The Power Stones of Ard: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

         

The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone

United States

Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)

Released in 1987 for Tandy Color Computer 3

Date Started: 23 August 2022

Date Ended: 22 October 2022

Total Hours: 25

Difficulty: Hard-Very Hard (4.5/5)

Final Rating: 25

Ranking at Time of Posting: 226/483 (47%)

        

Wow, did Ard put me through the ringer. It's been a long time since I had the experience of repeatedly saying "#@%* this" and giving up on a game "for the last time" only to wake up at 02:00 with a voice in the back of my head saying "what if you tried this?"

   

I ended up admiring the game somewhat. Some of the things that originally struck me as unfair turned out to be fairer (if still not exactly "fair") after considering all the clues. For instance, you heard last time that the player is expected to intuit that he needs to SCREW a peg, SEAL a hole, and SPIN a silver coin. During this session, I found a room with musical notes on the wall. I knew immediately that the puzzle was going to involve the lyre, but what verb? PLAY? PICK, PLUCK, or PLUNK? No, the player has to figure out that the right verb is STRUM. How many times do you imagine that you've said STRUM in your life?

   

But just as I was planning to eviscerate the game for requiring such a leap of logic, I noticed a pattern: all of the special commands begin with an "S." SCREW PEG, SEAL HOLE, SLICE APPLE, STACK BOXES, STRAIGHTEN PICTURE, and so forth. This realization clicked with a clue that, "Specials need an S," although at the time I thought it was simply saying that you have to hit "S" to input the special command in the first place. But that's a basic instruction, right there in the manual; clearly, a "hint" must be saying something else. Now, if I knew that I was looking for an "S" verb in all those situations, would I have figured out SCREW, STRAIGHTEN, and STRUM? I don't know. But it's less impossible than I originally made it sound.

    

I never figured out what this encounter was about.

    

Some of the other things I complained about last time turned out to have solutions, too. You cannot, after all, get into a "walking dead" situation because of a lack of flint or a lockpick. Those items show up in their original locations after they disappear from your inventory. They just take some time. As for the room on Level 2 that you can only pass through once, it turns out that the arm bands you loot from the Tor Beast will teleport you (albeit in unpredictable ways) if you invoke them with the EARTH trigger. You can use them to get past that door. 

   

Lest you now think the game is too easy, let me relate something that I didn't discover until towards the end of my final session. Because I had been saving with save states, I didn't realize that the game enforces permadeath. The only way you can mitigate it is to purchase a Soul Crystal from the temple, which will automatically resurrect you, but you lose all your accumulated equipment. You might as well just start over.

     

I did start over after my last session, creating a new character called "Chet" and prioritizing strength, as I was always getting over-encumbered with my previous character. I carefully mapped everything and took detailed notes, almost as if I were making a walkthrough, as I was sure I would get stuck somewhere and would have to leave it for a later player to finish. That turned out not to be the case, but it almost was.

The Spirit Stone is at the bottom of a five-level dungeon with about 250 total rooms and about 100 unique rooms (there are a lot of generic corridors and/or rooms with nothing in them). The layout is complex and difficult to map because the levels are interconnected and, unlike Dungeon Master II, they don't preserve fidelity of distance between departure on one level and arrival on another. Level 2, for instance, is made up of four major sections, all interconnected with Level 3, and it took me a while to figure out how they fit.

       

Level 2 alone had about 75 rooms.

   

The steps and puzzles absolutely necessary to reach the endgame are:

    

• Solve the hermit's riddle and get the apple from the apple tree.

• At the Thieves' Guild, get the Green Potion as related last time.

• On Level 1, open a coffin and kill a vampire lord, taking from his corpse the Crystal Key. He didn't show up the first few times I passed through the level, so his appearance is either tied to an inventory item or a character level.

• On Level 2, figure out the SEVER HEAD and SEAL HOLE puzzles related last time.

• On Level 2, kill the Tor Beast and get his Arm Band, as related last time. Solve the box puzzle, find the Silver Coin, use it to escape the skeleton room. Find a lyre in a secret room.

• On Level 3, STRUM the lyre in a music room to open a door to Level 4.

• On Level 4, find a room with a gold star on the floor. The hermit gave a riddle comparing an apple core to a star, and a gypsy riddle said, "A star, revealed a star, reveals a star." In this room, SLICE APPLE to make a Star Sword magically appear.

       

If it accomplished nothing else, Ard is probably the only game where you obtain the ultimate weapon by slicing an apple.

     

• Elsewhere on Level 4, find a room with red and black panels. There are messages in other rooms that encourage you to press red three times and not to press black at all. Pressing red three times opens a secret door forward.

• On Level 5, find a Silver Sword at the bottom of a pit and use it to kill a werewolf. Also find a Bone Ring, which protects you from dragon breath. In an old bedroom, take the hint that a picture is tilted and STRAIGHTEN PICTURE, which opens another secret door. Use the Arm Bands to cross an area of black smoke that dumps you into a pit if you enter.

• Kill a dragon.

• GO to the dragon's secret chamber. Use the Crystal Key on a Crystal Chest and find the Spirit Stone within.

• Make your way back to the main entrance to town and then leave.

     

The rest of the large levels are mostly about providing hints for how to accomplish the list above. There is a subset of puzzles that are optional, good primarily for improving inventory or giving the player a chance to fully restore a character without having to return to town. For instance, the "alter" I had discovered for my last entry turned out to be one of the latter. Hold a gem in hand and SACRIFICE it at the altar, and attributes are fully restored. There are Blue Scrolls and Blue Potions to find that do the same. A Red Book found in town fully restores you if you read it while sitting (another "S" command) in a red chair in a red room. Two fountains grant you healing potions if you fill your flask at them; a third has a water elemental attack you every time you enter.

        

A perfect place to relax and read a book.

      

The weakest part of the game is the RPG side. You can attain at least 11 levels, but each level just brings new types of enemies that hit harder and take longer to kill. I avoided leveling up past Level 5 as I explored the dungeon, as higher levels attracted demons and giants and other creatures capable of killing you after a few unlucky rolls. Inventory improvements are the only way to get an edge against enemies, and as you explore the dungeon, you find items like a Breastplate, Bracers, Boots, Chain Mail, and various rings. (Every piece of armor you find improves your rating automatically. Nonsensically, the Small Shield and Large Shield both "stack" to have a combined effect.) There are also five "artifact" items, each with a different "trigger word" (all clued by wall messages). An Amulet automatically destroys demons with the DESTRUCT keyword; the Star Sword becomes more powerful with the STARLIGHT keyword; a Gold Ring automatically restores strength (keeping you from having to sleep in dangerous places) if you say REPOSE; and there's a magic wand that shoots fireballs in response to BRIMSTONE.

       

This message has all the "triggers" in one sentence.

     

Spells, on the other hand, are mostly useless since their reagents are only good for one use before they disappear. "Lighting Bolt" and "Fireball" are both for emergency use only, since you have to make your way back to town and replace the Silver Wire and Fire Ruby that they require (respectively) after each casting. I never found the Snail Shell required for "Hold." "Healing" only restores about 10 hit points for the Holy Water it requires. I never noticed "Augment" doing anything at all. "Detect" finds secret doors--helpful, but unnecessary since you can just bump into the walls. "Knock" and "Light" are the only ones for which the reagents are good for multiple castings. There are about half a dozen locked doors and dark rooms between the dungeon's entrance and the Spirit Stone, and if you're lucky, one lockpick and one piece of flint will get you there. Otherwise, you have to "Teleport" back to town, get another, and try again.

   

There are an awful lot of puzzles that I didn't solve, and I don't know what they would have led to. On my "mysteries" list are:

      

• That jet of toxic gas that I described last time. The text in the game files suggests you're supposed to fill a flask of it, but nothing I did worked. Similarly, I never used the SQUEEZE FLASK command that you find in the files.

• There's a message suggesting that you need to say MAGIC in a particular room to get teleported to another one. I think I said it in every unique room, but I got nowhere.

• I solved most of the puzzle messages (including an interleave, an acrostic, and a cryptogram), but this one had me stumped: AU,CDE@TN? (UUU)N4(LEV84)FU(ON)T(RMB&). The best I can figure is that it's some form of pre-Internet "leet" speak. The latter part seems to be saying something like, "If you own the Arm Band."

• Level 4 has a statue of a toad with emerald eyes. If you STRIKE EYES, a toad demon appears and must be defeated, but upon his defeat, nothing happens. Maybe that's all that the idol is good for, but it feels like there's more to be done here.

       

Nothing toad me what to do here.

       

• Level 4 also has a room with a pit and a skeleton chained to the wall on the other side. You can J)ump across the pit if you're strong enough, but once you do, there seems to be no way to interact with the skeleton or otherwise do anything.

• Also on Level 4: a silver globe suspended in the air with a keyhole where Baron's Keep should be. I'm sure it opens to the Silver Key, an object that the files suggest is in the game, but I never found it.

• Items that exist but I never found: Snail Shell, Silver Key, Glowing Orb.

• I never found any use for the feather.

• I never found out what "each race has a special" meant.

     

Inspecting the text in the game flies only gets you so far because the game doesn't really acknowledge most of what you do. Except in a few places, you don't get messages like, "Your Crystal Key opens the chest" or "Your strike reverberates against the idol's eyes." Instead, you do something and the resulting item just appears, or the resulting door just opens. Thus, an inspection can tell you what commands and objects exist, but not always how they interact with each other or where to use them.

   

At the game's conclusion, you enter a large room with a dragon. The Bone Ring protects against its fire breath. The Star Sword is the only weapon that will damage it. It's still a nearly impossible fight, as the dragon gets five physical attacks per round. I had no chance against him at Level 5, so I had to return to the surface and pay for advancement before I had any chance. Even at Level 10, I could last three rounds against him at best. I tried a lot of strategies, including drinking the Red Potion in the first round (which doubles your attacks in subsequent rounds) and wasting a round to invoke the Star Sword's enhancement, thus doing extra damage in subsequent rounds. I still died about seven times--keeping in mind that these would have required a restart of the game if I had been playing "honestly." Finally, the dice went my way and I killed him.

     

My attempt to defeat the dragon at Level 5 didn't go well.

   

Beyond the dragon is a room with a crystal chest, which opens with the Crystal Key. Inside is the Spirit Stone. You have no idea how happy I was when I finally had it in hand. I gleefully went to put the Blink Dust in hand and "Teleport" back to town . . . only to discover that on this one trip out of all my trips to the dungeon, I had forgotten to re-purchase Blink Dust first. I had to walk back out, a process made a little easier by the fact that the Spirit Stone adds 5 to your armor rating.

        

Samuel L. Jackson would be proud of my response to that last message.

    

Back in the village, I just had to go north from the main gates to get the winning screen above. It's been years since I felt so relieved to win a game. Winning Ard legitimately would be a hell of an achievement.

   

Let's do a quick GIMLET:

    

• 3 points for the game world. The backstory is derivative but reasonably well-told, and the character's purpose is clear.

• 2 points for character creation and development. Creation has a few options, but you really need strength and dexterity to have a shot. "Development" mostly just gets you more hit points and harder enemies.

• 2 points for NPCs. There are a few of them, but the game doesn't make very extensive use of its keyword-based dialogue. There are maybe half a dozen valid words and responses.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. I give all of that to the puzzles, some of which are enemy-based. Ard makes the most of its 26 commands, and while some of the special commands were a bit arcane, none of the solutions are patently absurd.

• 3 points for magic and combat. The combat system is underdeveloped, relying far too much on luck. Magic is mostly for navigation, although I like the reagent and "trigger word" system.

          

Better prepared at Level 9, I finally defeat the dragon.

      

• 3 points for equipment. There are weapons and armor items to find. All armor items are illogically additive, and the game is a bit obtuse as to the damage caused by weapons. A wide variety of healing items keeps things a little interesting.

• 2 points for the economy. Money is a bit too easy to obtain, and by mid-game, you're ignoring most gold.

• 2 points for a main quest with no side quests or roleplaying options. The ability to walk away by leaving the main gates at any time isn't quite worth a third point.

• 2 points for graphic, sound, and inputs. While I enjoy the 26-letter keyboard interface, the game damaged it a bit by making you type out too many full words too often (e.g., every time you change the item in hand, you have to type the entire name) and by making BACKSPACE delete everything you've typed instead of just the last letter. Graphics are minimal and sound is nonexistent.

• 2 points for gameplay. It's a bit too linear, too hard, and too long for its limited content.

   

That gives us a final score of 25, which falls comfortably below my "recommended" threshold, and yet there's an extent to which I recommend it anyway. While it doesn't measure up perfectly to my ideal CRPG, it succeeds well in its own unique niche. I never heard from author Bill Cleveland, but I suspect it satisfied his intentions. It's also worth remembering that the various Color Computer models were under-served when it came to RPGs, so owners would want a game that was long and challenging. Ard was only one of two that I've identified for 1987; the other is the similarly-long Gates of Delirium. Ard is also a highly original game; unlike most of its Color Computer contemporaries, including Delirium, its interface takes no obvious inspiration from a previous title.

     

Ard had a 1990 sequel called The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar. It sends the hero in search of the Mind Stone. Screenshots show a similar interface but with more color and with additions such as a character portrait, monster portraits, and a compass. The navigation window shows a 3D view rather than a static "overhead" view. As far as I can tell, these are the only games that Bill Cleveland or the Three C's Project produced.

    

Struggling through some of these titles can be a lonely, frustrating experience, so again I want to thank LanHawk for helping me through this one. And on that topic--and on the topic of adventure-RPG hybrids in general--there's going to be some more CRPG Addict/Adventurer's Guild synergy coming up in November, as both I and Will Moczarski will be playing BloodNet starting the first week of November. Stick around!