Game 237: The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrinitron (1991)

There's no title screen, so this opening screen is the best we can do.

  

The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrinitron

United States

Independently developed using the DCGAMES creation kit; published as shareware

Released in 1991 for DOS

Date Started: 12 December 2016
Date Ended: 13 December 2016

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Very Easy (1/5)

Final Rating: 17

Ranking at Time of Posting: 39/238 (16%)

Ranking at Game #460: 108/460 (23%)

At the end of my recent tour of Legend of Lothian, I wondered whether any Ultima clone really "got" Ultima. Plenty of clones have copied the iconographic interface, the tileset, and the commands, but none have even tried to match the best Ultimas for dialogue, setting, and story.

The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrinitron is, alas, not that game--but the creation kit that it was built with could have, I think, supported such a game. It is called "DC-PLAY" in the documentation that game with Lorri, but it seems to have been renamed "DCGAMES" at some point. It is credited to David Hernandez of "DC Software" in Plano, Texas. Most of the information that I can find on the kit comes from archived pages with broken links, but it appears to have gone through several variations shared on Compuserve in the early 1990s. You can still download the creator here. Registering the product cost $40.

    

Exploring a world clearly inspired by Britannia.

   

The kit boasts a surprising number of features, including recorded voices for characters, scripts to control NPCs, and up to a thousand maps of 256 x 256 tiles. In mechanics, it is clearly inspired by the Ultima line and plays like a combination of the first six games in the series. The use of most of the letters from A-Z for commands goes back to the original Ultima, and the game superficially looks like Ultima or Ultima II. But it supports the detailed NPC dialogue (via keyword) of Ultima IV, a complex inventory system reminiscent of Ultima V, and an approach to combat that blends Ultima V and Ultima VI. Aside from a roguelike approach to some equipment (where colors and descriptions are randomized for various objects at the start of the game), the kit is so heavily indebted to Ultima, in fact, that I have to wonder if Origin ever became aware of it and, if so, what its reaction was. An unsourced comment on one abandonware site says that Origin threatened legal action against the maker of Lorri, but it would have made more sense to go after the maker of the kit.

In any event, we don't judge creativity on the CRPG Addict; we judge results. It is therefore too bad that the only way we can experience the DCGAMES kit is through a fairly sloppy implementation via The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrinitron. Old archive pages hint at other games created with the software--DBQuest, Knight Fall, Other World, Legends of Old, The Slovennian Saga--but if any of these ever existed and did a better job than Lorri, they're lost to history.

   

Swarmed by skeletons and rats in the dungeon.

     

Almost everything about Lorri is inept, including rampant misspellings, inconsistencies in the use of upper and lower case, completely wasted NPCs, almost no documentation, a bungled ending, unexplained spells that seem to do nothing, and overall gameplay so easy that I'm convinced the starting character could win as-is with no companions, equipment, or leveling required. The developer, Robert Cristello, only wanted $5.00 for it, but I'm sure there were better games available as freeware. I looked up the address of Cristello's company--the location to which he wanted the $5 sent--and I saw it was a prep school in Bath, Maine. I briefly had an image of a 16-year-old boy programming this game and then using his school's address to get some quick cash, and the game was excused--almost redeemed--in my eyes. Then I got hold of Cristello's c.v. and saw that he was, in fact, Director of Computer Sciences at the school at the time, and probably about 30.

The only background you get on Lorri, independent of the kit, is as follows:

     

Hello Adventurer, Rumor has it that the Beautiful princess Lorri has been kidnapped by a terrible being and is being held in a secret location. The King is in dire need of help, perhaps you could go to his castle and offer your services to him.  It is said that the King is wealthy and would reward a brave adventurer such as yourself for the safe return of his daughter.

     

Character creation follows the standards of the kit, which blends races and classes: you can be a human, elf, dwarf, wizard, archer, or fighter, each of which has different modifiers to strength, speed, aim, dexterity, IQ, magic power, and hit points. You get a pool of 25 points to distribute among these starting attributes and can choose your icon from a small selection. The game begins near your house (which you can enter and loot for a few items); nearby is a town and the castle of King Altheon.

   

Creating a character.

    

Most of the letters on the keyboard are used for various actions, from (A)ttack, (B)oard, and (C)amp to (W)ield, (X)it, and (Z)ap with a staff; some of the specific selections suggest a Rogue or NetHack influence rather than a simple Ultima one. (I don't think Ultima ever uses the word "quaff.") The small town maps are stocked with Ultima-style counters where you sidle up to buy or sell weapons, armor, and food. Bars are supposed to offer tips, but I never got any.

    

Magic armor is not only cheap; it's unnecessary.

    

My doubts about the game began to form when I first started speaking to NPCs in the towns. The kit supports long textual responses to any keywords--yes, NAME, JOB, and BYE all seem to work--and yet the maker of Lorri hardly programmed any such interactions. Throughout the entire game, in fact, the only thing I could find that was useful to do with NPCs is have them JOIN the party. I eventually supplemented Chester the wizard with Balthazar the dwarf, BOBCAT (yes, we're suddenly in uppercase) the human, and "elf" who never had a name.

     

Getting a character to join the party.

    

In the two-room Castle Altheon, I ran into a guard who demanded I not pass, then did nothing when I passed. King Altheon was standing next to his throne. The kit supports designating certain NPCs as "questers," which brings up a specific interface to receive and turn in quests. The developer here forgot to rename the generic title with the actual name of the king. In any event, I was able to get the game's one and only quest from him, but he had no other keywords.

    

I won't do it for less than 11,460.

    

The game world is about 200 x 200 squares with a few towns, dungeons, and castles, none of them very big. Terrain like trees, mountains, water, and shoals keeps you from visiting every location right at the beginning, and the key mechanism of proceeding on the quest is to find the next vehicle you need to overcome the terrain.

Monsters spawn at regular intervals. They consist of typical fantasy types--orcs, trolls, skeletons, zombies, "gouls," rats, spiders, dragons, demons--and if any of them have special attacks, I couldn't tell. The kit uses a derivative but still unique combat system. It takes place on the regular map, but when you enter battle, your party icon fans out to represent each individual character, even if it doesn't make much sense given the terrain (e.g., one character might appear on the other side of a wall or mountain). Enemies do the same. Each character's ability to hit an enemy, including considerations of range and obstacles in between, seems to be based on the lead character's position. 

  

My two-character party fights a troll.

   

Characters get experience for each successful hit against an enemy, and more if they actually strike the killing blow. Throughout the game, even when fighting hard-sounding enemies like demons, most died in one blow. Most of their attacks did nothing to my characters, and I only ever had to reload once when someone died of poison.

   

A character levels up just for hitting an evil wizard.

    

When they die, enemies follow the Ultima V tradition of leaving individual bags of treasure, items, or treasure chests. Even sea monsters leave treasures floating on the waves. Other than gold and food, these treasures can include rings, staves, potions, and scrolls. The game honestly didn't last long enough for me to bother figuring out how these items worked or what their various effects were. Hit points regenerate quickly just by walking around.

    

Spiders leave items and gold in their wake.

   

Within just a few combats, I had enough money to buy the best magical weapons and armor sold in the towns, and since everything else was so easy, by mid-game, I was just leaving equipment on the battlefield after combat.

   

"Let it sink!"

   

Characters level up at reasonably regular intervals, gaining a couple extra hit points, magic power points, and bonuses to attributes per level. As if this wasn't enough to win an easy game, I soon found a training facility at the end of a hedge maze where the trainer will increase any of your attributes by a few points, for no money. I mean, there's a money interface, and I think the developer intended to put a cost to the training, but in the game all the lessons are $0. You can get everyone up to 99 in all attributes for free. It's a measure of how easy the game is that I just upgraded a couple of stats and left. Healing, incidentally, also costs no gold--even resurrection.

   

Limitless development thanks to a trainer who never posted his prices.

   

The game has a food mechanic. When it started, I bought 225 units for about 8 gold pieces. When it ended, I still had 185. There's also a fatigue mechanic that makes you (C)amp every 1,000 moves or suffer hit point losses. But you can camp anywhere and it offers no risk.

Early in the game, I entered a city called Spectronis, which featured about a dozen rows of empty houses plus a few shops. One of the shops was a fortune teller who said I would need to "find the magicians [sic] castle to recieve [sic] transport to demon island!"

    

No need for all the other NPCs...one of them tells me everything I need to know.

    

To do his, I first had to get a boat. There was one at the end of a dock on the other side of a one-room mountain dungeon appropriately called "Boat Gateway." The boat allowed me to visit another island, which had a one-room dungeon called "Crystal Cave," where I found a Sword of Might.

   

Nice for someone to just leave this here.

   

Another boat-accessible area leads to a larger dungeon called the Underground. Here, you find a portable skiff that allows you to cross the smaller bodies of water in the dungeon (shades of Ultima VI) to the far exit, which brings you to an area encircled by mountains.

     

Out of one dungeon and into another.

    

In this area is the entrance to the "magic dungeon." You explore for a few minutes, find the evil wizard, kill him, and get his flying carpet.

    

Yeee-haaa!

     

The flying carpet works much like the Ultima V version except that you can fly over mountains with it. You use it to get to the Dark Castle. Two or three small levels of the castle lead you to the final battle against a group of demons guarding Lorri--as easy as any other battle in the game.

Lorri joins the party with the JOIN command. Her name is apparently PRINCESS, though, not "Lorri." Taking the exit near her brings you to an all-black area that says "welcome to end of game."

     

Use your indoor voice, Lorri.

It's rather dark in end of game.

    

Leaving this area brings you back to the outerworld near the castle. You enter and turn in the quest to the king, who screws you by giving you only $10 rather than the "11,459 in gold" that he originally promised. Or maybe the exchange rate just really sucks in Lorrinitron.

     

This is perhaps the first game in which the subject of a quest gets to level-up upon completion of that quest.

    

This is an example of a game whose implementation is so bad that it drags down what would otherwise be high GIMLET scores. For instance, the kit itself supports a decent approach to equipment--each character can have a variety of weapons, armor, shields, rings, necklaces, staves, and so forth--but Lorri is so easy that it's more of a hassle to micromanage inventory than it's worth. Similarly, the economy takes a big hit because the developer failed to provide anything important to spend money on. 

Combat is so easy that I didn't even get into spells, half of which don't seem to do anything anyway.

Thus:

• 1 point for the game world. I know it's called Lorrinitron and it's ruled by King Altheon. The kit supported much more detail but the developer didn't provide it.

     

Instead of using these books to flesh out the game's backstory, the developer showcases his inability to spell the names of famous literary characters or get their lines right.

    

• 3 points for character creation and development. A reasonable approach to both is undone by a game so easy that development is neither satisfying nor rewarding, nor do you have to try hard to get a mix of skills among your party members.

• 2 points for NPC interaction. A solid mechanic that was unused.

    

The most useless "tavern tip" ever.

    

• 1 point for encounters and foes. Enemies are only really distinguishable by icon; they have no special attacks or defenses, strengths or weaknesses. There are no other puzzles or encounters in the game.

• 3 points for magic and combat. Again, a potentially 5- or 6-point system was under-utilized.

     

This should have been just a little more epic.

     

• 3 points for equipment. Same story.

• 1 point for economy. Same story.

    

I forgot that this potion-seller even existed until I was going through my screen shots.

    

• 2 points for a main quest.

• 2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets all that for "interface." The graphics are uglier than Ultima and the developer of Lorri did not use the sound capabilities.

• 1 point for gameplay. Linear, non-replayable, far too easy, at least it didn't last long.

That gives us a subtotal of 19, from which I'm going to subtract 2 points for overall sloppiness for a final score of 17.
   

I am nonetheless convinced that DCGAMES is capable of a 40-50 point game, and I can't help but wonder if any of the other titles made with it fit the bill. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has experience with this creation kit.

Game 236: Mafia (1986)

   

Mafia

Germany

Igelsoft (developer and publisher)

Released in 1986 for Commodore 64; English translation 2010 by TheRyk

Date Started: 11 December 2016
Date Ended: 11 December 2016

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Easy  (2/5)

Final Rating: 30

Ranking at Time of Posting: 137/238 (58%)

Ranking at Game #460: 290/460 (63%)

I'm not sure I've ever heard the right term to describe what Mafia is. It shares a common structure with Sid Meier's Pirates!, AutoDuel, Visions of the Aftermath, and even that awful Girlfriend Construction Set, although all five games are given different genres on MobyGames. In each of them, you have an underlying score and a fixed time period in which to engage in a number of scenarios to try to boost that score. The games don't last that long (Mafia doesn't even have a save capability) and are meant to be replayed. No epic quest here--just a fun little afternoon diversion.

Mafia is light on the RPG elements, but it has them. A new player specifies a name and gang name and then rolls for random values (15-50) in intelligence, skill, and brutality; these statistics in turn affect success in missions and in combat. You specify how long the game will last by giving the ending year, and then you are set loose on the city of Chicago in 1925, with no reputation and $6,000 or $7,000 in your pocket.

    

This was a lucky series of rolls.

   

The map of Chicago--which has nothing to do with Chicago--is unvarying from game to game. It is dotted with shops, banks, pubs, casinos, loan sharks, and other buildings, and the player's goal is to navigate through them and accomplish things, thereby increasing his score and rank. When the time limit is up, the winner is the player with the highest score. In a single-player game, the player must achieve a maximum score (100) plus accomplish two key side-missions.

    

The game world with its various facilities.  The best I can figure, up is west. In the lower-left, you're seeing a few of the docks and the beginning of Navy Pier. Michigan Avenue cuts down the middle, and you're seeing a bit of Grant Park in the upper-left. Don't ask me to figure out the train stations, though.

    

Every location gives you the opportunity to do something positive to increase your score. When you enter each location for the first time, you get a poorly-drawn full-screen graphic and are then taken to a set of menu commands. Your specific actions differ on the type of location but include:

• Gambling Dens: Bet money on poker, blackjack, or roulette. Alas, you cannot actually play these games; the game simply tells you if you've won or lost. You can't even see what the probabilities are. From experimentation, they seem to be about 50/50 for all games.

    

The graphic upon entering the gambling den for the first time.

   

• Banks: Rob it or case it for a nighttime safecracking. You have to have the rank of at least "small fry" to do either, and you have to have at least one other gang member to commit a robbery. The safecracking option brings up a fun mini-game in which you scroll through a three-digit combination on a safe and actually listen for "pings" with different tones than the others.

    

The cool safecracking minigame--one of the few times in RPG history that sound is vital to the game.

   

• Grocery store: Rob it, panhandle, demand protection money, or pretend to be a police officer and confiscate the register. Only works at higher ranks. If robbery or extortion is successful, you have sub-options whether to ransack the place and/or rough up the shopkeeper.

   

I never had option #2 work.

    

• Subways: Pick pockets or snatch bags. This is an easy way to get money and points in the early game.

• Hideout: Rent a flat for a certain number of months, or pay to renew. Hideouts are necessary to develop gangs.

• Gun store: Buy weapons or get training. Weapons include melee weapons (knives, chains), revolvers, shotguns, machine guns, and grenades. You have to have a minimum intelligence or "brutality" to use some weapons. Ammunition is limitless.

• Car dealer: Buy or steal a car.

  

Only one of these cars was available in 1925.

   

• Police headquarters: Turn yourself in, bribe the police commissioner to look the other way for a fixed number of months, or try to break a gang member out of prison.

• Railroad station: Go to the bar (see "pub" below), pickpocket passengers, or rob the mail train.

• "Faking Billy": Buy counterfeit currency or a fake ID.

    

You would of course expect a counterfeiter to operate with a paint can and roller.

    

• Pub: Get a legitimate job (bouncer, croupier, hotel clerk) for a few months, get intelligence about available special jobs, buy alcohol for bootlegging, hire guys for your gang. Working a real job usually leads to either some skill checks and/or combat with single troublemakers.

The different options in the bar.

   

You accomplish these things in the context of turns, or months, which pass pretty rapidly. It can take an entire month to walk down the street and visit the pub, for instance. Buying or stealing a car increases your mobility and thus what you can accomplish in a month.

Every success except gambling adds to your point total, which causes your rank to climb from "rookie" (0) all the way to "gangland king" (100), passing through ranks like "snatcher," "hoodlum," "mafioso," and "public menace" along the way. Certain actions are restricted by rank; only "small fries" and above can rob banks, for instance, and only "hoodlums" and above can recruit other gang members.

    

An overview of my progress at the turn of the month.

    

Just about any scenario can go wrong and lead to combat with other gangs, police, bank security guards, and so forth. To succeed in the scenario, you have to win such combats. The combat system isn't bad--a lot of RPGs of the era are worse--but it could have been better with some effort. Basically, you and your fellow gang members (if you have any) exchange shots or blows with members of the opposing force until one of the groups is wiped out. ("Energy" serves as a proxy for hit points.) Your attributes and weapon type play a role, and there are some minor considerations related to terrain on some maps, but a lot of it is just luck.

    

Fighting against guards to rob the mail train. I guess those are giant bags of mail.

    

Losing in combat doesn't mean "dying." You can't actually die in the game. The worst that happens is you get caught and go to jail for a few months, which reduces your score. But if you set the scenario for long enough and play smart, you have plenty of time to make up for losses. 

In between months, you get a summary of your statistics and finances along with a continually-updated "wanted" poster for your character. The higher your level the greater likelihood that you'll get stopped by a police roadblock. 

   

   

Winning in single player means accomplishing three goals. First, you have to get your score to 100. This is the easiest part. You can do it via some of the scenarios that are almost impossible to lose at, such as working bouncer and croupier jobs at bars, or safecracking banks. The second is to complete the "assassinate the mayor" mission. You get this from bartenders after asking for their intel on available jobs.

   

Working a "real" job with a skill check. If I failed it, I would have had to fight one-on-one with an unhappy customer.

   

Once this mission is assigned, a new icon appears on the screen until you decide to attack. You first have to defeat the mayor's 6 bodyguards, then fight a rather sad battle against the lone mayor himself.

I don't like his chances.

   

(I'm obliged to note here that the Mayor of Chicago in 1930, when I killed him, was William Hale Thompson, widely regarded as one of the most corrupt mayors in American history, even by Chicago standards. He had the open support of Al Capone. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre happened during his third term. If I had solved this quest before 1927, I would have killed William Emmett Dever, the mayor who interrupted Thompson's second and third terms. He was known as "Decent Dever" for enforcing Prohibition even though he didn't agree with it. He's thus a much likelier candidate for this mission, and since he was due to die in 1929 from cancer anyway, it wouldn't have messed up the timeline very much.)

   

   

The second special mission is to ambush and rob a cash transport. It's the hardest mission in the game, involving combat against 10 police officers with machine guns.

    

The epic final battle on the streets of Chicago.

    

Solving these latter two missions means, therefore, building up your own gang. I needed 10 heavily-armed members to accomplish the last mission. You find gang members in bars. Each of them costs several thousand dollars (and you have to have a "flat" rented before you can hire any of them), plus another several thousand to equip them with weapons. If you don't like their statistics, you can pay several thousand to train them (an option also available for your own character). This is often necessary since the types of weapons a character can use are limited by attributes.

   

My late-game "party." The game names your companions.

    

Getting (and keeping) all this money makes up the bulk of the game. Robbery jobs might net you a few thousand--more if you can get some intelligence on where gold bars are stored. Investing in a credit business provides monthly payoffs. Investing in weapons smuggling (done in bars) can provide major one-time payoffs. Safecracking is pretty lucrative. Bank robbery almost always ends in combat, but the net is usually worth it. Even working bouncer jobs for $2,000-4,000 adds up fast. Gambling is risky, but unscrupulous players in the era of save states will naturally find it the easiest option.

   

And someone else took the risk!

   

Of course, events can cause you to lose money, too. If you're caught by the police (which often happens at frequent roadblocks), you either have to bribe them (around $5k) or hire a lawyer (about the same) to try to beat the rap. You can prevent this with a fake ID, but that's a few thousand in itself. You also need to maintain a hideout.

    

   

Still, the assets generally overwhelm the liabilities. I was able to win without cheating (i.e., reloading when something happened I didn't like) in just a few hours. When you accomplish all three goals, you're treated to an image of presumably you as a mafia don plus some congratulatory text.

     

   

In a GIMLET, the game gets:

• 3 points for the game world. It's original for an RPG, but Jazz Age Chicago doesn't really "come alive" in Mafia.

• 2 points for character creation and development. It just barely meets RPG criteria here.

    

"Interviewing" a goon for my party.

    

• 2 points for NPC interaction. They're not classic "NPCs" that we see in most games, but I'll give some credit to the bartenders and shopkeepers and whatnot.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. There's nothing to the foes, but I rather like the scenario-based encounters, which even offer a bit of role-playing (e.g., you can play as a card shark, bootlegger, gun-runner, extortionist, robber, or some combination of these).

    

A successful robbery against a store clerk affords some role-playing options.

    

• 3 points for combat that aspires to be tactical but doesn't quite make it.

• 1 point for equipment. You just have different kinds of weapons.

• 6 points for the economy, the true driving force of the game.

    

....as a successful mail train robbery drives home.

    

• 3 points for a main quest with several parts and paths to reach it.

    

Getting intelligence on one of the final missions.

   

• 3 points for graphic, sounds, and inputs. The graphics are ugly. The sound is fun in parts (I like the machine guns and the safecracking). The interface is simple and easy to master. Loading the graphics takes too long.

  

The police chief doesn't really want to see me.

   

• 4 points for replayable gameplay, and it's hard to challenge the pacing when you can set it yourself.

The final score of 30 is higher than I expected, but despite the comparatively high score, I couldn't help but wish it was better. Better character development, better combat, maybe some more complex plot developments, a more interesting map...all of these would have helped make Mafia a true crime RPG instead of a crime-themed simulation/strategy game with RPG elements.

The one thing I didn't experience was multi-player mode, and I could see it being a lot of fun (if even less of an RPG). You'd have to specify a relatively short time period or else the game (which, again, you can't save) would take all night and everyone would find a way to get to 100. But with that caveat, Mafia could become a fast-paced board game in which you'd have a lot of fun laughing at other player's misfortunes and declaring gang wars on them.

I haven't been able to find much information on Igelsoft (I believe igel means "hedgehog") or anything at all on Mafia's developers specifically. I don't get the impression that it was terribly popular, even in Germany. (The English version that I played was a 2010 adaptation.) But it does deserved to be remembered as the first "crime RPG," if only barely (there have been other games in which crime was possible, but I can't think of an earlier one with crime as the driving mechanic). Quickly scanning my list, I don't see another obvious one until Gangsters 2 (2001).

It's nice when my diversions from Fate are just single-session games. Let's see if the same is true of The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrintron.

*****

I played Journey into Darkness for a while and found its interface excruciating. Then I realized I could reject it because there didn't seem to be any mechanism of character development except through acquiring inventory. No experience, no levels. If I'm wrong about that, someone will have to play the game long enough to prove me wrong, and that doesn't seem likely.

I've also rejected Mindstone on the same grounds. It's an adventure game in which the characters can gain some one-off increases in attributes. This is not enough "character development" to qualify as an RPG.

Finally, after some research, I've come to the conclusion that Planet's Edge is a 1992 game, not 1991. I base this on a) the earliest review of the game wasn't published until May 1992; most are from the fall of that year; b) the trademark for the game wasn't approved until June 1992; c) the November 1991 issue of a German gaming magazine refers to the game as "forthcoming"; and d) other than the reference in (c), the name doesn't appear in any book or periodical searches (relying heavily on Google Books here) before 1992.

Fate: Land and Sea

Somebody please stop me.

   

At some point, I got the idea that Fate's game world was 400 x 400 squares. Maybe because the furthest north coordinate was around 400, and all of the interior maps have been square, so I figured the easternmost coordinate would be around 400, too. Then I got into my ship and tested my hypothesis. A few hours later, I found myself at what I believe is the real southeastern coordinate, which is around 650 squares east. That suggests a map of 260,000 squares. I guess the Britannia of Ultima VI is still bigger--almost five times bigger, in fact--but it really doesn't seem that way. It's probably a mistake comparing tile counts in top-down games versus first-person games anyway.  So put another way, the overworld of Fate is more than 50 times as large as the overworld of Might & Magic.

Learning that the size of the world was 63% larger than I had believed should have driven home the point that I cannot possibly map it all, and it's folly to try. And yet I persisted in mapping the places that I visited--mainland, islands, the water in between. I mapped (and searched) dozens of little one-square islands off the coast. I sporadically mapped the southern border of the world. I don't know what's wrong with me.

    

Navigating tight waters.

   

Sailing the ship is fairly easy if a little time-consuming to hop on and off. It works very much like a first-person Ultima IV or V. You board the ship from any adjacent land square and raise the sails to get going. Clicking on the compass tells you the wind direction. If the wind is "calm," you either have to wait or cast the "Storm" spell to whip up a gale. You get the best speeds running before the wind or at a broad reach, the worst close-hauled, and you can't move at all facing into the eye. (Did I learn these terms from Pirates!? Yes, I did.) 

You can steer in 45-degree increments but you can only face in the cardinal directions (just as on land), and you can look around independently of steering, so the view is sometimes a bit weird. When you want to land, you just run yourself ashore at the desired point; the ship takes no damage. The game won't let you leave the ship unless you've furled the sails, so there's no chance of losing the ship. You just have to remember where you parked it.

   

"Docking" on an island.

    

You can sail anywhere that there's a single square of water, even way upriver. You're out of luck if you hit a bridge. I actually bought a second ship at one point because I'd sailed the first one all the way up to Fainvil and I didn't feel like going all the way back.

I'm finding that jewels are particularly useful for sailing. Even if I was going to map the entire overworld, I wouldn't be so pathological about it that I would insist on sailing on every bit of water. (You find nothing on the waves; if you try to "dig," the character sarcastically asks if you mean to put a hole in the bottom of the ship.) So the jewels help determine where there are islands, and where I can just fill in squares with swaths of blue.

   

Checking my position at sea.

    

I started by mapping some of the little 1 x 1 islands I could see from the shore, then progressed to some larger ones. Commenters had told me of fantastic treasures to be found on islands, but so far I haven't had much luck. I did manage to find a "warphammer" in the far southeast corner. It's a great melee weapon that weighs less and does more damage than Winwood's previous weapon, the "hulkhammer." 

A couple of the islands have offered names, such as the island of Laria and the island of Wym.

When I got bored, I made my expedition to the ends of the world, then started using the jewels to look for islands with cities. There was a large island in the southeast corner that seemed to qualify, which is how I found myself exploring the city of Katloch.

Katloch was full of monsters, such as insects, giants, and undead. There were hardly any usual NPCs. A lot of the enemies were capable of one-shotting my lowest-HP characters, so I relied heavily on the Banshee "Freeze" spell and the Enchanter "Tornado" spell to take parties out of commission. One monster, the Bane Giant, was one of those I talked about a few postings ago, where they never seem to die by hit point loss alone. I learned to rely on various stoning spells to kill them.

    

I wasn't prepared for these guys.

    

The city had some of the more advanced guilds (anti-fire +8, magic points +4, invulnerability +8), so I spent a lot of my training slots (and money) here. Oddly, the taverns wouldn't allow me to "go around" the way you can with the mainland taverns. There were no shops or smithies.

The entire city is an odd shape: a kind of spiral that culminates in a large open square with a small lake and a little 3 x 3 platform in the middle of the lake. I was surprised when I encountered nothing here. On the far end of this open area is an inactive teleporter. I assume both mysteries will be resolved at a later date.

   

The odd-shaped city of Katloch.

    

Miscellaneous notes:

• Leveling isn't all that satisfying in Fate. I wish the game gave you any indication of the number of experience points needed for the next level as well as the number of experience points earned for various enemies. As it is, leveling is always a complete surprise.

• You can sail between islands that are connected to each other on a diagonal.

• I experimented a bit with using crystals in combat. You have to pay at guilds (and sacrifice some spells slots) to learn how they work. They summon demons, essentially, which act like greater melee weapons for one round, doing damage to all opponents. 

• This black monolith appeared in a graveyard that I explored on the mainland, leading to the dumbest comment from an NPC in the game so far.

    

    

• Every once in a while, I find a mysterious item like this, which given its name and location must be a powerful item, but the statistics suggest that it's worse than leather armor. I'm not sure what to make of it.

    

Is it called that because I'm doomed if I wear it?

    

• I think I might have mentioned this before, but party members will often refuse to do something, like insult a powerful enemy or make rounds in the tavern if the character is a shy woman.

On the main quest, most of my hints have come from wandering mages since there were so few NPCs in Katloch. A big group came from a guy named Gideon on a random island I explored. As we discussed last time, to defeat Thardan I apparently have to enter his "Forbidden Zone," which in turn requires a Cassidan mage wielding the legendary Moonwand. The mage in question is almost certainly Bergerac, whose statue awaits the return of its heart.

I've had no information about the heart, but I have been getting clues about the wand and the "Agyssium," which might be the same as the Forbidden Zone--I'm not sure. The Agyssium is supposed to be a maze beneath Katloch with hallways somehow formed from living creatures. To enter, I have to use the Moonwand in the middle of the "Blood Circle." 

   

I guess that's useful to know.

    

The Moonwand has been broken into seven pieces--groan--and scattered across the land. I guess I'll have to recover them one by one. A wizard in Katloch told me that he'd once met a mage in Laronnes who spoke of the Moonwand and a piece of it called the "Dreamstone." Another part is called "Spiralgem."

    

I supposed it was too much to hope for that this Moonwand quest would be easy.

   

Before making my way all the way back to Laronnes, I decided to try to find the one other city that I knew was out here somewhere: Pirate Rock. Again, I sailed around using jewels liberally until I found a likely location: a mountainous island surrounded by a ring of smaller islands. Pirate Rock was a smaller city with useless NPCs and a surfeit of taverns, but I found the guild that increases dexterity by 2 and spent most of the remainder of my slots on these upgrades.

A short post representing about 20 hours of gameplay. In the next one, we'll have an exhaustive tour of the magic system and see if I've made any progress on the pieces of the wand.

Time so far: 151 hours