Dungeon Master II: Won!

 

The endgame cinematic reveals the real villain, and it doesn't make much sense.

       

I was pretty close to the endgame when I wrote last time. There were only two more levels, and one of them (the roof of Skullkeep) was completely open and flat. The other wasn't even a complete level, although like the others it was packed with puzzles.

   

The fun started shortly after I arrived from Level 3 and found a locked door with a keyhole. There was a water source in the area and a pentagram back to town. The first "puzzle" involved a corridor of five squares with electrical pylons on both walls. Blasts of electricity arced across the corridor in a cyclical pattern, with a brief pause between blasts. It took a couple of reloads to get the timing right, but with the "Speed" spell active, I was able to just fly through. A switch on the other side turned them off.

      

Can't I just hack through that conduit?

     

The room on the other side had an alcove with a couple of keys. I picked them up and found myself sucked into some kind of magnet in the square just before the alcove. Nothing I did would release the party from the squares. I tried several spells, dropping everything, and a few items. The only thing that worked was to throw one of the keys back into the alcove.

   

Some experimentation revealed that the onyx key was the one I needed for the locked door. The other was a skull key. At first, I thought I could just open the door with the onyx key and then take it back and swap it for the skull key. Unfortunately, removing the onyx key from the lock just caused the door to close. I forgot about the skull key for a while and just explored the area beyond the door. I soon found a ladder that, when lowered by a lever, took me back to the third floor. With this new way of accessing the interior of Level 4, I no longer needed to keep the onyx key door open, so I returned and traded it for the skull key. 

       

Trapped in some kind of gravity well.

    

The center room on Level 4 is an open 7 x 7 area. In the center is some kind of enormous, pointed stone set on a kind of receptacle with electronic indicators on it. A path of square tile (the rest of the room is more rough-hewn) leads south to the corridor, at the end of which is some kind of gate.

  

There are four switches in the room. The first is in an alcove at the north end. It causes a lightning bolt to shoot from a box with a couple of electrical coils on the north wall. The bolt goes directly to the stone and shoots down the walkway to the gate, but by itself it apparently isn't enough.

Two other switches are on the southeast and southwest walls, right next to two fireball launchers. When activated, they launch fireballs that shoot completely past the stone on the right and left sides. I figured I'd have to find some way to angle them into the stone. I started hunting around and, sure enough, there were a couple of reflectors behind a locked door to the west.

    

The final level and the setup of the final room.

     

To open the door, I had to use the skull key in a keyhole. This activated a teleporter that took me into the small room with the two reflectors, a brazier, and a table. The problem was, there wasn't room for anything else. I couldn't even leave the square I landed in, let alone make my way to the other side of the locked door. Among all the items in the room, I knew the table was the only destructible one, but it was at an angle from the party, so I couldn't hit it. Then it occurred to me that's exactly what reflectors are for. By shooting arrows or spells into the reflector in front of me, I could angle them to hit the table and eventually destroy it. This gave me enough room to get to the door and open it, and then to push the reflectors out of the room and into the stone room, angling them so they would reflect the fireballs into the stone.

   

Moving a reflector into place as another goddamned minion appears.

   

Once I got them all set up, I pulled the switches. The two fireball launchers worked fine, but suddenly the electrical current was no longer running. I figured it must have something to do with the generator, so I returned to the generator room on Level 1, and sure enough, it had stopped running. Down in the basement, I found that some enemy minions had arrived and driven away the cyclops-golems, who were no longer feeding the furnace. I killed the minions and the golems got back to work.

   

I had to kill about 50 minions while exploring Level 4. They essentially never stopped coming. As I covered last time, I found them horribly annoying, although I have to admire how the game has them work against you by undoing the puzzles you've already solved. I'm not sure that's a "first"--I'd have to look through my list and think about it--but it's certainly rare. Back on the unfortunate side, the minions were the only enemies on this level, and unless I'm already misremembering, they were also the only enemies on Level 3.

   

Anyway, back in the portal chamber, I got both the lightning and fire hitting the stone, then went into the corridor to the south and threw the switch. A wormhole appeared in the middle of the gate, showing me a black void on the other side with a blue pathway.

      

Gates to another world!

     

I didn't go in right away. I had a hunch the endgame would be on the other side, and yet I'd found another ladder up. I figured I'd check the next level before proceeding further. The ladder went to the roof of the keep, which was swarming with those horned slug archers that I'd faced on Level 2. Each one had a quiver full of slayer arrows and began pelting the party immediately.

  

In the center of the roof was some kind of electrical contraption. It had a lightning rod on top and four coils in the corners. I couldn't find any way at all to interact with it. I don't know what it does. I get the impression that the electricity on the level below is powered by the generator. If the lightning rod is meant to be a fourth power source, the stone doesn't need it.

         

One big waste of time.

       

I spent some time clearing the slugs, having to resort to a bit of ladder-scumming, but I eventually got bored and decided to try the final area. Before I did, I refreshed my memory of the game's backstory, as I had lost track of what I was doing a long time ago. The stone, the energies that power it, and the generator that produces those energies must be what the backstory calls the "ZO Link." Some evil entity is trying to cross "the void" to our world. The old woman had told Torham to turn on the ZO Link and use it to enter the void and "attack him there before he attacks us here!" The framing story doesn't mention who "he" is, but elsewhere the manual gives the name of your foe as Dragoth.

   

As I entered the void, I found only more minions at first, but then, across an expanse of nothing, I saw a large character who looked credibly like a "Dragoth." He started hurling missiles at the party, so I tried to find a way over to him. The void area has a number of platforms connected by pathways that appear and disappear. I had to time crossing the pathways to reach Dragoth's platform. I fell a few times, and even more during the battle with Dragoth, and falling seemed to take the party to a random location back in Zalk. Sometimes I landed in Skullkeep; sometimes I landed in the graveyard or some part of the wilderness. I mostly reloaded these times rather than make my way all the way back to the top of the keep.

       

Dragoth across the void.

   

I eventually made it to Dragoth's platform. The original Dungeon Master served up a difficult, chaotic final combat, and this game certainly lives up to that precedent. Dragoth blasts the party with devastating magic attacks, including "Poison Field," which screws up the battlefield. He has a spell that shoves the party a square backwards and I think he can also perform a separate physical shove if he gets adjacent to the party. I had a hard enough time not walking off the platform--god, I grew to hate the screaming sound effect when the party falls--let alone avoiding his shoves. He is excellent at dodging spells, and when he doesn't dodge them, he often casts the "Reflective Mist" spell and sends it hurling back at the party. He continuously summons minions to annoy and distract the party and whittle down their hit points. Finally, if he gets too low on hit points, he goes through the portal to his homeworld to chug some potions (I didn't know what he was doing at the time, but a spoiler site told me about this later).

    

Dragoth, about to shove us off the platform.

    

I tried several strategies, including various offensive and protective spells. I tried summoning my own minions, but he killed them almost immediately. I tried dodging around him and using physical attacks, but even when I avoided his attacks, I got walloped mercilessly by his minions, and before long, he would manage to push me off the platform. I'd tried casting my own "Reflection Mist," but Dragoth just shoved me out of it. Everything happens so fast that there's very little time to line up spells, let alone enter your inventory and drink healing potions and such. Maybe some players can navigate this battle effectively, but it destroyed any illusions I had about having achieved any proficiency with dodging and attacking.

     

The infuriating thing is that the game gives you no clues as to how many hit points an enemy has and how much damage you've already done. In my multiple attempts to destroy Dragoth, I didn't know if I'd come close, or if I wasn't doing any damage at all. Even worse, I wasn't sure he was beatable. I thought for a while that maybe there was something I hadn't done that makes him vulnerable. Maybe I needed to follow him into his homeworld (you can't get through the door), or do something with the lightning rod on top of Skullkeep (spoiler sites, consulted after I won, confirmed it does nothing). Until he died, I didn't know any of this. I wasn't even 100% sure I was fighting Dragoth. For all I knew, it was just some intermediary minion, and I'd need to kill him, go through his portal, and scale another 10-level tower.

         

A portal to another world. Alas, it will not let me through.

    

I considered various tactics and strategies:

   

• Spend more time with the game's various weapons and make sure I have the most damaging ones.

• Spend more time with spells. Perhaps there's a particular spell that devastates Dragoth or protects from his attacks (an "Anti-Push" spell?) that I don't know because I still don't know what half the spells do.

• Attack him for as long as I can, then run away and heal before trying again. Maybe he doesn't heal while the party does--although I think most enemies do.

• Go back to the surface with my fat purse and load up on usable magic items (incidentally, the two magic boxes, which I saved, don't seem to freeze time in the void).

• Grind some more levels.

• Stand near the safety of the entrance portal and just fire spells across the gap at him. This would give me more opportunity to line up spells and duck through the portal to heal, but he's so good at avoiding spells that I think it would take forever. 

   

The problem with all of these is that they involved dealing with dozens more minions, and I was just sick to death of them. 

      

Trying to stop the minions by blocking a portal with a reflector. They just moved it aside.

    

So I'm afraid I won in a kind of cheating way. I know this will upset and disgust many of you; you're just going to have to learn to accept it for any game whose success relies on quick hand-eye coordination. I wouldn't resort to this in a turn-based game. But there are times I just don't have the dexterity to win an action-oriented battle like this. Maybe if everything was controlled by the keyboard.

   

In my winning battle, I used various protective and buffing spells, some poison attacks, and a lot of fireballs. I fought him for about 30 seconds, then stopped to save if my actions had been mostly successful. Another 30 seconds, then save again. If I fell off the platform or took too much damage or wasted too many spell points casting spells that didn't work, I reloaded. Even doing this, I couldn't defeat him without losing Seri and Cletus and nearly losing Saros. I had Cletus and Saros attack with melee weapons in the front while Torham and Seri used "Fireball" spells from the back, although eventually I had to stop because towards the end of the battle, he started reflecting almost all of them.

         

Near the endgame, Dragoth returns from his realm.

      

I frankly don't know what ultimately killed him. I was about to reload when from several squares away, he started shouting "No! No!" and then the endgame sequence took over. I think maybe he wandered into one of his own poison fields or walked in front of one of his own minion's spells.

   

The endgame offered a cute animated video. Dragoth gets teleported to a cave somewhere, likely in his own world. He materializes and kneels before a robed man sitting in a large chair between two braziers. "Dragoth!" the mysterious figure says. "What news do you bring?"

    

"Theron's champions are more powerful than I expected, Lord Chaos," Dragoth rasps.

      

Dragoth explains himself to Lord Chaos.

     

"Failure," Lord Chaos responds.

   

"Yes."

   

"You know my price for failure," Chaos says as he reaches into a bowl, pulls out a slimy worm creature, and pops it in his mouth. As Dragoth protests, Chaos surrounds him with magical energies and turns him into a slithering reptile, the same kind that I fought several times in the game. I see from spoiler sites that it's called a "tiger worm." It runs circles around the floor.

        

The fate of Dragoth.

    

Chaos continues: "So, Theron, we are enemies again. How long will your champions survive this time?" Roll credits.

   

This denouement is clearly meant to tie the sequel to the original game, but I don't really understand how. Why did Dragoth refer to us as "Theron's champions," and why does Chaos address his last comment to Theron? Theron doesn't appear anywhere in the backstory or in the game itself, nor is there any NPC who could plausibly be Theron in disguise. And why is Chaos even still around? The whole point of the first Dungeon Master is that both pure Order and pure Chaos were evil, and to complete the quest, Theron's champions had to fuse the two halves back into the Grey Lord again. 

        

Well, surely the answers will come in Dungeon Master III. In the meantime, share your strategies for winning the final battle, and I'll try to conquer Dragoth more legitimately for the "Summary and Rating."

   

Final time: 37 hours