Star Saga: Two - The Clathran Menace: Summary and Rating

     

Star Saga: Two - The Clathran Menace

United States

Masterplay (developer and publisher)

Released 1989 for DOS, Apple II, and Apple IIGS

Date Started: 7 December 2024

Date Ended: 25 January 2025

Total Hours: 32 (1.9 winning games)

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5), although tough to rate with this sort of game

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)   

    

Summary:

    

Like its predecessor (Star Saga: One - Beyond the Boundary), The Clathran Menace is a hybrid between a computer game and a board game. The computer keeps track of your inventory, health, statistics, and location, while you use a physical map to plot routes across the galaxy and physical books, with about 1,000 numbered sections, to read what happens. When you finish, you have both played a game and read a novel. You play one of six space explorers with both a personal quest and a general quest to understand and stop the slow advance of the Clathrans (a reptilian species) across the galaxy—all while the mental stresses caused by a widening "Dual Space Interphase" are causing havoc back on the Nine Worlds, including Earth.

   

The game involves a lot of reading, exploration, and trading, but not much in the way of traditional RPG mechanics. There are no probabilities associated with combat: either you have the right equipment to defeat the enemy or you don't. You get to choose where to go, but otherwise the character dialogue and choices are completely scripted—and, with a few exceptions, identical to every other player. The game is meant to be played with between 2 and 6 players who take turns of 7 "phases" each, but it can be played solo, and I did that for most of my experience. 

    

****

       

I was a bit exhausted when I finally got to the game's ending passages, although that was in part due to my decision to play it twice in a short time period, for which I can hardly blame the authors. Still, the basic format of the Star Saga games is not for me. I kept wishing the same plot were grafted onto a more traditional RPG like Starflight or Star Control, with proper combat mechanics, actual risk, and a more traditional inventory. I rather like the trade mechanics, though I'm not sure the game needed so much of it. I respect the opinions of players who enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of it, but I'm glad that I finished it by myself and saved my game-playing time with Irene for games that have a bit less reading and more action. We've been playing Descent: Legends of the Dark (2021) lately, and it has the same characteristics of being both a board game and a computer game, in both cases, I frequently find myself wishing that they had just gone all-in on one or the other.

         

To the extent that Star Saga is a "computer game," we have to confront the fact that it isn't really much of an RPG, lacking traditional character development and combat mechanics. Both the character and ship get stronger with purchases of weapons and defenses and the acquisition of special skills, but it's an odd sort of "development" given that combat is always about hitting a certain threshold. It would be as if in a traditional RPG, you always lost battles against orcs when you had a short sword, then always won the moment you acquired a long sword.

      

A random battle with a Clathran convoy. Having acquired the right items, I will never lose such a battle again.

     

Yet, to me, the most disappointing aspect of the series is not the lack of traditional RPG combat mechanics but the lack of any significant role-playing choices. The player has a lot of choices when it comes to directing the character to various places, but essentially none when it comes to deciding what the character will say or do. Moreover, even in the limited choices the player does get—what planets to visit in what order—he or she gets the same text, with the same dialogue, as every other player. That rather damages the illusion of the six characters as unique individuals with unique perspectives and motivations.

   

On the positive side, I praise the plot and the imaginative characteristics of the alien worlds. It was never boring to arrive on a new planet and start learning about its culture and history. The story is derivative in places, but the authors are aware of this and did it deliberately. I'm a tepid science fiction fan at best, so I'm sure a lot of references went completely over my head. I also liked the logistics of plotting trade routes, but again this is hardly an RPG staple.

     

I don't think the GIMLET works well with this type of game, so I'm going to skip the detailed analysis by category. Suffice to say that it naturally does best with the "Game World" (7) and overall nonlinear gameplay (5), but worst in traditional RPG mechanics like character development and combat. I had trouble applying some of the categories; are there really "NPCs" in those passages or just "Encounters"? I did my best, and it scored a 32 in total, one point higher than the first game, though I don't think that's significant. There are some variances in the categories between the two games, but they likely have more to do with my using different thought processes when applying the GIMLET categories and less to do with any real differences between the two titles.

       

It's nice to know that people were using "artificial intelligence" as spuriously in 1989 as today.

     

Vince DeNardo and Chris Lombardi reviewed the game in the September 1989 Computer Gaming World and agreed with me that it is "unfortunate" that the computer handles all combat. They note that there is more combat in Two than in One, "and the frustrations of not being able to pick and choose weapons and tactics [is therefore] magnified." They also lament the fact that if you lose a combat, you can't tell what sort of weapon, defense, or skill might help change the outcome; you just have to buy everything and hope for the best. They further note that non-combat skills are used less than in One. This is also true. I wondered at several points why I had bothered to acquire certain skills. I'm not sure "Darthan," "Flying," "Jump'r," "Sensaround," "Deresha," "Mellomia," and a variety of other skills ever played a role. I was confused until the end about the distinction between "Chameleon," "Illusion," and "Ghost" when it came to stealth.

   

The reviewers played with multiple players over several sessions, and they had some issues where some players spent multiple turns primarily trading while others spent the same turns primarily reading, creating a somewhat imbalanced and disjointed experience. However, their overall feelings were positive, and they thought it was equal to the first game. The same basic sentiments are found in the January 1990 Compute! review and the May 1990 Games Machine review. No one really liked the combat; everyone thought the text was well-written and addictive. Looking at pictures of the box and contents, I'm almost sorry that I played this all electronically. I might have enjoyed moving the game piece over the map (something for which I did not find an electronic analog) and marking up pages in the physical books. The setup is impressive just to look at, and even if I liked the game less than I did, or didn't like it at all, there's a sense in which I'd still have to admire it.

      

The writing was almost always good, but the sheer amount of text got to be a bit much.

      

The two Star Saga games were the only titles from Masterplay Publishing Corporation, the Florida-based company founded by Mike Massimilla and run by Andrew Greenberg. Production costs were expensive, and the first two games did not sell well enough to justify the third planned title. For 35 years, therefore, fans have tossed and turned at night, kept awake by their gripping questions about the Masters, why they hate and fear humanity, the Message, the Core, the fate of Vanessa Chang, and the true source of Flame Jewels.

   

For those sleepless fans, I have happy news: Mike Massimilla's daughter discovered my entry on Star Saga: One back in 2023. She alerted her father, who wrote to me and offered to share the story that would have been presented in Star Saga: Three. I present it gratefully below, only lightly edited. According to Mr. Massimilla, the game never went into production..

        

*****

    

Synopsis of Star Saga: Three - The Return of the Masters

By Mike Massimilla with contributions from Walt Freitag

    

In Star Saga: Three, the Explorers continue to encounter alien races, some still living and some only by their relics and ruins. These encounters are overall stranger than in the previous games. They are conveyed using abstract and psychedelic reality-bending styles of science fiction, as in the early George R.R. Martin short stories. The old races and ruins tell of an ancient cataclysmic war and a dominant race of psychic Masters. The war destroyed many planets and threatened all life in the galaxy. The Masters put an end to the war, using genetic technology to enslave the vicious Clathrans and pacify everyone else.     

Since then, intelligent races have not traveled far from their home worlds. There have been no recent wars, just limited trading and terraforming. This has been no accident: it was the effects of the Masters' intervention. The Masters kept tabs on any race that might be ambitious or threatening, and they took steps to limit that race. In most cases, they did this by modifying the race's genes. The Clathrans were genetically modified to be subservient police. They surveyed the galaxy, reported back to the Masters, and either weakened or exterminated any races deemed dangerous. The Space Plague that decimated the human worlds and led to the establishment of the Boundary was an example of this treatment. Many of the oddities of the races the players have met can be explained by the Masters' meddling.  The Masters were determined that Galactic War would never occur again.

The gameplay in the main portion of Star Saga: Three focuses on assembling sufficient technology to enter the Galactic Core, where the Masters live. The Core has a nearly impenetrable surface. Any matter that attempts to pass through disintegrates. The old races that live near the Core are said to have knowledge and abilities that can be combined to build a Core Ship. This has not been done in a long time.

Meanwhile, the dream about the Message becomes more insistent, and not only for the Explorers.  Humans back on the Nine Worlds are experiencing the Dream and speculating about what it might mean.  Even worse, the widening Dual Space Interphase is causing disturbing psychic episodes. People are anxious, confused, and occasionally violent. Society is at risk of falling apart. To save humanity, the Explorers must enter the Core, meet the Masters, and deliver the mysterious Message.  

Complicating the situation, the Explorers encounter a political conflict between two factions of Masters, more accurately known as Archaegenitors. There are not many Archaegenitors left, but they are powerful.  One faction sees humanity as a threat that must be destroyed at all costs. This faction, with the Clathrans doing their bidding, is symbolized by the green-scaled dragon. The other faction believes humanity is carrying the Message referred to in ancient texts, vital to the future of the galaxy. This faction is broadcasting psychic calls for humans to come to the Core. The Explorers meet various aliens aligned with each faction.  

Following various clues (a tip from a friendly alien race, an advanced tracking technology, etc.) the Explorers discover Vanessa Chang—still alive! She has been trapped in stasis on a ship she built trying to make it into the Core. The ship fortunately got caught in a time eddy, as it likely would have been pulverized. (The time eddy brings to mind the unfortunate planet stuck in a time loop; how did the Masters arrange that?) The Explorers rescue her, and she joins the expedition. More accurately, we should say that the Explorers join her. She provides important technology, history, and map coordinates.

Eventually, by getting enough help from the planets they visit, the Explorers upgrade Vanessa's Core Ship with everything they can. Small scale tests near the Core's surface look promising, but it's impossible to know for sure. In case they fail, the Explorers leave instructions behind for the next crew to attempt the mission. Taking the plunge, their ship slowly approaches the Core's surface. Space and time flow into a new dimension—a psychic one? Their minds expand, and they are through.

At this point, the game's finale begins (about a quarter of its total content). There are changes in game mechanics as the Explorers are now traveling together. Instead of separate exploration and trading, this segment poses problems requiring simultaneous actions by different crew members (whether played by one or multiple players). These are somewhat like multiplayer escape room mechanics, but as in previous Star Saga segments, they are based on narrated problems rather than abstract puzzles. There are no dead ends (getting stuck), and still no deaths.  (The printed books contained some red-herring death passages.)

Before the final chapter, the Explorers have to complete a quest that requires traveling back to the outer parts of the galaxy.  Fortunately, the Core Ship is capable of passing through Space Walls. No one is quite sure how Space Walls work. One of the old races recalls that they were created by a doomsday weapon used in the Galactic War.

Finally meeting with the seemingly all-powerful Archaegenitors, the Explorers learn that the Masters can no longer reproduce or travel outside the Core. The Masters have been able to perpetuate their race with cloning and genetic engineering, but each generation is physically weaker and less numerous. Moreover, they are extremely sensitive and poorly adapted to the widening Dual Space Interphase. [Ed. I thought the opposite was true about the Masters, but I didn't get a chance to clarify this with Massimilla. He might have meant "narrowing," or I might be confused about what "widening" means here.] They hope to eventually find a solution to further extend their lifespan, but their efforts thus far have been unsuccessful. Life for them is now difficult and painful.

The Masters ask for permission to examine one of the Explorers. An analysis of human DNA solves the mystery of the Message: it is humanity itself. A mostly forgotten farsighted faction of ancient Archeagenitors engineered humans to be their eventual successors. Humans were given enhanced intelligence, the desire to explore, hardiness to withstand danger, and an exact copy of the Archaegenitors' psychic genes. The closer the humans travel to the Core, the more powerful their psychic abilities become.

Given the revelation that humans are the Masters' descendants, the Masters unite in support. They agree to put the fate of the galaxy in human hands. They will train the Explorers how to use the genetic technology and how to command the Clathrans.  However, the Masters warn that keeping watch over the galaxy is no easy task. What, they ask, do the Explorers think is the best course of action for the future?  Will they:

      

• Continue the Masters' legacy, using the genetic engineering throughout the galaxy to ensure peace? Or:

• Abandon the genetic technology and let life go its own way, even if that might again someday again lead to galactic war?

     
Meanwhile, the widening Dual Space Interphase threatens everyone. Maybe a solution can be found if all the races of the galaxy work together.

The End

    

*****

   

Chet again. I like it. I think it would have wrapped up the series nicely. Again, it draws from existing tropes about "ancestor races" without precisely copying them. It leaves the players with a major role-playing choice at the end. I'm curious how that would have been handled with multiple players, as I'm curious about how the turn-based gameplay would work once the players are united with Chang. It's possible that the authors hadn't worked that out before they abandoned the project.

   

A March 1990 Computer Game World article about the pending sale of the franchise.

     

My understanding is that as Masterplay dissolved, they sold the rights to Star Saga to Cinemaware, which did nothing with them and was itself out of business a year later. While the rights were for sale, Andrew Greenberg was interviewed for a brief September 1990 Computer Gaming World piece. It's a curious interview, as in the space of just a few lines, Greenberg says that the company's decision to support the Apple II, which was incapable of advanced graphics, partly accounted for poor sales, but then he goes on to reject the idea that graphics are needed or even desirable for the game. To me, especially since they also released it for DOS, the more likely explanation is that the $80 price tag (around $200 today) was too steep for most players, and that the hybrid nature of the gameplay didn't appeal to them.

   

As we discussed in the opening entry, Mr. Greenberg died in 2024 at age 67. His negative experiences with Sir-Tech on Wizardry led him to become an intellectual property attorney. He was beginning this career in Tampa at the same time he was running Masterplay. Mike Massimilla, who did most of the programming, became a software engineer for a variety of industries. Rick Dutton and Walt Freitag wrote most of the game text; Dutton went to medical school and became an anesthesiologist; Freitag remained active in the CRPG community through online forums and has worked in a variety of industries. I thank Mr. Massimilla and Mr. Freitag for offering the conclusion to the story even as I think that modern technology might offer new life to the franchise should they wish to pursue it.

 

The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

We never get to see Niz's reaction.

     

The Power Stones of Ard II: The Five Towers of Trafa-Zar

United States

Three C's Projects (developer and publisher)

Released in 1990 for Tandy Color Computer 3

Date Started: 10 January 2025

Date Ended: 31 January 2025

Total Hours: 15

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

     

Summary:

    

This sequel to The Power Stones of Ard: The Quest for the Spirit Stone significantly changes the original game's interface to a first-person dungeon crawler with numerous adventure game puzzles. Trafa-Zar takes place entirely within the titular five towers, all five levels, all 5 x 5 tiles, as the PC, an apprentice wizard, seeks to destroy the evil wizard and recover the Mind Stone.

   

The spell system, consisting of 10 battle spells and 10 exploration and defensive spells, works well, but both combat and puzzles alternate between too easy and too hard. For every puzzle that requires the clever use of an object or the environment, there's a blatantly absurd or unfair puzzle that forces the player to guess the arbitrary way the author used his own interface. In the end, it does not have enough character development and tactical combat to be a good RPG, and the puzzles are too nutty to make a good adventure game.

      

****

   

The last two towers offered the same experience as the first three: lots of combat, lots of puzzles, some fair, some not. I needed LanHawk's help a lot. We're all lucky he struggled through the game before I got to it.

   

An example of an unfair puzzle was the one that greeted me right away on Tower 4, Level 1. The completely open level had only two items of note: a pile of hay in one square and a glass case in another. The glass case was filled with smoke, but peering through it revealed a Fire Sword. The unintuitive solution was to T)ouch the GLASS. But you have to type GLASS, not CASE or SWORD or anything else. You also have to T)ouch it, and with an empty hand, not P)ut your hand on it the way you do when touching your nose in that previous puzzle. Nobody likes adventure game puzzles that have silly solutions, and nobody likes adventure game puzzles that force the player to fight with the commands. This one managed to include both of these elements in several of its puzzles.

   

The Fire Sword ends up being the best weapon in the game, but more importantly, it ignites the pile of hay in the other room (it must be magic hay, as a "Fireball" spell doesn't ignite it), which in turn somehow carries you up to the next level on the smoke. As smoke tends to do.

    

Getting from Level 2 to Level 3 was as simple as finding a pole and hook, attaching them with the P)ut command, using them to hook the edge of a hole in the ceiling, and C)limbing up.

   

Level 3 was back to the absurd. One room has a huge iron vault that won't open to anything. The door has a small hole in it (which you only see if you examine the IRON VAULT, not just the VAULT). Elsewhere on the level, you find a fuse (the kind that lights a stick of dynamite, not the kind that's in a box in your basement). You have to stick the fuse in the hole on the vault door and light it with the Fire Sword. The door blows off the vault and shoots through the ceiling, leaving a hole. You can then climb the vault to get to the next level. Why does this work? Were there explosives in the vault? Does the author think that a fuse by itself can cause an explosion? Who knows.

      

This is the only screenshot I got during this section of the game because I forgot the keyboard shortcut.

      

Towers 4 and 5 stopped introducing new enemies every level. In Tower 4, the entire bestiary consisted of dust devils, glass golems, red devils, rog demons, and blood beasts. Of the four, the blood beasts were the most difficult, with 5 attacks per round each. Fortunately, I had enough spell points by now to keep "Ironskin" going almost constantly, and this spell essentially makes you immune to physical attacks. I'm not sure I saw an enemy get through it even once. Magical attacks are another matter, but rarer; I don't think any of the Tower 4 enemies had spells. Thus, the battles in the tower were trivial as long as I was willing to grab hold of that pebble and rest frequently.

   

Level 4 offered the one exception. There were no regular enemies on the level, just a demon lord. He killed me three times before I discovered that he was vulnerable to the "Hold" spell. One casting took care of him.

    

Isn't this more of a "devil"?

      

Beyond the demon lord was a chamber with a demoness, who did not attack. I discovered I could kill her, but then I was stuck. The solution was to give her the diamond discovered on a much, much earlier level. (If you give her anything else, she gets angry.) She took it gratefully and stuffed me into her boudoir, which had no obvious exit. First, you can shatter the mirror on her vanity to get a glass shard. To get out, you have to pile pillows and climb them through a hole on the ceiling—a hole that the game never tells you is there. Plus, it only says there's one pillow. I can't remember how I piled them. I might have picked one up and dropped it or P)ut it somewhere. Whatever the correct command was, it took me a while.

 

She turned out to be too materialistic.

      

The final level of Tower 4 evoked a pentagram, as it had five single-square rooms arranged as if they were the points of a pentagram. Each had a wall that teleported me clockwise around the level, which was completely unnecessary. I have no idea what that was for. One of the rooms had a rag doll in it. It was missing its left eye.

   

The central square on the level had a pentagram with a little girl kneeling in the center. Giving her the rag doll, or anything else, caused her to turn into a star demon and tear me apart. The solution was to P)ut the glass shard on the doll; "it replaces the missing eye," the game said. How does a shard of glass replace a doll's eye? Whatever. If you give the doll to the girl after that, she looks at it, sees her own reflection, and disappears. Saying FIRE in the pentagram sends you to Tower 5.

        

If you were exploring a deserted tower in real life, it's hard to imagine encountering anything scarier than a little girl sitting in a pentagram. Maybe a clown.

     

The fifth tower was unlike the others in that there was really only one puzzle. Each level had a series of colored circles on the walls, and I had to associate the colors with letters based on clues found throughout the other towers. LanHawk had to help me with this one. A few were easy, such as a brown "E" in Tower 1 and a white "Y" in Tower 2. But the game kept giving me colors that it had not associated with any letters--unless you sound some of the other clues aloud. Tower 1 has a statue of a blue jay ("J"); Tower 2 has a picture of a woman pouring golden tea ("T"); Tower 3 has a painting of a farmer picking green peas ("P"). I'm not sure I would have figured that out, but it's a fair puzzle, and closer to the ones that I enjoyed in the first Power Stones game.

   

The circles on Level 1 of Tower 5 were blue, orange, and white, which spelled "JOY." Each level has a room where you're told to "speak the word of passage," so you just string the colors together and find the right words, which end up being JOY, FAITH, HOPE, and LOVE.

   

     

Beyond that, the only puzzle is an optional one on the first level. You find a room with a stone altar and a crystal chest. The chest opens with a crystal key found so long ago I didn't even note it. Inside is an ephod, which I had to look up (it's a ceremonial garment worn by ancient Jewish priests). A message on an earlier level had said: "Find his place, gird thyself in purity, and call upon the Father." I was pretty sure I had found the place, but I had no idea how to gird myself in the ephod as there's no W)ear command. I tried P)utting it on my BODY, CHEST, BACK, SHOULDERS, ARMS, TORSO, and so forth to no avail. I don't know how it came to me, but just as I was about to give up, I tried simply putting it ON, and it worked. This makes no sense because when you use P)ut, the game asks, "Where will you put the ephod?" ON is not a place.

   

I didn't know how to "call upon the Father," but I tried just K)neeling, and it worked. A column of light descended upon me, all my maximum attributes increased by about 5 points, and I was knocked out. The game then asked if I wanted to continue playing. This is what it asks when you die, so I thought the experience had somehow killed me. I was in the middle of cursing Bill Cleveland's name to hell and back when I hit "Y" and the game just continued. I don't know what that was about.

      

Consciousness ran from the room, screaming, "I am FREE!"

        

The enhanced attributes helped, but I think I could have won without them. As I continued to explore the tower and work my way up, I met black knights, iron golems, eyes of Argon, executioners, and apprentices. Apprentices have magic attacks, so I had to keep "Magic Shield" going in addition to "Ironskin." The enemies otherwise weren't very hard. I hit Level 7, the final character level, at some point, earning enough spell points for "Brimstone," which I never successfully cast. I never did earn enough for "Mind Melt." I suppose you need to roll very high intelligence and perhaps play as an elf.

    

The final level had only three battles: a group of vampire lords, a dragon, and Trafa-Zar himself. Each required a unique strategy. I found that the vampire lords were vulnerable only to "Stone," but I could only cast one of those between rests. So I had to encounter them, cast it, flee, get through a door, cast "Lock" to seal it from the other side, rest to restore spell points, cast "Knock" to unlock the door, engage the rest of the party, and repeat.

   

The dragon was invulnerable to anything except the basic "Arcane Arrows" spell. 

    

Finally, Trafa-Zar attacked me in his throne room. His battle is scripted to always start with "Mind Melt," then move to "Fireball," "Lightning," and "Arcane Arrows" before settling on some kind of "Bolt" spell for the remainder of the battle. In the meantime, I was trying all of my spells to no avail. He was immune.

      

His portrait adds another angle to the Santa Claus puzzle in Tower 3.

     

You're supposed to defeat Trafa-Zar using a special staff, disguised on a much earlier level as a black snake. The backstory warns you about this. When you meet the snake, you're supposed to say "ARD" to transform it. During the battle with Trafa-Zar, it blows up in his face. 

   

Lacking the staff, I just pumped myself with a few castings of "Augment," then whacked him half a dozen times with my Fire Sword.

    

Striking the final blow.

    

When Trafa-Zar dies, he drops a key. It unlocks a chamber that holds the Mind Stone. Picking it up has you immediately transported back to Niz's workshop, which ends the game. There isn't much of a denouement, either, just a single victory screen.

     

"Wow, that's a lot of magical energy," Chester said as clumps of his hair began to fall out.

    

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

   

• 4 points for the game world. It's not bad. I like how the "accident" in the backstory leads to the main quest, and how the game's connection to its predecessor is a bit of a mystery. But the tower doesn't feel anything like a real place. Why would Trafa-Zar want to devote 90% of his floor space to weird puzzles?

• 3 points for character creation and development. There isn't much to creation—name, sex, race—and development is relatively slow, with the difficulty of monsters matching your growth in lockstep. It is nice to unlock new spells, however.

• 0 points for no NPC interaction. The few people you meet in the tower are "encounters," not NPCs.

• 2 points for encounters and foes. There's nothing really special about the monsters. They're high fantasy tropes, mostly distinguished only by how hard they hit and whether they cast spells. If the game consisted only of its fairer puzzles, it would earn a 4 or a 5 here, but I have to take as many points away for the more ridiculous puzzles.

• 3 points for magic and combat. Combat is just about holding your best weapon and hitting A)ttack, but the spells add some fun variety. Being able to flee from foes, slam the door behind you, and "Lock" it is not an experience that most games of the era were offering.

    

Figuring out the best spells to use against certain enemies was a fun part of the game.

     

• 2 points for equipment. It's mostly of the puzzle variety.

• 0 points for no economy.

• 2 points for a main quest. It has one side puzzle that isn't worth an extra point on a 10-point scale.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are fine; the interface is mostly fine. It could have offered a second hand slot so you're not always having to re-equip your weapon after picking up something else. Unless I screwed something up in XRoar, there's no sound.

• 2 points for gameplay. It gets those for not being too long. It's otherwise very linear, not replayable, and extremely frustrating. The difficulty is all over the place. Spells cost too many spell points, but it's also too easy to restore those points.

   

That gives us a final score of 21, four points lower than I gave to the first Power Stones title. That one was far more innovative, with a mix of outdoor and indoor exploration, an economy, NPCs, and puzzles that were a little less absurd. This one feels like it was meant to be lost.

    

Tony Olive reviewed the game in the August 1990 Rainbow. He didn't get out of the first tower, and some of his information is wrong (you don't have "over 50 spells"; you have exactly 20), but he found what he experienced fast-paced and exciting. The review smacks of the desperation you find in a lot of Color Computer reviews, where they know they have a miserable platform for CRPGs and they don't want to criticize one of the few titles to come along. I would have liked to read a review from someone who made it as far as the "Santa" puzzle, but alas I couldn't find one. I don't find it improbable that LanHawk and I are the only two people to have ever won the game.

        

I never got to ask Bill Cleveland who the other two Cs were.

              

The Three C's Projects, headquartered in Hamlet, North Carolina, sold the game primarily through magazines like Rainbow, charging $25, or about $60 in today's dollars. Someone sent me a link to a Color Computer newsletter in which owner/author Bill Cleveland announced he was leaving the business, but I can't seem to dig it up now that I need it. I think it was from late 1990 or 1991, and he indicated he just didn't have time for it anymore. He became a dentist in his hometown instead, which was probably a good career move. I tried to reach him back in 2022 after I played the first game, but he wasn't interested in talking about it.

   

Thus, we never got the third title in the trilogy, so we never found out the name of the third stone (after the Mind Stone and Spirit Stone) nor how all three stones would be united and used. I'm going to assume that the third stone was the Power Stone and at the climax of the trilogy, Thanos shows up and grabs them with his gauntlet.

   

***

   

Edit: Based on some news letters linked in the comments and sent to me by LanHawk, we can piece together what happened. By 1994, Bill Cleveland had gotten busy with other things and closed his company, as reported in the November 1994 Adventure Survivors (this link also has hints for the first game that would have been helpful when I played it). The following month, the publishers of the newsletter, Lin and Nan Padgett, announced that they had the two games "available," and they were offered for sale in subsequent issues. So it appears that Cleveland sold the rights to the Padgetts.

Betrayal at Krondor: Summary and Rating

 

Did I miss a winged reptilian creature at some point in the game?

     

Betrayal at Krondor

United States

Dynamix, Inc. (developer and publisher) 

Released 1993 for DOS on floppy disk; re-released in 1994, 1996, and 1998 on CD-ROM, each time with different features

Date Started: 23 July 2024

Date Ended: 21 January 2025

Total Hours: 72

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)    

     

Summary:

    

A well-written, prose-heavy sequel to Raymond Feist's Riftwar Saga, Betrayal at Krondor concerns the rise of the Moredhel (dark elves) under a new leader and their war on the Kingdom of the Isles. The player takes charge of half a dozen characters, half directly out of the Riftwar pages, as different combinations of 2 or 3 try to make sense of the invasion and the mysterious powers behind it. The game is organized into nine chapters with fixed beginning and end points, but for most of those chapters, the player is free to explore a large game world with numerous battles, encounters, treasures, and side quests.

  

The interface is distinguished by a continuous-scrolling first-person perspective (still rare for the era), combat on a tactical grid, and an encumbrance system based on volume rather than weight. Character development occurs through the use of attributes and skills. Players have to do a lot of reading, as almost every action is narrated in paragraph form. The text is well-written but leaves little opportunity for role-playing. The plot is canon to the Riftwar franchise and was later novelized by Feist as Krondor: The Betrayal (1998).

    

*****

       

Wherever it lands on the GIMLET, Betrayal at Krondor deserves plenty of credit for offering a remarkably fresh and unusual experience. Very few things about it are individually unique, but most things about it are at least rare, and in combination they make the game unique. To list some of these factors:

   

• The sheer amount of text.

• The reliance on a well-established setting, and the integration of the game's story with the canon of that setting.

      

Characters and plot points introduced in this game would continue to fuel novels through 2013.

       

• Making the PCs named characters with fixed backgrounds drawn from that setting (half of them have already appeared in the books, and the rest will appear in future books).

• Using only three party members at a time. 

• Having the PCs banter with each other during the adventure.

• Narrating each action as if it is a passage in a book.

     

This is, conservatively, the 500th time that Pug has been in battle, but he still can't quite make sense of it all.

      

• The use of chapters.

• An open world in many of the chapters.

• Swapping the PCs between chapters.

• A 3D perspective with continuous movement in both outdoor and indoor environments.

• Use of real people for portraits and animations.

      

"Unbelievably ludicrous" — Jimmy Maher.

      

• Combat on an isometric grid.

• Use of that same grid for non-combat trap puzzles. (In this, I think the game is unique.)

• Inventory capacity based on the physical size of objects in the pack.

     

We could spend hours tracing the progenitors and descendants of just a few of these elements. It's hard to imagine that New World wasn't inspired by the inventory system for Might and Magic VI, for instance, or that the authors of Krondor didn't take inspiration from Circuit's Edge or Interplay's Lord of the Rings games for plot integration. The combat perspective recalls Amberstar and Ambermoon. I swear there was some other game that narrates everything you do as paragraphs, but I can't put my finger on it.

The inventory screen from Betrayal at Krondor  . . .

. . . and Might and Magic VI (1998).

            

Krondor unexpectedly shares some important characteristics with Star Saga, a game that I'm only wrapping up at the same time by virtue of a random roll of the dice back in December. These shared characteristics embody what I like most and least about both games. Both offer an open, nonlinear world when it comes to exploration but a tightly-scripted world when it comes to plot, including essentially no role-playing in either case. (The similarities are likely coincidental; see below.) The open world allows for great variety for the order in which players do things, or skip things, but no variety in the fundamental outcomes of the story. Krondor tells a novel-quality narrative, but it's its narrative, not the player's.

    

Notice that I used the term "skip" there, not "miss." To me, "miss" suggests unintentionality, perhaps even carelessness, whereas "skip" is a matter of player preference and time management. This is true even when the player doesn't know what he is skipping; if I come to a fork in the road and decide to take the left path without exploring the right path, I have "skipped" the adventures to be found down the right path, not "missed" them.

   

I say all of this because as we see more open worlds with side quests, optional dungeons, and skippable content, I'm going to have to make harder decisions about what I prioritize. I could have doubled the number of entries on Krondor by exhaustively exploring the world in every chapter, and I suspect some fans of the game would have preferred that. But I'm glad that I skipped some things. I'm grateful for a game that supports skipping things. I like the idea of new adventures over the horizon. I like the thought that if I ever want to come back to a game, I can enjoy a different experience. I am not a "completionist"; I reject the very term. To me, trying to experience 100% of an RPG makes as much sense as going on vacation to an unfamiliar city and insisting that I visit every street. There are too many cities that I haven't visited to spend that much time on one.

       

Some commenters wanted me to listen to the soundtrack. I agree that it's a superior soundtrack. I honestly could have stood to keep it going while I was playing, as it doesn't just play on an endless loop the way many games of the era do. There's a memorable title theme in 3/4 time and the cutscenes are scored with short, heavily-accented motifs. New tunes pop up during party dialogue, NPC dialogue, combat, and city title screens, but the main exploration window remains mercifully silent. The music has the appropriate tone (no hard-driving techno for this medieval RPG), has good MIDI instrumentation, and complements the game's atmosphere well. (For more, including things I didn't get to experience first-hand, see this excellent comment from Wild Juniper.) Credit goes to Jan Paul Moorhead, who we have not encountered before and will not encounter again, as Dynamix, despite its success with Krondor, never developed another RPG.

    

We have a lot of post-GIMLET material for this one, so let's get the GIMLET out of the way:

      

1. Game World. I expect Krondor to do best in this category. In well-written prose, it tells a complex, nuanced, adult plot, well-integrated with Raymond Feist's existing novels, with several fun twists. I like that there's no "evil wizard" but a group of opponents, each of which has their own reasons for their actions. For a perfect score in this category, I ask that the plot respond to the player's choices in a way reflected in the world state and NPC dialogue. That mostly doesn't happen here, primarily because there are so few choices. Everything else is solid. Score: 8.

 

2. Character Creation and Development. And then we have one of the weakest categories, starting with the defined nature of the characters. Is there a particular reason Owyn couldn't have been more of the player's own creation? "Development" occurs in increments as you use various skills and abilities, leading to higher numbers for the attributes and higher percentages for the skills. But those percentages are only one part of a complex formula that determines success, including equipment, fatigue, and buffing items to the point that I question whether they make all that much of a difference. I guess I'd like your opinion on that. If starting Gorath tried to finish the game with ending Gorath's equipment, would he really have that difficult a time? My skepticism here is why I never really bothered to mess around with the option to "tag" certain skills, and I don't feel like I faced a significant challenge, save for a small handful of battles.

      

Final statistics for Owyn.

      

I'll say one positive thing, here, and add a point to the score for it: I unexpectedly liked the number of party members. I found that having three members allowed me to think of each as a unique individual and not just playing a role in a "blob." Four would have been okay, too. It makes me wonder why the typical default is six. Score: 3.

   

3. NPC Interaction. The NPCs in Krondor are often characters from the novels. Even the ones created for this game tend to be fleshed out, with their own personalities and goals. The keyword dialogue system means that you learn a lot about the world from these NPCs. But the lack of dialogue options and role-playing in these encounters (save a very rare "Yes" or "No") option dooms the game to a middling score in this category. Score: 5.

   

4. Encounters and Foes. Enemies are okay. There are maybe 12-14 different types, and they do have various strengths and weaknesses that you have to adapt to. In this category, I also have to give credit for the fairy chests, the trap puzzles, and the occasional non-combat encounters that require a little imagination and creativity. The game fails to gain a point here for allowing no random battles or grinding. Score: 5.

      

Damn. We're in a tight spot.

        

5. Magic and Combat. I didn't hate the combat system but I didn't love it. I would have liked a bigger field, so that crossbows could be more relevant. I don't like how easy it was to completely obviate a spellcaster. I would have liked to see more use of terrain. The spell list contains some nice variety, but a few spells are so powerful that you could get through the game with only two or three of them. On the plus side are all of the usable objects, the relative swiftness of the experience, and the auto-combat, which works well against weak enemies. I always like spell systems that let you vary spell power, too. Score: 4.

          

I only tried about 20% of these spells.

      

6. Equipment. I like the game's inventory mechanics and the way that stores work. I like the variety of usable items. I wish there were more options for melee weapons beyond staves and swords. Armor is even worse, with only one set of "armor" (from cap to boots) and only a couple of upgrades over the course of the game. The repair system adds a little. The clear item statistics and descriptions are a nice bonus, however, and rare for the era; again, it's hard not to imagine an influence on the later Might and Magic games. I would have liked to see some randomization; according to sources I consulted post-games, the items you find on each enemy and in each chest are scripted down to the last coin. Score: 5.

   

7. Economy. Decent. I played too conservatively with money. Cash is useful for equipment upgrades, usable items, healing, blessing, spells, training, and teleporting, and a player who wants to run around collecting items and selling them can make about as much as he wants. It's just too bad that owing to the nature of the chapters and how the party switches between them, you're never sure if the right party is going to have the right-sized purse. It's also too bad that there are so few places to spend money during the last three chapters. Score: 5.

        

Owyn finished the game with over 5,000 sovereigns. Even checking the purse is narrated.

      

8. Quests. The game features a main quest with no player input and a nice number of side-quests and side-areas. Score: 4.

   

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. This is probably going to be controversial. I admire the graphical effort of the game. There were even times that I came upon a bridge or forest and found the scene almost pretty. The cutscene graphics for some of the towns and castles look nice. Overall, however, I thought the graphics are indicative of most of the early 1990s, when it was becoming possible to show more detail, but not yet possible for actual beauty and immersion. There were times (particularly with monster graphics) in which the developers attempted more detail than was really possible to depict, leaving a lot of confusing blobs. We've talked plenty about how the character portraits are just absurd.

   

There are other issues with the outdoor graphics that I didn't talk much about because I had trouble defining exactly what was wrong. There were lots of times that distances or proportions or something got screwed up, so I'd be right next to a building and not be able to see it, or there would be three chests in a cluster, but I'd only see two of them unless I left and came back from a different direction. 

    

Sound is another matter. Not only do we get some nice sound effects, but we hear some of the only background noises of the era, with birds chirping outdoors and dripping stalactites in caves. I'll talk about music, which isn't part of the GIMLET, later.

   

Finally, the interface: I had no problems with the commands. The game balances the mouse and keyboard well and uses the best tool for the best job. I liked the automap and inventory screen. My only criticism comes from difficulty moving in the outdoor screens, where the corner of every mountain and river seemed to project well beyond its visible boundaries and cause the party to get hung up. Score: 5.

    

10. Gameplay. I still need a better name for this category. Remember, I'm looking for four things here: nonlinearity, replayability, an appropriate challenge, and good pacing. I find the nonlinearity good. It doesn't last for the whole game, but the chapters that don't feature it have good reasons. I find it only slightly replayable, owing to the things you might have skipped in the open world. The challenge was okay. The game as a whole tended towards the easy side, but some individual battles were tough. A greater part of the challenge were the quasi-survival elements such as hunger, the slow rate of healing, poison, and "near-death," all of which I liked, although in some ways the game made it a bit too easy with abundant resources.

 

As for pacing, I did like the variety of lengths and scopes for the chapters. No game divided into chapters should become overly predictable. At the same time, I think it was a bit too long for its content and a few of the chapters dragged a bit. Score: 6.

    

That gives us a final score of 50. That's in the early 90s for percentile, suggesting an A- rating. I think that works. I liked it about as much as Amberstar and Bloodstone and other games that got the same rating. I liked the story more but the mechanics less. 

     

One wonders how they came up with this calculation.

       

Krondor was widely reviewed, so we'll just take a sample. We start first with Computer Gaming World, where I am immediately irked to see a review by Jay Kee, who I've never heard of. I wanted to see Scorpia's take on this one. I guess I've become a Scorpia fan, as often as I disagree with her. Even the title annoys me: "My, But You're a Feisty One!" Ho, ho. It's a play on "Feist." But it otherwise doesn't work, since there's nothing "feisty" about the game or any of its characters. (Yes, I know, my subtitles don't always hit a home run, either. I'm not a commercial magazine with paid professional editors and 300,000 readers.) Then we have the first paragraph:

       

On the surface, fantasy role-playing games seem to have come a long way since the early days of text-based gaming; the days when dungeon mazes were created by bored programmers on mainframe computers. Today, the graphics, sound effects, music, and animations produced on increasingly sophisticated computers make those early efforts look like cave drawings.

     

Has Jay Kee ever played any of those "mainframe" games he's deriding? Because I guarantee that their programmers weren't "bored," and their outputs were anything but rudimentary. It's the earliest commercial games that look like cave drawings, not the mainframe ones. Incidentally, did an editor look at this? Because the first thing an editor does is strike "on the surface" and "seem to," and then he turns that semicolon into a dash.

      

Orthanc from 1975. Or, as Jay Kee sees it, "cave drawings."

          

Anyway, his point is to draw a contrast with the roll-your-character mechanics that have dominated CRPGs since the beginning. "Anyone expecting anything like a standard CRPG is in for a lot of surprises." And then he talks about all the things that I talked about at the beginning of this entry, except that he's convinced that Krondor heralds a new era in CRPG design, whereas I see it as a welcome variation, but not something I want to see replicated in every major RPG from now on.

     

I don't disagree with him on everything. He loves the open world but not the graphics. He praises the audio, the interface, and the map. But he sees the simplicity of inventory and character development as positives, which I don't, since I'm looking for an RPG rather than an adventure game. And his statement on the character portraits ("some people will not like the look of the characters or their costumes") fails to describe the depth of their inanity. Computer Gaming World would later give the game "Role-Playing Game of the Year" and name it one of the 150 best games of all time in their November 1996 issue. In August 1994, the U.S. PC Gamer ranked it 31 out of the best 40 games of all time, a rather brash article given that it was only their third issue.

   

I don't know why I keep going back to Dragon, which never had a good approach to reviewing computer games, but here I am reading Sandy Peterson's brief "Eye of the Monitor" column. (He starts each review with a quote from classical literature, the pretentious git, although the quote he chose, Claude Adrien Helvétius's "What makes men happy is liking what they are forced to do," is apt for this blog.) He had never read Feist, and he had trouble booting the game, so it was never destined to be a good review. He gave it 2 out of 5 stars. This paragraph is worth analyzing:

         

The designers, in a hare-brained attempt to make the game more realistic, have made the game hardly fun at all. You must constantly be polishing your armor, keeping your swords sharp, inspecting any food you find to make sure it's not spoiled or poisoned, replacing your crossbow's bowstrings, and continually engaging in other such dull maintenance activities.

    

I don't agree with him, and yet it's hard to explain why I don't agree with him. It's hard to explain why I prefer "survival" mode in games that offer it. Simply saying that I "like the challenge" doesn't seem enough. I like a variety of challenges, from the meta-challenge of finishing the game to micro-challenges like keeping my characters alive with sufficient rations. I love it when those micro-challenges sometimes come to the forefront, derailing your plans and sending you on a half-hour quest for a drink of water or a warm fire. But I suppose that's a subject for a longer entry where it's more relevant.

  

MobyGames's round up of reviews shows them ranging from 56% in the June 1993 German Power Play to 97% in Electronic Games. The median is about 85%, which surprises me. Overall, the various characteristics I listed at the start of this entry are present in many of the reviews, with some reviewers (incorrectly) thinking they are unique to this game, some suggesting (incorrectly) that they are heralds for CRPGs to come, and many unable to get past relatively minor parts of the game like the janky movement, the survival mechanics, and not being able to create your characters.

        

Given the popularity of the game, there is plenty of material to reconstruct its history. Primary sources include Neal Hallford's web site (thank you, Bronzon) and interviews with Hallford, director John Cutter, and Dynamix CEO and founder Jeff Tunnell, and Raymond Feist. The game's history was also covered thoroughly (as usual) in 2019 by the Digital Antiquarian. The original idea for Krondor was Tunnell's, who read and enjoyed the Riftwar novels. Tunnell gave the project to Cutter, who had been hired by Dynamix but was a bit adrift for his next project. (Cutter had coincidentally come from Cinemaware, which acquired the rights to Star Saga in 1990, but Cutter told me by email that he personally didn't have much to do with Star Saga and that its approach did not influence Krondor.) After securing the rights to the Midkemia setting from Feist, Cutter hired Neal Hallford, who he had met at New World, to do most of the writing. Feist had refused that role, saying, "You couldn't afford me."

    

Hallford had previously written the manual and in-game text for Tunnels & Trolls; Crusaders of Khazan (1990) and Planet's Edge (1991), both of which had issues but certainly gave Hallford the requisite experience. I have to agree that he really stepped up his game for Krondor. Jimmy Maher at the Digital Antiquarian says: "Hallford wrote [the game] with Feist's fans constantly in mind. He immersed himself in Feist's works to the point that he was almost able to become the novelist. The prose he created, vivid and effective within his domain, really is virtually indistinguishable from that of its inspiration," a fact no doubt responsible for persistent rumors that Feist himself wrote the game's text.

   

The original plan was to make a literal adaptation of Silverthorn (1985) which I agree is the most adaptable of the original novels, as it tells a relatively self-contained story in which a classing adventuring party goes through wilds and dungeons seeking a quest item. Maher's research credits Hallford for pushing for an original story instead, set during the 20-year gap in between A Darkness at Sethanon (1986) and Prince of the Blood (1989). 

   

As we've previously discussed, the interface was adapted from a flight simulator (a genre for which Dynamix was almost exclusively known) called Aces of the Pacific (1992). It technically pre-dates, or is at least contemporaneous to, Ultima Underworld (1992) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992), although the lack of interactivity of the Krondor engine, the graphics problems, and the inability to look up and down, keeps me from taking any accolades away from those titles.

      

Krondor got good reviews but wasn't a smash hit financially. Maher suggests several reasons: it was over-budget and well beyond its deadline in the first place; non-Feist fans were a bit lost in the narrative; and Dynamix had the misfortune of releasing it at the beginning of a general slump in CRPG sales. Planned sequels were canceled, Cutter was fired, and Hallford quit. Nonetheless, Sierra (Dynamix's parent company since 1990) ultimately did well with CD-ROM re-releases and with interest gained by Feist's 1997 canonization of the game in novel form: Krondor: The Betrayal. (Incidentally, one of the CD versions featured this interview with Feist, where I first learned the world is pronounced "Mid-KEE-me-uh" and not "Mid-KAY-me-uh.") Although Sierra had lost the Riftwar license by then, they capitalized on the novel's release by publishing Betrayal at Antara, set in another world but using the Krondor engine, the same year. None of Krondor's principals worked on Antara.

    

In the meantime, a Dallas-based developer called 7th Level, Inc., purchased the rights to adapt the Riftwar setting. 7th Level commissioned a sequel, Return to Krondor, from PyroTechnix, a Cincinnati-based studio that it had acquired in 1996. In the middle of the game's development, 7th Level sold PyroTechnix—to Sierra. The game came out in 1998 and was novelized by Feist as Krondor: Tears of the Gods (2000). The literal game novelizations make up 50% of the Riftwar Legacy quartet. The other two books—Krondor: The Assassins (1999) and Jimmy and the Crawler (2013)—conclude some of the plotlines started in Betrayal at Krondor.

               

Feist's canon novelization of the game.

     

I bought The Betrayal even though I knew I wouldn't have (and haven't had) time to read it in full. I was curious how you go about adapting a game into novel form when the game already has full paragraphs of prose and basically presents itself as a novel. The results are not what I expected. Feist adheres far more closely to the plot, order of events, and even dialogue than I would have expected. He re-writes most of the prose but not in a way that makes any significant changes to facts.

     

The Betrayal's prologue starts a bit before the game, with Locklear hanging around Tyr-Sog, hiding from the fallout of an unwise tryst in Krondor. By Page 5, his patrol encounters Gorath fleeing a group of Moredhel eager to capture him. Locklear's party drives off the pursuers. Gorath says he has a message for Prince Arutha and refuses to give it to anyone else. The soldiers from Tyr-Sog haul him away in chains. 

     

Chapter 1 picks up from Owyn's perspective, as he sits around a campfire and broods about what he's going to do with his life. He hears a noise, and then Locklear and Gorath come staggering into camp, Gorath having been wounded by a recent encounter with assassins. Owyn offers to help dress the Moredhel's wounds, and by Page 13, we've joined the opening moments of the game. Feist curiously uses almost none of Hallford's prose but does use a lot of his dialogue from this point. For instance, when he sees the assassin in the game, Gorath yells, "Get out from underfoot, Owyn! Assassin in the camp!" In the book, the two sentences are reversed but otherwise the same. When he gets hold of the assassin, in the game, Gorath says, "Do not struggle so, Haseth. I wish to keep you alive. But be glad I do not. The goddess of death will show you greater mercy." In the book, he says, "Do not struggle so, Haseth. For old times' sake, I will make this quick . . . May the Goddess of Darkness show you mercy."

    

Side quests are mostly cut. For instance, the characters hear about the Brak-Nurr in Chapter 1 but do not venture into the dwarven mines to deal with it. (They never enter the mines at all, in fact. Owyn and Gorath's journey from Krondor to Elvandar happens off-screen.) There are no rusalki in the text, no hand of glory, no Guarda Revanche. There is a mention of one "lock chest," but otherwise those fairy chests play no role in the book, nor do the copious traps, nor any NPCs who provide training in the game.

   

I was otherwise surprised at how closely Feist followed the plot, even when the original didn't make a lot of sense. For instance, Feist still sends the characters through the sewers on their first visit to Krondor on the silly excuse that the castle gates have been sabotaged. Owyn and Gorath's escape from Sar-Sargoth is still a bit unbelievable, although Feist does a better job justifying it by not having them engage in all kinds of noise and slaughter on the way. Perhaps most important, the characters still cover a huge amount of territory in unrealistically short time frames.

   

Feist does cut, expand, and recontextualize a few notable things. In the leadup to Northwarden, he skips having James and Locklear run random errands. He cuts the scene in which Arutha presides over the torture of a Moredhel captive. He introduces Makala much earlier (he's with Arutha when Locklear and company originally arrive at Krondor). [Ed. Makala is mentioned in the cutscene between Chapters 1 and 2 of the game, too. I just didn't remember.] When Gorath meets Aglaranna, he puts his hand on his sword so he can draw it and present it to her as part of the Return ritual.

       

This scene does not exist in the book.

       

Perhaps most surprising are the ways that the game seemed to change Feist's approach to the magic system of Midkemia. In the pre-Betrayal books, magic is a nebulous thing with few hard rules and not really organized into discrete, named "spells." That changes in the novelization, as in this passage where Owyn, Gorath, and Pug consider a party of Panath-Tiandn:

    

Gorath said, "This will be difficult, especially those two on the end with staves like yours."

   

Owyn said, "A moredhel spellcaster named Nago tried to freeze me with a spell; I've made it work once."

   

Pug closed his eyes and said, "I . . . I know which one you mean. The magic fetters that inflict damage. I . . . think I can cast that."

    

Owyn said, "If we can immobilize those two, then cast a ball of fire at the rest, maybe that will cause enough panic we can get inside and find your daughter."

    

Feist avoids the specific spell names, but this scene otherwise feels exactly like a player planning combat tactics.

   

Those of you who have fully read the book, please feel free to comment with your analysis or any mistakes in my summary; again, I skimmed most of it.

        

This integration of a computer game with the canon of a larger franchise is groundbreaking. We've had novels based on games and games based on novels, but with Krondor we have a depth of mutual interaction that we haven't seen before, at least in the west. As such, the games paved the way for mixed-media franchises like Star Wars, The Witcher, and Fallout. Krondor isn't the highest-rated game of 1993, but for those reasons, it's a strong contender for "Game of the Year" and a worthy entry to my "Must Play" list.