Sandor II: A Midsummer Night's RPG

 

My party stays up all night in a forest.

                

Since I was teenager, I've tried to adhere to the tradition of staying up all night on the Summer Solstice, which isn't at all that hard given my natural circadian rhythm. I'd like to say that I'm usually doing something interesting during that time—gamboling in a forest outside Athens, for instance—but I suppose most of those 35 years have been spent on a computer or in front of a television set. This year, I spent it playing Sandor II. There was a time I wouldn't want to admit that, but I'm old now and have no one left to impress.

       

It became clear this session that the game is a lot larger than I thought. What I took for the entire game world in the automap was just the portion that I was able to see based on my current "Cartography" skill. When I pumped that skill up to 100% and saw the entire thing, I realized it's more than a dozen times as large as the small, walled-in starting area in the northwest.

      

The full world map. In this session, I didn't go further east than Column D or further south than Row 4. The opening area is basically A1:A4.

           

A second revelation was that there was more to the interface than I realized. Thanks to Buck for cluing me in. Right-clicking while in dungeons brings up some options, including the ability to see the current time and to wait. I tried it in the dungeon with the three fountains, and the same NPC who I had met outside came along. He told me of the importance of two words. "One word opens the fortress, but the other you must tell the gatekeeper! Now listen carefully. Whoever forgets the 7th letter of my first name gets one. Whoever swaps the first 4 gets the other. Well, farewell to you."

   

The NPC is named FLORIAN, so one of the passwords is FLORIA and the other . . . well, "swaps the other four" could mean several things, and I would have saved myself 44 guesses if I had realized that it meant "put them in reverse order." Instead, I interpreted it as "changed the order" and I listed all 23 possibilities—but really 46 because I didn't know whether I should keep the IAN or not. When FLORIA didn't work on the guard at the gate surrounding the starting area, I tried FLRO, FLROIAN, FORL, FORLIAN, and so forth, before getting it at the end of the list with ROLF.

       

Waiting until midnight in the dungeon.

           

Unfortunately, while ROLF let me through the gate, it didn't work when trying to get back. I left some undone stuff in the starting area. That was particularly unfortunate because I had a third revelation in the first dungeon I found on the other side of the gate: Dungeon doors haven't been locked. What I took for "locked" doors could be opened with an "open" command on the same screen as the clock. Some of them require forcing the door or picking the lock, and you have multiple tries to do so. I still think there is some door that's going to require stones (as per one of the tavern tips), but I haven't found it yet.

       

Exploring the island kingdom.

      

I didn't explore this first dungeon very far. Instead, I hopped a ferry across a channel to another walled-in area. Eventually, I came to a house with a woman who offered to ferry me across yet another river. There was no river nearby. I said yes anyway and found myself on a couple of islands connected by a bridge, with no way back. I wandered to the southern island and met a mage who said I was in the Island Kingdom of Bramos and that I had to pass a test; specifically, this riddle:

      

German	English
Ein Glanzmetall steht hier am Anfang. Ihm folgt in tiefem Schwarz ein Anhang. Ein Mensch mit einem Angebot. Man wählt. Er schleppt herbei, was Not. Wir aber sehen bei der Verschmelzung der beiden schließlich nur noch Rot.	A shiny metal stands at the beginning here. It is followed by an appendage in deep black. A person with an offer. One chooses. He brings what is needed. But when the two merge, we ultimately see only red.

     

I couldn't get anywhere with it; fortunately, commenters matt w and Michl figured it out: ZINNOBER, or CINNABAR in English. The shiny metal is meant to make you think of tin (zinn) and the person with an offer is meant to make you think of a waiter (ober). "When the two merge, we ultimately see only red" refers to the vermilion color of cinnabar. I'm not sure what the "appendage in deep black" is about.

    

As a consequence of answering the riddle successfully, teleporters bounced my party around several islands before we met the "representative of the King of Bramos," a cyclops, who gave us Kotalan's Ring. I assume that becomes vital later. (Kotalan is the evil wizard who has kidnapped the three princesses.) A ferry took us back to where we came from.

       

That is one ugly cyclops.

         

Other findings in this new area were cities called Lunosa and Terosa; schools offering to train "Cartography"; "Hunting"; "Negotiation"; and "Trap Removal"; and a spell school. At this latter location, my spellcasters learned "Strength 1," "Ninja 1," and "Flame Jet 1." "Flame Jet" turns out to be awesome, damaging every enemy on the screen.

     

As I continued to explore, I kept getting trounced by the enemies in the wilderness, so I returned to the dungeon near the entrance to this area. Amidst a few battles, I met an NPC who told me that I'd left the "Old Land," and that to get back, I would need a different password. He gave me instructions to go to a grove of trees to the southwest and wait, which I did. A voice gave the password as GORF.

      

I guess technically I wasn't supposed to wait after sundown, but it didn't seem to have any negative effect.

       

I had picked up a fifth party member, Iain, in one of the towns. In the dungeon, two more offered to join the party. I only had room for one, and I took the one (Bridget) who had better spellcasting statistics. That gives me three fighter characters and three mage characters.

         

The last character.

         

Now that I had the password back to the starting area, a full party, and a better sense of how the game worked, I felt better equipped to explore things comprehensively. I broke the world map into quadrants and began exploring them starting in quadrant A1. Most of these places, I'd already been, but here we go anyway:

 

• City of Kolono (A1). Trainer. Tavern tip is about the king's daughters.

• Cartography School (A1). I pumped Sirus up to 100%.

• City of Malonga (A1). Has a guild (where you level up). Tavern tip is also about the king.

• King's Castle (A1). Already been here, got the quest to rescue the princesses from Kotalan.

• Cave that's looking for a 4-symbol combination on the door (A1). No clues yet, but see below.

• Dungeon (A1). Wolfsstein Ruins. I thought it had a locked door when I entered before, but it didn't. I find no enemy parties in here, just a lot of adventurers who offer to join my already-full party.

      

If Sirus had entered this dungeon first, he could have completed his party all at once.

       

• Dungeon with the Three Wells (A2), as described above.

• Cartography School (A2).

• Locksmith School (A3). I trained Iain up to 50%. 

• Ferries (A3/A4).

• Cave with the Mosaic (A3). I can't get in until I figure out the pattern. I later found a mosaic picture in the B4 dungeon, but it doesn't seem to be the one that this cave is looking for.

• City of Paradiso (A4). Guild. Training. Tavern tale is about putting stones in a gate to make it open.

• City of Kassada (A4). Red and platinum gems for sale. Tavern tale is about creatures whose charms are irresistible to men but not to women.

• Magic School (A4).

• Dungeon (B4). This is the one with all the traps. A spiral hallway ended in a door that wanted 3 symbols out of 5. That's only 10 possible combinations, and I got it on the first try (the first 3 buttons). Beyond was a message and a picture of a mosaic, but not the one for the cave in A3.

      

Actually, I may be wrong. The top image shows the mosaic in the dungeon; the bottom my (nearly complete) attempt to replicate it in the cave. I just realized that I had the top bar in the second glyph wrong. I'll try again before the next entry.

       

The message in that last dungeon was:

      

There is a gate and a secret mechanism that opens it, there in the temple of the deceased. Whoever solves the riddle will receive his legacy as a reward and my help in the fight against the hordes of the Kotalan. He who can see, let him SEE.

       

After this, I got thinking: assuming no buttons are pressed twice, and the order doesn't matter, how many possible combinations can there be of 4 buttons out of 8? (I didn't know for sure that no button was pressed twice and the order didn't matter, but my experience in the last dungeon made me suspect it.) The answer is 70. I decided that was just on this side of "too many," returned to the cave in A1, and got to work. The door opened after a couple of dozen guesses.

      

I still wonder how I was supposed to do this "for real."

          

The dungeon beyond the door was the largest in the game so far, with numerous combats and messages:

      

• In many great vaults there is nothing but nothing.
• We've already been there and took everything! Signed, Olaf the Red.
• You have a choice: Take the short road or the long road. Both will lead you to the Realm of Madness. It's not worth turning back!
• You have chosen the long road. You will starve.

      

The only other encounter I found was with a guy who demanded all my food. I gave it to him and he laughed about how much of an idiot I was and disappeared. I reloaded and said no, and nothing else came of the encounter. I don't know whether I missed something, but I found nothing else in the dungeon; perhaps those first two messages were meant to be taken literally.

         

Note from the automap the size of the dungeon level.

          

Except when I got ahead of myself and started meeting Level 6-7 enemies, combat has been relatively simple so far, but that's partly because I learned an early trick. The party always goes first. All characters get 5 movement points. Moving a space costs 1; attacking costs 2 unless you have only 1 point left, in which case you can attack for 1; spells cost 2. Characters can move and attack in the same round, but it doesn't appear that enemies can. Thus, you're safe from melee enemies as long as you don't end a round next to them. Spellcasters and missile enemies can hit you from wherever, though, and some spellcasters have the equivalent of "Flame Jet." Other than "Flame Jet 1," "Firebolt 1," and "Healing 1," I haven't experienced much with spells myself.

       

Conleth blasts the enemies with "Flame Jet 1." The game cycles through each enemy and gives the damage done.

        

There are two tedious parts of playing the game. The first has to do with equipment. Trying to identify everything after combat (you often get 8-10 items), figuring out what's more powerful than what I already have, then testing to see which characters have the strength to equip it, takes so long that I know I've been overlooking potential upgrades. The second tedious part of the game is having to click on everything. I would pay good money for the numberpad to control movement. 

     

Like most Motelsoft games, though, there's something charming about it overall. Character development is palpably rewarding, and there's a minor thrill that comes with overcoming each puzzle and challenge and opening up a new area, perhaps heightened for me because I also have to struggle with the language. Something will probably block me permanently before the end, but I'll do my best to get there.

   

Time so far: 14 hours