Game 465: Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep (1993)

 

I think if they tried, they could have fit a few more typefaces onto this screen.

        

Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep

United States

FTL Games (developer); Interplay Entertainment (publisher)

Released 1993 for PC-98; 1994 for FM Towns and SEGA CD; 1995 for Amiga, DOS, and Macintosh

Date Started: 15 August 2022 

    

It's hard to count the number of Dungeon Master-inspired games that I've played since the 1987 original almost 12 years ago: the Eye of the Beholder series, the Abandoned Places series, Black Crypt, Knightmare, Captive, Arcan, Towers . . . there must be three or four more. We even saw a top-down adaptation with DarkSpyre. Few of them have rivaled the perfect blend of real-time combat, focused character development, and mechanical puzzle solving as the original. There have been clones that dealt with what I thought were weaknesses of the original--no economy, impenetrable equipment data, poor story--but not without sacrificing something from their progenitor. By 1993, fans must have been rabid for a sequel.

   

Unfortunately, unless they were Japanese, they had to wait another couple of years. For some reason, FTL, a San Diego-based studio, decided to develop the sequel for the PC-98 first. (And for some reason, the Japanese version lacked the words "The Legend of" in the subtitle. I'll try to sort these questions for the final entry.) The result is that the 1995 DOS port I'm playing feels almost premature. It has noticeably better graphics and sound than the 1993 games I've been playing. Still, many of the game's elements seem already dated for 1993 and particularly so for 1995. I doubt the two-year delay did FTL any favors when it came to U.S. reviews.

     

By the power of Skullkeep!

       

The backstory for Skullkeep has nothing to do with the original Dungeon Master. I'm not even sure they're set in the same world, which here is called Zalk. Skullkeep is a long-abandoned fortress on a remote island, rumored to hold the remains of some kind of machine called the Zo Link. A young warrior named Torham Zed has been sent to the island by his uncle, Mylius, who serves on some kind of governing body called the World Council. Torham discovers that evil is stirring in Skullkeep. Weird, evil little orbs keep teleporting into the world "from the Void" and then flying directly into the castle.

   

Torham meets an old woman who initially mistakes him for Mylius. Just before one of the orbs kills her, she talks about someone trying to "cross the Void" and enter the world, and she begs Torham to put the machine back together, use it to somehow cross the Void himself, and "attack him there before he attacks us here!" Torham's problem is that Skullkeep is sealed with a lock that requires four keys, and no one knows where the keys are.

      

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed when it comes to Dungeon Master's character classes and methods of character development. Every character is some mix of fighter, ninja, wizard, and priest, with their strengths indicated by ordinal levels in each of those classes. The first four levels are, in order, neophyte, novice, apprentice, and journeyman. As with the original, you don't create characters but choose them. Torham himself is a non-negotiable member of the party. He is a fighter first (apprentice), priest and wizard second (novice), and a ninja last (neophyte). He begins with a dagger, leather armor (jerkin, pants, and boots), a canteen, three gold coins, a silver coin, and a gem.

 

Gameplay opens with Torham in what the manual calls the "Hall of Champions," but which just looks like a bunch of caves. There, Torham can walk up to a variety of what looks like cryo-stasis machines and view the inventories and statistics of the occupants. (This sequel, in both the backstory and in-game graphics, seems to suggest a greater fusion of fantasy and science-fiction than its predecessor; there were times during the opening hour that it reminded me of Perihelion.) There are 15 potential champions to choose from, each with different stats (strength, dexterity, wisdom, vitality, anti-magic, and anti-fire, plus maximum health, stamina, and mana), levels, and inventories.

        

I'm not looking at that face for dozens of hours.

      

The champions don't have explicit races. Most of them are human, but Het Farvil has weird hair that suggests some plant DNA. Equus, despite his equine name, looks like a bull, albeit with horns pointed in the wrong direction. Bane Blade Cleaver is some kind of goblin. I have no idea what Cletus is--a monster with facial horns and a third eye or gem in the middle of his head. Anders Light Wielder has pointy ears.

   

I went with Cletus (primarily a fighter), Seri Flamehair (primarily a priest), and Saros Shadow Follower (primarily a wizard). You can rename all the heroes, including Torham, once they're in the party, although I didn't. There's an empty chamber, presumably for Torham himself, although this conflicts a bit with the backstory.

        

Seri Flamehair has a couple of good statistics.

        

The interface is mostly unchanged from the first game, with just a bit more style and ornamentation to some of the buttons. Unfortunately, this extends to the use of the keyboard, which again offers nothing except movement and the use of number keys to see character portraits. The only major change is the fusing of the attack, formation, and spellcasting elements into a single complex panel. Apparently influenced by Eye of the Beholder, the panel now depicts hands when the character is unarmed and the regular weapon icon when armed. You can dual-wield, which I don't think was possible in the original. More on magic and combat later.

   

The inventory screen is entirely unchanged. Almost immediately, I get annoyed by the inventory system all over again. Saros has a "Cloak of Night." What does that mean? Cletus has an "Illumulet." Does that provide light? Nothing seems to change if I take it off. Then again, I remind myself, I probably would have had the same objections to Eye of the Beholder except that I'm more familiar, from other games, with what standard  D&D magical items do. 

   

One minor change is that a sound option has been added to the inventory screen, with the ability to adjust the volume of sound effects and music independently. This is one element that makes the game feel more like it exists in its port year of 1995. By 1993, not only do few games offer the ability to mute music without muting sound, hardly any game has volume settings for either. Being able to lower the music volume without muting it means I'm less likely to turn it off completely. In the caves, the music was unobjectionable anyway--more atmospheric than melodic (again, I can't help but compare it to Perihelion, although I realize there's little chance of any direct influence). This changed on the next level, with a highly repetitive and annoying (to me) melody, and the music went off. I'll periodically give it a try in later areas.

       

I had a lot of paragraphs with no images in between, so here's a shot of a window where you can click on the curtains to open and close them.

       

As I move around, I notice an unwelcome interface element. Perhaps in a nod to the growing influence of continuous-movement games, Skullkeep introduces a half-step when you move forward. You don't have to hit the forward key twice or anything; the game just automatically moves you half a square, then half a square again. I find it as awkward as the transitions used in Lands of Lore, but at least there you could turn it off. The stuttering is not there if you strafe. I find myself wondering if this is going to affect the famous combat waltz.

   

The Cave of Champions is a small 5 x 8, so I don't bother to map it. I had an entire paragraph here where I noted that the lack of an automap, while not particularly bothersome to me, was unusual for 1993 and particularly for 1995. Then I discovered the game does have a map of your surroundings, in the form of a "magic map" that you find on the next level. I do enjoy mapping, but I've also just come off a few long games that required it extensively (not to mention the aborted Tygus Horx), so I might see how far I can get without mapping, at least for the introductory areas.

       

A ladder leads up from the cave to a stonework room with a couple of exit doors. Here, not only are the game's improved graphics on display, but also some interesting new interface elements come to light. It looks like you can click on a lot more things in the environment (alas, not with any Lands of Lore or Beholder-style commentary from your party members), and some items you can even move. For instance, this room has a table blocking access to a painting. If I click on the table, I can pull it, push it, or move it left or right to get access to the painting.

         

Moving a table around the room. Because I can.

      

The table has a canteen (technically, a bota) and a gold coin. A lot of my characters started with gold, silver, and brass coins, and the manual has already alerted me that Skullkeep will have shops and an economy. Behind the painting, I find the magic map (which looks presciently like an iPad), a sack full of food, and a money box where we can put all of our coins and gems without having to take up individual inventory space. Brilliant. 

      

I mean, the game could have just had a "gold" statistic like any other game, but this works fine, too.

       

The room also has a chest with a couple of potions, plus a "solid key" that I barely see against the grey stones. Containers are a bit weird. It appears you have to put them in your hands and then open them from the combat panel rather than the inventory screen, although you can drag things to and from them from the inventory screen. It's not necessarily a problem, but there are a lot of ways in which Skullkeep reverses the conventions of similar titles, and in the opening hours, I constantly find myself clicking on the wrong things, or right-clicking when I should be left-clicking and vice versa.

      

    

The adjacent room to the east has a window with curtains that you can click to open and close. This has no functionality, but I still find it delightful. There's an altar in the room with a scroll on it. It takes me a while to read the scroll because I'm used to the Beholder way of putting it in a hand and clicking on it. Instead, what I want to do is drag it to a character's "eye" icon and hold down the mouse button. Anyway, it says: "Renew the life of a fallen champion." This is clearly our resurrection altar.

  

The key opens a northern door, which takes us to a short hallway that ends in an arch leading to the outdoors. Here, we find our first enemy--some kind of blob with two glowing eyes, blocking the path. As usual, it annoys me that in this series, you can't tell what anything's name is. 

      

My first foe. He's facing to his right here, so we only see one eye.

      

Combat works by left-clicking each character's weapon (or bare hand) in the combat panel, at which point you get a small menu of options specific to the weapon. For instance, with a dagger, you can slash, stab, or throw. A club lets you bash or throw. Bare hand options are punch and kick. Only the characters in the front row can attack enemies in front of you by default. When you click on a weapon, you also get a little panel that lets you change the orientation of the character, allowing them to attack to the side or rear, I guess if you were flanked or surrounded by enemies. In Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back, I found that I could use this effectively by orienting the two rear characters to the rear, then spinning the party around and having them attack while the front characters cooled down. Unfortunately, that's not possible here, since the moment you move or turn, all characters snap back to a forward orientation. I don't know why the developers introduced that; maybe they thought what I was doing was an exploit. The only way the rear characters will get combat experience is if I change party positioning, which to be fair isn't that hard. 

      

Some of the outdoor graphics.

       

There are more blobs as I move forward, but I find they're as likely to move away as they are to fight me. The outdoor area is initially just like an indoor dungeon, but with bushes instead of wall textures, but it soon gives way to a large, open area. There's a thunderstorm going, with associated graphics and sound. Soon, I'm mapping again, though I promise myself that I don't need to annotate every treasure this time, just major locations, stairs, and puzzles. I force myself to adopt the leftmost wall pattern that I talked about in Eye of the Beholder III although it still feels so much more natural to go right.

   

There are a lot of rocks and branches on the ground, and even a scythe and a staff. I soon find myself in an area with some kind of mosaic on the ground and a sign with an image of a sword on the other side. I note a similar sign in the square ahead of me and realize it is marking the entrance to a shop. The first one I encounter is an armor shop, complete with a guard standing in an alcove as I enter.

     

Am I meant to interpret this as some kind of technology, or just an interface abstraction?

      

I have to read the manual to understand how buying and selling works. There's a display on the wall that scrolls through what the shop has to offer, along with the buying and selling prices for those items. To buy something you scroll to the item you want, then side-step to a table to the right, where a shopkeeper presents the item on his side of the table. You then load up your side of the table with coins or items of value that he might want. Once equity has been reached, he spins the table and you take your item.

     

I'd rip this guy off, but he shrewdly blocked the way with a table.

      

If you want to sell something you step to the left table, but I can't get it to work, not even with armor. I put stuff there but nothing happens. Supposedly, putting your money box on the table also gets the shopkeeper to convert your lower-value coins to higher-value ones, but nothing happens for me. While I'm trying to figure it out, instead of putting my money box on the table, I accidentally send it sailing across the table to bonk him in the head, something the manual specifically warns against. He turns around and walks away as his guard shows up to kill the entire party in about three seconds. Thus do I get my first glimpse of the "full party death" screen, which is just an uninspiring "THE END."

     

Don't mess with loss-prevention officers.

      

I think I'll wrap up for now and figure it out next time. Classes are about to resume, and if I increase my playing-to-blogging ratio, I can get more material out of less game time and thus reduce the chances I have to take a break from the blog.

    

They didn't work very hard on this screen.

      

In writing this entry, I had to look over many of my old Dungeon Master entries, and I can't tell you how embarrassed I am, twelve years later, at my coverage of that game. I clearly had no sense of its place in history and no appreciation for how it differed from other RPGs. In nearly every entry, I mention the possibility that I'll quit the game at any moment, clearly without realizing how horribly it would have hurt my credibility if I had done so. I don't really like the idea of replaying games I've already completed (I seem to have abandoned my Pool of Radiance series), but I probably need to revisit that one and give it proper coverage.

    

Time so far: 1 hour