all their experience. The scroll continued with an account of Lord Wood of Gelnor's expedition to Ferronrah to seize the "orb" in which the curse is somehow contained. Although he was initially victorious, Nikademus counter-attacked, drove Lord Wood back to Gelnor, and hid the orb in an unknown location. Lord Wood is a key NPC in all three games, basically creator Winston Wood's avatar in the game.
     

More about the backstory and main quest.

    
The second scroll described Senog's laboratory, the former lair of an ancient and powerful wizard, on a small island near Saxligham. An imp had taught Senog the secret of traveling to the Netherworld, and Senog died there.

Finally, there was the Oracle, whose presence was attested by one of the first scrolls in the game. I had to give her some gold and walk through a wall of smoke, which did a heavy amount of damage to my characters. The Oracle advises me to visit the Netherworld, find the "Book of Beasts," bring it to Filmon the Sage, do whatever he wants, and then return to the Oracle. Filmon is also a key NPC in all games, basically a Gandalf/Elminster-like character.
   

Exploring new overland squares.

     
After exploring the dungeon, I wandered to some other overland screens. A little mini-map on the right side of the outdoor screen keeps track of which outdoor "rectangles" you've already visited. It looks like there's 32 such outdoor squares, each with some combination of towns, dungeons, and inns. I've explored only one so far, but I expect the pace will pick up now that my characters are around Level 5. I remember from previous games that you have to be careful which directions you march, however. Some of the random outdoor combats are devastating to lower-level parties.
     

Those are some awfully large zombies.

     
Miscellaneous notes:

• I'm already encountering a problem I remember in Phantasie and Phantasie III: having too little gold to pay for leveling. Having two monster classes with low charisma doesn't help.

• The game really wants you to put your money in the bank. Every time you return to town or save the game, you have to divide gold into shares, all of which goes into each character's account. But since you need gold in hand to pay for training and spell acquisition, you're constantly withdrawing it immediately.

• The hit point disparity among characters is quite strong, from 65 for one of my fighters to 13 for my thief.

     

The "health" screen keeps track of everyone' s current status.

     

• Despite having some low attribute rolls at the beginning of the game, all of my characters seem to be pulling their weight, and I don't have plans to replace any of them.

     
It's been nice to play a game in which new pieces of equipment and new levels have a tangible effect on characters. I like watching my fighters slowly go from an average of 2 HP damage to 4 then 6. (My Fate characters, meanwhile, never seem to get palpably better no matter what I do.) More on magic and combat next time.