Game 550: Sandor II: Kotalan und die drei Schwester'n (1991)

 

From the company that made Seven Horror's comes another random unnecessary apostrophe.

       

Sandor II: Kotalan und die drei Schwester'n

"Sandor II: Kotalan and the Three Sisters"

Germany

Motelsoft (developer and publisher)

Released 1991 for Atari ST

Date Started: 27 May 2025 

           

This is my fifth Motelsoft game, and I found myself looking forward to it as it came up on the list. Since my first go at Seven Horror's (1988), I've found that the company has offered a consistent middle-range experience. None of their games so far has been amazing, and some have been downright confusing, but in general, they've done a solid job analyzing and replicating the factors that make for successful commercial RPGs. That said, I don't think I've managed to get through any of their games without getting significantly stuck at one point or another, a scenario that's doubly likely here, where the game exists only in German.

   

Sandor (1989) is the only one of their titles so far that I didn't finish. The version Motelsoft offers is freeware, and the company doesn't offer the ability to obtain a registered version. LanHawk was later able to win it and offered instructions for getting around the registration problem, but I never found time to go back to it. I found the plot impenetrable (Motelsoft's site only says, unhelpfully and incorrectly, that it's "self-explanatory"); LanHawk was able to offer a bit more, but even his account leaves a lot of mysteries.

         

The game begins.

     

At least for the sequel, we have a proper description in the instructions: A malevolent wizard named Kotalan has extorted King Salinos of Sandor by threatening to turn all his subjects to stone; he has already petrified everyone in Salinos's court except the king himself. It's unclear what he has extorted the king for; it may be an object or a person. The king has put out a plea for assistance, and heroes have arrived at his castle from various neighboring lands. The player has to assemble a party of at least four characters, visit Salinos, and accept his mission. (German readers, I would appreciate if you could visit this site and let me know if I've missed any nuance.)

     

As the game begins on an iconographic outdoor landscape, there is only one character in the party: a 28-year old woman named Tanja, a "Tranok." (Mysterious races are a staple of Motelsoft's games.) She has skill values between 3 and 5 in various weapon skills (sword, axe, bow), navigational skills (hunting cartography, negotiating), 120 provisions, 350 gold, and various attributes such as charisma, intelligence, strength, and luck. She comes with "arc gloves," "toco plate (iron)," and "talmon boots," none of which she has the strength to equip. She also has one spell: "Healing 1." I'll later find that every time you start a new game, values are rolled randomly for Tanja, and the Tanja I got here is extremely weak. It's very on-brand for Motelsoft to not offer much player choice in character creation.

      

This Tanja's starting inventory.

         

I quickly discern that the game interface is mouse-only, which makes me unhappy. I steer Tanja towards the nearest town, Kolono, which was also the closest town to the start in the first Sandor. The maps are otherwise not identical. The town has an armory, a pawn shop, a healer, a hotel, a training center, a bar, and a place where you can buy and sell trade goods like tobacco and tea. 

   

At the armory, which only sells weapons, shields, and potions (no armor), I buy a sword and wooden shield for Tanja.

    

Visiting a pleasant town.

      

In the bar, I have the option to buy provisions (I've already used 11!), talk to the guests, or recruit other adventurers. Talking to the patrons produces a couple of rumors. Scouting for adventurers results in 1 "wanderer" offering to join the party. He's a 22-year-old man of the "Hunch" race with much higher charisma, weapon skill, and strength than Tanja. I take him on, name him "Waldau," and give him Tanja's starting equipment, but he also can't equip the plate or boots. I return to the weapon shop and buy him an axe and shield.

      

Weapons and armor available in the shop.

     

Let's pause for a moment. A few paragraphs ago, I said that Motelsoft was good at analyzing successful games and incorporating their elements. Doesn't the menu town remind you a bit of Pirates!? I think the authors blended menu town concepts from completely different genres; from Pirates! they took the ability to buy and sell trade goods, the ability to recruit at taverns, and the way time passes while you're on the menu screen. (Amusingly, the game has both a 0-hour and a 24-hour, so I guess there's a 25-hour day.) They grafted it with more common RPG menu-town options like buying weapons. I'll bet some of the towns even offer the equivalent of visiting the governor.

     

On our way out of town, a man appears and says, "I am being followed! Will you help me?" We say yes and find ourselves in combat with six grünmagen, which translates as "green mages" but looks to be some kind of gnome (which makes sense). 

         

Getting slaughtered by garden gnomes.

       

Combat takes place on a 13 x 9 grid. You begin by placing your characters. As each round starts, each character has a certain number of action points, which they may use to move, attack, cast a spell, or use an item. This system was popularized by a number of SSI games, including Shard of Spring (1986) and Demon's Winter (1988), and I suspect these games are the source of many of the primary mechanics of both Sandor games. (I should note here that Motelsoft's Heinz Munter, in a 2019 email to me, said that the authors had not played these games, but I think there are just too many similarities. I think it's more likely that after 30 years, Munter forgot, or that he isn't aware that primary Sandor author Harald Breitmaier had played them.) 

   

The enemies completely slaughter us. I can't even kill one of them despite hitting him repeatedly each round. So as unheroic as it seems to say "no" to people in need, it might be necessary this early in the game.

     

The Great Wall of Sandor.

     

I spend the next few hours not so much trying to "advance" as to get a scope of the environment. The game seems to start at the top of the continent, so I move south in east-west strips. Among my findings:

   

• A school that teaches the "Cartography" skill for around 60 gold pieces per point (the price varies between the two characters, so I suspect it depends on charisma).

• There's a wall down the eastern edge of the world, with some obvious content beyond it. The only gatehouse has a freaky guard who demands a password.

      

For a moment, I thought he wanted a longsword.

     

• Other cities called Malonga, Paradiso, and Kassada. They seem to have the same options as Kolono. The shops have different stuff. (I'll figure out equipment later.) I don't find any new companions in the bars: "None of those present are interested in dealing with you."

• King Salinos's castle. The gate guard won't let me pass because I don't have 4 people.

• A couple of dungeons in which the interface turns into a very stylized first-person view. It is quite unlike Motelsoft's other first-person games. Anyway, I don't explore long. I'll have more on dungeons later.

• Some place where I have to press 4 buttons. Obviously, I have no clue here.

        

I definitely don't want to press that first one.

      

• Ringed by mountains, a different dungeon that is explored top-down. I guess the game has both. 

         

 

The second type of dungeon.

        

• A second "Cartography" school and a "Lockpicking" school.

• A place where the game seems to want me to arrange tiles into a mosaic. I think I could probably solve it, but I leave it for later. 

       

I must be missing something because this looks too easy.

       

• A ferryman's hut, where we're offered passage across a river for 40 gold pieces. This is the only way to get to the southern part of the world and several cities there.

      

There are actually two huts, on either side of the crossing.

       

• A place where they'll teach me spells. They say Tanja can learn one new spell, and I can choose between "Firebolt 1" and "Speed 1." Waldau can't learn anything. 

      

We explore so long without any random battles that I begin to wonder if the game has any. Eventually, we're attacked by a thug and a "firenip." This one goes a lot easier, and we're able to kill them with minimal damage. We earn different amounts of experience, so experience seems to be based on what you accomplish during the battle. 

      

The combat window.

     

Shortly thereafter, we get a random noncombat encounter: a group of travelers want to show us their wares. They have some potentially useful items for sale, but I need to get a handle on equipment and the economy before I spend any money. 

   

The wall down the eastern edge eventually turns west and cuts off southern territories, too, so it's clear that what I've discovered is all I have to explore. There's oddly a lot less stuff in the game world than there was in the first Sandor, and other than Kolono, none of the towns are (so far) repeated. There are none of the first game's churches, which confused me. I don't even think LanHawk figured those out.

     

Having burned a ton of provisions just getting the lay of the land, I start over. I note this time that Tanja has different statistics. Her luck and weapon skills are better; she has three spells instead of just one; and her strength is much higher. She's ugly as sin, though, which I think might affect the likelihood that others will join. I try a few more times, and the three general options seem to be a fighter character (at least one good weapon stat, good strength), a mage-oriented character, or a character that sucks at everything. I don't have any luck trying to get a balanced character.

       

My new party leader.

       

While in the process of rolling my twelfth Tanja, I get a new name: Sirus. He's much better than any of the Tanjas, with skills of 10 for sword and axe, a charisma of 9, and decent magic skill (though no spells). I visit several towns and buy him a decent kit. A guy with decent magic skill joins him; I name him Conleth. He's followed by McCann and Maisie, both of whom are more fighter characters. Equipping them is a huge pain in the neck, as there's no indication when you're buying items what strength they require. I keep wasting money on things that the character isn't strong enough to wield.

     

With four characters, we can now enter the castle, which turns out to be a first-person dungeon. "Only the most daring adventurers may come before his eyes!" a message warns as we enter. Dungeon exploration seems to follow the standard Dungeon Master style (again, mouse-only) with a compass and a stylized GTFO cluster. Special encounters appear in the environment as question marks, as they would in the later Magic Tower I: Dark Stone Ritual (1992). I assume enemies will not appear in the environment and combat will take place on the same tactical grid as the outdoor battles, but I don't meet any enemies here.

     

Exploring the castle.

       

My reading of the interface is that if you have someone trained in cartography, it makes an automap for you, but so far, none of my characters are trained. In any case, this "dungeon" is a very small level of only 46 squares, and the wall pattern leads me directly to King Salinos. He told us a story that recaps the backstory, but with a crucial addition:

 

Kotalan came to me in my castle. He showed me how great his power was by turning all my warriors to stone! Then, as a price for sparing the land and its people, he demanded my three daughters: Sarah, Melissa, and Laura. My pleas and begging fell on deaf ears, so after much back and forth, I gave in.

I called my daughters to me and told them of our misfortune. When Kotalan saw them, he muttered a magic spell, and in the next second, my daughters disappeared. Kotalan held up a leather pouch, laughed his terrible laugh, and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. 

        

Were they triplets?

           

"Do you want to try to free my three daughters?" the king asks at the end of his story. I honestly don't know whether I should say yes now or whether I'm supposed to build up my characters to "the most daring" first. I say yes and the face of Kotalan appears to laugh at me. I guess I deserve that.

   

I love that in a game series that forces you to play characters with names like "Monky" and "Gnorr," the king's three daughters are named Sarah, Melissa, and Laura. 

     

The town menu gives the ability to dismiss characters, even the original one, so I don't know if this will be my permanent party. But I'll see if I can build them up as I figure out more about the game.

       

Time so far: 3 hours