Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation . . .

        

Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale

United States

Mindcraft Software (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS
Date Started: 23 October 2023

Date Ended: 2 February 2024

Total Hours: 54

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: 50

Ranking at time of posting: 472/508 (93%)

    

Summary:

The fourth, last, and arguably best game in the main Magic Candle series, Bloodstone is a prequel to the first game, telling a story set in the ancient past, only centuries after the primordial gods created the world and populated it with its first inhabitants. The dwarves of the land of Tarq are beset by the monstrous Taldor, and it is the destiny of the main character to unite the dwarven kingdoms by collecting a set of fabled artifacts, including the great axe Khalmakhad (which appears in later games). He assembles a party and explores a top-down, iconographic land full of cities, towers, and dungeons.

    

Bloodstone makes no interface improvements from The Magic Candle III (1992) except that characters don't lose energy while walking. Otherwise, the strengths of the series are all here: tactical combat that requires detailed knowledge of a couple dozen spells, an open-world approach, relatively interesting NPCs with detailed dialogue, tons of lore (kept organized for you in a journal that records everything), and a variety of skills and attributes to develop. Unfortunately, character development is a little inconsistent and the game is a little miserly with its equipment upgrades. Still, the pluses outnumber the minuses, and the series definitely went out on a high note.

    

*****

    

After the last entry, I only had one dungeon remaining, but it took a while. After giving all of the artifacts to Rakan, chief of the Morin, I returned to Castle Entemar. As I had already cleared it, I just headed directly for the throne room and got teleported to a series of vast ice caverns.

   

Returning to the endgame.

    

The caverns turned out to be four levels, with a ton of rooms, and honestly I don't think a single room was necessary until the last one. I started by exploring the levels completely and entering all the rooms, but after a while, the combats got so hard that I didn't bother to re-enter if I lost. If the room didn't have another exit or otherwise indicate that it was necessary, I was liable to poke my head in and skip it. I don't know what treasures I missed by doing so, but I certainly didn't need any more money or mushrooms.

  

Aside from the rooms, Levels 1-4 offered a couple ambushes and a few places that I had to use "Walkwater." On Level 1, I found the sleeping chamber of Rohrkhad and used the password (GARTHUME) I had found ages ago. He awoke and increased everyone's endurance, charm, dexterity, agility, and resistance.

      

It's too bad we couldn't have had more of a conversation with him.

    

The caverns didn't get honestly hard until the fifth and final level, which took me far longer than all the other levels combined. The level was a large circle with about half a dozen concentric "tiers" leading down into a room in the center. There were a couple of optional rooms around the outer ring. As we worked our way around the circles and down the few flights of stairs, we were beset repeatedly by ambushes--impossible ambushes full of windhir, ghosts, yetis, firelords, necromants, and skeletiers. You don't know what those are, but suffice to say that most of them have enormous armor and hit point totals, devastating spells, and deadly melee attacks.

   

Ambushes usually result in "surprise" for the monsters, who then get to act first. Such a situation was instant death for my party members. The "Sense" spell detects the ambushes and avoids the surprises, but there are only so many times you can cast that before you forget or run out. I had an embarrassing number of reloads. The first ambush alone, with five windhirs, three necromants, and five ghosts, took nearly two hours to win on its own before I finally figured out the right combination of spells, in the right order, to keep enough characters alive to survive to the end.

      

A very nearly impossible battle.

      

Very late in my exploration of the level, I remembered a trick from the earlier games in which you could change party formation to avoid ambushes. Since ambushes are triggered by a single square, you just have to avoid that one square. A combination of formations and dismissing and re-enlisting party members can let you "leapfrog" that square, but of course only after you've reloaded a bunch of times to figure out exactly where it is. I used the technique for the last couple of ambushes, but probably took as long as just fighting the damned battles.

    

I should point out how different this situation is from the previous Candle games. In those games, just pumping the characters full of mushrooms and casting "Jump" to send them directly into melee range was enough to win every battle, unless there's one I'm misremembering. Here, enemy hit point and armor totals are so high that you absolutely need those mushrooms and "Jump" spells for each battle, but you need a lot of other strategy, too. Although I suppose it sounds like I'm complaining a bit here, I did ultimately enjoy the challenge. The Candle series always had the potential to be extremely tactical but ruined it by making the battles too easy. Bloodstone finally lives up to that potential.

 

As we finally reached the central chamber, Maxon spoke up: "Khamalkhad lies beyond this last door. Although we are weary, we must fight and triumph one last time so we can return the axe which will unite all the Dwarven tribes under one leader!!"

     

Maxon recaps the plot in case we forgot.

      

I loaded everyone with mushrooms, even those they didn't need. (The thought of multiple Turpin mushrooms sitting in the stomach of my one non-spellcaster, never doing anything, bothered me until the end.) I made sure every shield was set to 99. I drew my blades. I entered.

   

The final battle was with seven "keepers." They have almost 1,000 hit points, armor of 100, and shields of 99. They can cast "Imbecile" on your party members and stop them from casting spells. Even worse, they can cast "Revive" and resurrect, with full hit points, their fallen comrades. The player doesn't even get that spell. It was absolutely imperative to keep any of them from casting in any round. But they also attack three times per round for 70 damage each, enough to kill most characters in a couple of hits once their Nifts run out. I had faced 10 of these bastards in a previous room. They killed me in the second round, and I declined to re-enter when I reloaded.

         

The end of the first battle.

      

The final battle took me three tries. My winning strategy was to cast "Timestop" in the first round so I had two uninterrupted rounds, "Jump" three characters into melee combat where they could all hit the same keeper, "Sharpen" their swords, and "Weaken" each of the keepers to remove their armor. I then had them concentrate on a single enemy at a time, swallowing Mirgets between every hit. They were able to kill two in the first round. 

     

When they cast it on me, they get me for like four turns. This seems unfair.

      

In the second round, I had two spellcasters cast "Imbecile" on each of the remaining five keepers, preventing them from casting. I also had a fourth fighter "Jump" into range, but he had to use a couple of his turns casting "Weaken" on the next couple of enemies, and I also had to use a couple of random turns casting "Jump" on the original three characters so they wouldn't have to walk down the line. I was able to kill two more in Round Two. Then the keepers took their turn and killed Maka by overwhelming him with attacks.

  
Still, by then it was won. Round Three was more "Imbecile," "Weaken," "Jump," and Mirget-fueled melee attacks. I killed the last keeper on my last action of the round. So it wasn't the most difficult battle of the game, or even the dungeon, but it was challenging enough.

        

Only one party member lost!

     

The game had us search their bodies for no reason, since it ended immediately afterwards. I didn't even get to open the chest. 

       

This looks like a completely different game.

        

Unfortunately, the end--told in a series of static images--was a little bugged:

       

Danat returns to Haraza with Kahamalkhad. But Torongo is jealous of Danat's power. Danat's "reward" is being thrown in a dungeon for life. But Danat escapes with help from his loyal companions. Danat returns to his ancestral caverns in secret. Danat never forgets how Torongo treated him. Years later, he returns with a band of mighty followers. Danat destroys Torongo and becomes the ruler of the Tamar.

     

If you hadn't just rescued me, I'd be mocking you mercilessly about your skirt.

     

Through generations, Danat's knowledge of shipbuilding is passed down. His descendants build a mighty fleet of galleys. They embark on a great voyage, landing at last in the land of Deruvia. And the rest is history.

     

Hey, this is where we came in!

      

It's not a bad ending except I didn't give the other artifacts to Torongo; I gave them to Rakan. I have no idea why the game decided I had favored the other leader. I tried watching some videos to see the other ending, but I couldn't find any that featured it. In one of the ones I watched, the creator commented that it had given him the wrong ending, so perhaps that happened for everyone. An Andrew Schultz walkthrough says that Rakan gives Danat part of his lands to rule; the second paragraph is the same.

    

Aside from the story issue, the artwork is a little odd in the final scenes. I never got the impression that the dwarves of this game were toga-and-sandal-wearing types, nor that the game took place in a world of sand and ziggurats.

   

Overall, though, I had a lot of fun with Bloodstone, certainly more than the last couple Candle games, and perhaps even more than the original Magic Candle, although I played that 12 years ago, so my memory might be foggy. The Magic Candle had an unforgettable ending, no question, but I felt like this one had a tighter plot and more challenging combat, as well as the interface improvements introduced in the sequels. I just wished the developers had fixed the issue of uneven character development. All my dwarves ended with maximum values in their primary weapon skills but hardly anyone gained any points in other skills, particularly "Magic," despite using it constantly. I could have made more use of trainers, but trainers always have seemed a bit cumbersome. And the system of increasing attributes by waking up gods never really clicked with me.

       

There was one god I never woke up.

     

Still, I expect a high GIMLET. Let's see:

    

• 7 points for the game world. I really enjoyed the setting in early history, civilization just establishing itself, the wars of the gods still in recent memory. The backstory and the character's role are both clear. Every location and most objects have lore attached to them, delivered through NPC keywords or library books. Some of it is a little banal and derivative, as is the norm for the era, but overall the game (and the series) offer better worldbuilding than 95% of titles in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

• 3 points for character creation and development. You don't really get to create your characters, but you do get to choose from a large number of them. I just wish the various races and backstories of the characters played more of a role in the game's encounters and dialogue. As noted above, development is a little inconsistent and less palpable than in many games, with equipment upgrades and mushrooms doing far more for a character's effectiveness than his inherent skill.

• 6 points for NPC Interaction. That's about as high as it goes when the interaction is so one-way. I like the variety of NPCs and the lore they impart. We'll have to wait for later games to introduce true role-playing into these interactions. 

       

The evil wizard who loves flowers is an NPC I haven't met in a previous RPG.

       

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The series has always created its own bestiary, and it's up to the player to learn from experience the strengths and weaknesses of various enemies. Every battle is fixed in both location and composition; I could have done with a little more randomness here. And there aren't really any non-combat encounters or puzzles.

• 5 points for magic and combat. A nice, challenging, tactical system with a good variety of spells and some fun touches like the ability to attempt a rallying speech. It would have been nice to have a few non-magic tactics like flanking bonuses, backstabbing, and parrying, but it's still better than many games of the era.

     

The need for "Restsoul" adds some complexity to combat.

      

• 6 points for equipment. There are a lot of usable and equippable items in the game, although I thought it was a bit too miserly with magic weapons and armor. (I ended with only two Mithril suits and only half my characters had magic weapons.) I could have done with some more randomness in the distribution of items. Nonetheless, equipment upgrades are a major part of the series, and this game in particular excels in usable items--mushrooms, potions, throwing weapons, map flasks, and the like.

• 7 points for the economy. Until the very last expedition, there were still reasons to make money (if only to buy every spell totem for every character), and in the beginning of the game, the economy offers an authentic challenge. I also like the complexity of the economic system. Characters can work for a wage (with many of the skills oriented to this), trade, or gamble.

• 4 points for quests. In addition to a main quest with (theoretically) two endings, we have a few side areas and optional dungeons and side-quests with artifact rewards. 

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. You can win them all. Most of the credit here goes to the interface, which does a nice job with keyboard and mouse redundancy. The notebook is brilliant, and there are some intuitive touches like the ability to switch between characters without backing out of the inventory screen. As for the graphics, they're serviceable, but they make the mistake common to this era of trying to depict too much without enough pixels, with the result that I was constantly missing important features and NPCs and accidentally talking to furniture. The sound is too sparse to even bother reaching for the headphones.

   

The comprehensive, searchable notebook is one of the best features of the game.

    

• 7 points for gameplay. We end on a strong note by recognizing the game's general nonlinearity, its modest replayability (with different character choices), its near-perfect difficulty, and a length that mostly fits the content.

      

That gives us a subtotal of 51, but I'm going to subtract a point for the ending bug to get a final score of 50. Once again, my GIMLET demonstrates a fundamental consistency as it ends up being almost exactly the same as the original Magic Candle's 52 (I promise I didn't look at the previous game's rating until just now), to which I gave a 3-point bonus. Thank the gods for Bloodstone and Ambermoon. No other game has scored more than 50 points in almost two years.

       

Looking at the November 1993 Computer Gaming World--there's that damned Spear of Destiny ad again--I was disappointed to see that Scorpia didn't like it. She called it a "disappointment" because of "design flaws and inadequate playtesting." I see what she's saying in the review, though. She played a female character but all the cut scenes still show a male and use male pronouns. She also apparently got Khamalkhad without giving any artifacts to the dwarf leaders first, which apparently caused the game to "make a default choice" of leader. She had other problems that I didn't experience. Moreover, unlike me, Scorpia never really liked open world games. She considers it a negative, for instance, that you can accidentally wander into a difficult dungeon near the starting point. I never mind writing "come back later when I'm stronger" in my notepad.

     

I wish I'd found out what these devices are about.

      

Mobygames's summary of other reviews shows similar low scores, with a median of 58%. The best was an 80% from the German Play Time, the worst a dismal 33% from the equally German PC Player, which recommended it only to players who "don't value a coherent story, good atmosphere, attractive graphics, or user-friendly operation." Ouch. Well, I liked it regardless. Matt Barton, at least, agrees with me. In Dungeons and Desktops, he wrote: "In my opinion, it's a great game for novices as well as more advanced fans wanting to try something different."

     

One month before Scorpia's review, CGW offered a profile of Mindcraft and its founder and CEO, Ali Atabek. The article describes how Atabek, a corporate programmer, decided to create his first RPG (Rings of Zilfin) after getting hooked on the Ultima series. Zilfin had been published by SSI, but Atabek and his wife, Ugur, formed Mindcraft to develop The Magic Candle and its sequels. The company struggled for years with unlucky distribution deals before becoming its own publisher in 1991. The article suggested a rosy future for the company, with a number of planned titles like Walls of Rome (a strategy game based on the engine from the previous Siege), a 256-color strategy game called Dominion, a 3D RPG called Gryphon Master, and a sci-fi strategy game called Mechamender. 

      

Ali Atabek in 1993, from Computer Gaming World.

     

There's nothing in the optimistic article to suggest that the company would be bankrupt by the following summer, most of the titles never seeing the light of day. But even in the CGW article, Bloodstone was described as "the last game to be set in [The Magic Candle] world," so it's not the company's dissolution that ended the series. Atabek went on to spend four years at Interplay (he has a minor credit on 1997's Waterworld, which is on my list) before leaving the entertainment industry at the end of the 1990s. As far as I can tell, lead Bloodstone developer Anthony Osterman never worked on another game.

   

As we say goodbye to Mindcraft and the Candle series, it occurs to me that it is perhaps the only series of its size (four games--five if you include The Keys to Maramon) to which I had no exposure when it was new. The titles didn't always knock it out of the park, but they have certainly been (for me) some of the better discoveries to come out of this blog.