Game 389: The Secrets of Bharas (1991)

 

         

The Secrets of Bharas

United States

Victory Software (developer and publisher)

Released in 1991 for Apple IIGS

Date Started: 7 November 2020

    

I was looking forward to Secrets of Bharas after I played Victory Software's first title, 2088: The Cryllan Mission, a couple of years ago. 2088 wasn't great--it scored just below my "recommended" threshold--but it had some interesting thematic elements. The three brothers who started Victory Software, Vinay, Vivek, and Vijay Pai, were raised in Houston, but by parents recently emigrated from India. Their games are the closest we get to an "Indian RPG" until a couple of Trine Games titles in 2008.

    

Indian themes, or at least proper names, are far more on display in Bharas than in the sci-fi 2088, starting with the title. In the game, Bharas (almost universally misspelled online as "Bahras") is the name of the land. In Hindi . . . I'm not sure. Bhar appears to be a caste, and both it and Bharas appear as prefixes to a number of names and place names, but I'm not sure how Hindi roots work (and, of course, the entire word has been romanized). The game's backstory is similarly filled with Hindi or Sanskrit names: the lands of Bharas include Surya, Nadhi, Darthi, and Vashi among many others.

       

I wonder if Vivek and Vijay occasionally think about how they used to style themselves "MC VSP" and "DJ VJ."

         

These names pepper a game world heavily inspired by Ultima and other high fantasy. The manual spends a long time setting up the history of Bharas and its six lands: Surya, kingdom of humans; Nadhi, land of great rivers; Dharthi, kingdom of dwarves; Wairan, land of great deserts; Jalamuki, land of volcanoes; and Hawa, kingdom of the elves. The races originally didn't know about each other, but the great Suryan explorer Sadanana traveled the world and established relationships and trade between the three peoples. An elf named Narayan and a dwarf named Gaspard independently discovered magic; the rivalry between their two schools eventually escalated into a war between Dharthi and Hawa that spread across the world, drew in the Suryans, and resulted in four Great Wars over 200 years. Each new spell discovery shifted the balance of power in favor of those who discovered it.

    

The game begins a few years after a Great Summit established peace across the world. As a symbol of a new era of unity, the three kings agree to a joint expedition to "chart the lands of Bharas." However, the party of cartographers sent to Jalamuki mysteriously disappears. How this impacts the main quest, or what the main quest is, is left (strategically?) unsaid by the manual.

       

Creating a new character.

       

The player creates a party of six, choosing from human, dwarf, and elf races and warrior, mage, and cleric classes. The game rolls random values for strength, agility, stamina, psyche, and ego, and you supplement that with a pool of around 12-20 additional points. You need high values in psyche to assign a mage or cleric. I made two of each race and class. There's a training round after creation, during which your stats may go up or down.

         

The game starts in the wilderness, at night.

        

The game begins in what seems like a random place in Surya. The game uses the same interface as 2088, dominated by an exploration window and a message window. It has acquired a few features since the previous game. A row of command icons duplicates the most common menu selections. There's a map of the current continent, showing the party's current position as a blinking cursor. A clock tracks the time, which only advances when you act, not when you sit still. A compass points the way to the nearest town, and a set of status bars show the current health of the party members.

    

Movement is accomplished with the mouse (you click on your destination) or the numberpad. Commands are found under the menus at the top. Most have a keyboard backup, but in all cases, this involves using the Apple II GS's "command" key, mapped in the emulator to ALT. This is mildly annoying. The game isn't very interactive. There are no chests to find, doors to open, or places to search. All you can really do is attack, talk, camp, shuffle player inventory, and mix spells. The party has started with only daggers, no spell components, and no gold.

    

Following the coast, I make my way to the first town, called Varnas. It has a healer, a magic components shop, a transport shop, and a transport repair shop. Other continents are accessible by ship, and the manual suggests you start saving money for a ship right away. 

           

As with Ultima, spells in this game require reagents.

         

There are about a dozen NPCs. Conversation hasn't changed since the last game. Although there are different dialogue buttons--"background," "introduction", "new topic," and "more detail"--they all serve to basically advance the same verbose (and often recursive) narrative. For instance, these are the results with the first NPC I find, Emilio:

      

• Background: I am from Dharthi originally. I came here to explore the dungeons of Surya. I'm just resting in Varnas for a while. I'll go to the dungeons soon. I've been talking to people in this village, but it seems like nobody knows where any dungeons are. Before I go, I'll have to stop at that place they call Kota. 

• Introduction: I have sailed to this land from Dharthi. I like Varnas. It is one of the better ports that I have been to. I'm just here to get some supplies and some information before heading to the dungeons. A lot of travelers come up to me and ask me questions. They must realize that I'm a traveler too since I am a dwarf. But I don't know that much more than anybody else.

 

Chatting with Emilio.

             

• New Topic: Sailing up here was an interesting experience. Kind of seasickening. I'm used to doing all my travel by land. As far as I'm concerned, the land is always the best way to get places. They should build a land bridge from Surya to Dharthi. At their closest, our two kingdoms aren't that far apart.

• More Detail: I sailed here from Normandy. We went north through the bay and then headed northwest. We then started following the western coast of Surya. I noticed that most of the islands south of Surya are pleasant and full of meadows or light forests. But there is one island covered with mountains. The mountains are very tall. Quite bizarre. I must go there one day.

      

There's also an option to ask an NPC for a specific object if you also have the name of the person who told you to request it.

       

I suspect I'm going to be asking Nathan for a CACTUS FLOWER and telling him that DARCIE sent me.

       

The NPCs are relatively interesting, bringing us perhaps the closest to Ultima IV-VII dialogue that we've seen in any other RPG. They don't seem quite as mission-driven as their Ultima counterparts--sometimes, they just ramble--but every paragraph fills in a bit about the game world and its lore.

    

Some other NPCs in Varnas include:

• Bagdu. He used to be a map-maker. His expedition was recently canceled because of the disappearance of the other cartography party. He notes that much of Bharas is covered in water.

• Giselle. She loves ancient artifacts and hopes to collect them someday in a "Giselleum." Her father wrote The Book of Legends about the "ancients," a race that had the ability to create magic amulets and gems, but these seem to have been lost to the ages.

• Igor: His family is descended from those who used to run the Prisons of Lakmos, which are now ruins. A mysterious man was once incarcerated there--no one knew his name or crime--and he somehow got hold of an Amulet of Invisibility. He was killed trying to escape, and the amulet was lost in the dungeon. Igor intends to go look for it.

• Baal the Goat Man: Says he has a secret but I'm not ready for it yet. Goats are apparently going to be a thing in this game.

• Baxter: Goes on about Varnas's history as a port town. He says he knows a lot about history and hopes to get appointed to the Varnas Proud committee.

• Dritte: A follower of Yajiv the Big-Nosed, who has the gift of prophecy. No one knows if Yajiv came from another world or just nearby Kota.

• Julius and Hermes. Two marine merchants who were recently lost at sea. They ended up at the city of Davenport in Hawa, where elves told them that all lost ships end up there.

• Craig the Elder. A village elder who governs Varnas with four other elders. He's always had the sobriquet "the Elder"; the fact that he is an elder now is just a coincidence.

• Andreas: A former farmer who notes that Varnas grows most of the food of Surya. The meadows to the north grow a lot of food and also have a lot of game.

• Ralph. A dungeon explorer who tells me there are three dungeons in Surya. One is the Caves of the Yukon to the east.

     

I find the sage named Yajiv in a secluded area. He's twice the size of a normal man and surrounded by unicorns. Unfortunately, I apparently need the "Tassels of Learning" to speak with him.

     

Focusing on his nose somewhat misses the point.

      

Leaving Varnas, I head east, hoping to find the Caves of the Yukon, but instead I find a second village, Kota. I note its location but decide to move on until I have some money. The land is quite large, and it's hard to find anything, particularly since the day/night cycle (which works like Ultima VI, bringing a fog of darkness around the periphery at night) makes it hard to see.

       

It takes a while before I have my first combat, with two peasants. They attack me, so I don't feel bad. As with 2088, combat occurs on a tactical grid. In its sheer number of options--move, attack, cast, use an item, enter and exit transports--it shows similarity to the Gold Box games. Unfortunately, executing the commands isn't quite as elegant. Particularly annoying is simple movement, which requires you to click and drag the character to an adjacent space. I don't know why numberpad-based movement suddenly stops working here.

       

Two peasants attack from the top of the screen.

         

But the developers did a great job with auto-combat options in 2088, and that same control panel returns here. In 1989, it was probably the most sophisticated calibration of auto-combat that we'd seen at that point, and it remains so through 1992. Unfortunately, even with the computer in charge, you have to activate each round manually. The manual hints at something called "continuous combat" where this isn't necessary, but I don't see any options for that. 

           

Various autocombat options.

       

I eventually find the Caves of Yukon and enter. Dungeon exploration is first-person. The compass changes to show your facing direction; the world map changes to show a dungeon map; and a separate button now brings up an auto-map. Unfortunately, I'm clearly here too soon, and I get slaughtered by the first group of enemies I fight.

      

Inside the Caves of Yukon.

My dagger-wielding level 1 characters aren't ready for this.

        

With my remaining time, I head to Kota and make the rounds of another dozen NPCs. An elf from Hawa named David said he had come to Kota to learn magic from Matthias, only to discover that Matthias didn't really know anything. He now plans to return to Hawa and study with Yaniv the Powerful. I don't really understand magic in this game yet. I know you have to mix reagents as in Ultima, but I'm not sure if there's a training component. I need to head back to the manual.

   

Two NPCs encouraged me to consult the sage Yajiv, and yet there were two self-identified prophets in town. Gwendolyn the Gifted said she recently dreamed of an evil being arising from a chasm in the earth. Another seer named Io said that I would have to purchase a ship and travel far.

   

Kota's main industry seems to be growing and processing turmeric. The town has a food shop, so I think I'll hang out in the area, practice combat, and build up my food stock. The game has offered a solid, Ultima-esque start so far. My only complaint is that I have no clue as to what my party is doing or what our place is in all of this. I don't know whether it's supposed to be implicit that we're on a quest to find the missing cartographers or if there's something else at work. Maybe we'll know by next time.

    

Time so far: 3 hours