Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

Dr. Doom cameos to set up the next game.

         

Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom

France

Silmarils (developer and publisher)
Released 1993 for DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST; 1994 for Macintosh 

Date Started: 28 July 2025  

Date Ended: 4 September 2025

Total Hours: 20

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

      

Here I go for the second time in a row, trying to reconstruct what happened in a game I played weeks ago. My first screenshot shows the party in a richly-decorated room, taking something off a table. The best I can figure, this is the commander-in-chief's office, which we opened with the key that we got from Zeldy's neck. I believe the item that we're taking is an air amulet stolen from the temple on Zach's Island. No . . . wait. I guess we're taking an idol stolen from the temple, which we then returned to the temple, for which we were rewarded with the air amulet. Forgive me if I have something messed up there.

         

I never got to kill the guard captain. We saved the world but didn't solve the corruption of Zach's Island.

        

My next note is: "Tossed $40,000 worth of evening clothes in the trash." This seems to be about the Blue Velvet club. The first time we visited, we were arrested and tossed in prison, an event that simply repeated when we visited again. There's a hint somewhere in one of the taverns that the club expects you to show up dressed to the nines and wearing pendants, which was supposed to be a clue to spend $8,000 each on five sets of evening wear from one of the shops in town. I don't think I figured this out for myself. I wrote down that there were two places in which I used a walkthrough, and I'm pretty sure this is one of them.

         

Zuburan dons some fancy clothes.

     

Our attire let us join the party, which apparently led us to a sad old man named Olbar who gave us the map to the final island—his island, as he was one of the original companions in Crystals of Arborea. Only he didn't "give" us the map; he put it on the table for us to take. This is different from all of the other maps in the game, which led us to leave the bar thinking we'd received the map, throw away $40,000 worth of clothing, realize later that we didn't have the map, and have to re-buy the clothing and re-visit the club.

        

Look at that goblin gettin' all funky.

      

Before visiting the new island, we returned to Akeer's Island, as I felt that the amulet was the key to getting past the invulnerable air spirit. It was; the creature simply wasn't there. We fought our way through skeletons and mummies and some kind of lion-headed beast ("Paralyze" worked very well on him) and ultimately made our way to a series of prison cells.

        

Nice skirt, Simba.

     

A girl named Grimzel was in one of them. "Take me back to my father," she ordered. To get her into the party, I had to dump Yornh, the priest, which fortunately everyone else was cool with. Grimzel had pretty miserable statistics, but her spells at least replicated what I lost in Yornh (which didn't make sense to me, as she was a scholar, not a priest, but even as she leveled, she never gained the other spells that my scholar gained). She couldn't wear or wield anything useful, and I didn't really bother to equip her. For the rest of the game, I kept her in the back and just had her heal other characters.

        

I just now noticed that she's blind.

       

It took me forever to find a secret door that had to be opened with a button—a mechanic the game does not introduce until this point. A puzzle involved using the skulls we'd been finding to weigh down platters suspended from the ceiling by chains. We had to fight a guard dressed in blue (again, "Paralyze" was a god-send). I believe he was guarding a room with the last glass-encased bone belonging to Grimzel's father.

     

Bluer than velvet were his eyes . . .

      

We returned to Jon's Island, moving fast and frequently healing to avoid having to buy furs again. Yes, I had also thrown away those clothes, even though I should have realized I'd have to return. We put the bones on the five pillars, and with a resounding "Dwilgelindildong!," the druid Grimz was standing before us.

     

I hope the order doesn't matter.

      

I now had to make another space in my party. I tried expelling Grimzel, but Grimz wouldn't join without her. (And to make a full confession, none of my party members would countenance her expulsion, so I had to murder her just to see if Grimz would join without her.) Thus, with reluctance I gave up Karorn, my only good warrior after Zubaran. There was no way I was giving up Eliandr or Khalin's spells. I was way over-relying on "Change of Timescale" by this point. 

   

Grimz was about as useless as his daughter. He also promptly went into the back rank. He couldn't equip or carry anything, and he only came with four spells. Fortunately, one of them was "Fireproofing," which turned out to be vital for the endgame. I believe Grimz is the only druid character, and thus the only character with this spell. Otherwise, the player could skip a decent part of the game.

         

Grimz is smart but nothing else.

       

After we revisited the Blue Velvet club and properly got the map, we set sail for Olbar's Island. The only landing point immediately took us into the final dungeon, where the first foe was some kind of fire elemental, capable of blasting most of us to smithereens without "Fireproofing" refreshed every minute or so. Even with the spell active, he took a long time to kill. Only Zubaran and his Living Sword +20 were capable of doing any serious damage.

     

I haven't figured out the spell yet.

        

Not long after the fire elemental, we had to repeat the process with a dragon. I couldn't get the timing right on how often I needed to cast "Fireproofing," so I just ducked out of combat and saved every so often, reloading if anyone died. I should mention that Zubaran didn't need "Fireproofing," as he had the shield that Griml had enchanted. I started to wonder if a single character with that shield could just solo the game and skip a ton of content that involved finding the various pieces of Grimz. The problem is that unless you were prepared to return to Zach's Island a lot to rest and heal, you'd need a magician to cast "Change of Timescale" or at least someone to cast "Heal." Maybe the knight could do it. I don't think the magician, who can wield a shield, could do it on her own, as she can't wield a weapon powerful enough to do any damage to the late-game enemies in melee combat. It's possible I'm missing something, though. Could that "Invulnerability" potion substitute for "Fireproofing?" I never tried it and have no idea how long it lasts.

          

This dragon looks very uncomfortable.

       

We fought through skeletons, mummies, liches, some kind of crone with horse legs, and more lion-ogres, picking up piles of cash that we wouldn't spend. We had to find a few more secret doors and trigger several pressure plates to open the way forward. Finally, we made it to the door outside Shandar's chambers. Here, again, I needed a walkthrough. To open the door, I had to click on it with the parrot, which we had purchased ages ago. I think the rationale is that we had previously come upon an unnamed sorcerer practicing some kind of password, and the idea was that the parrot repeated the password. Why one of us couldn't have repeated the password, I don't have any idea, particularly since it's the same mysterious goofy word that I've been making fun of for half the game.

         

Is it possible that this word doesn't sound as idiotic in French?

             

With the baboon, mouse, and man-eating plant still unused in our packs (do any of them do anything?), we entered the final chambers. Shandar was a bit of a pushover, although I did have to keep "Global Psychic Protection" and "Fireproofing" going constantly. I nailed him with a bunch of offensive spells, moved in, and just had Zubaran hammer him until he died. He was capable of casting "Inversion," so I had to be careful that Zubaran wasn't hitting other party members instead of Shandar. I think this is how I lost Grimz at some point, but I didn't really care, since the final cut scene took over as soon as Shandar lost his last hit point.

     

Shandar hits us with a spell.

     

The unsatisfying endgame showed the fortress of Ishar from the outside as day transitioned to night. There was an absolutely pathetic volley of like three fireworks, barely visible. As the words "The End" appeared, an ominous cloaked figure wandered into the frame, his gaze fixed on the fortress. Or maybe he was just watching the fireworks.

 

This is the extent of the "fireworks."

       

The GIMLET is not going to be great for this one. I really didn't like anything about it except the graphics. I found the difficulty extremely unbalanced (admittedly, I contributed to that by over-grinding at one point) and the puzzles a bit too obscure.

       

The text and dialogue were either unnecessarily obtuse or poorly translated. For instance, if you try to enter the club before 20:00 or any of the shops after the same hour, a message comes up that says, "Shut up over there!!! Haven't you seen the time!?" I don't know what it says in the original French, but why couldn't it just say, "We're closed!"? "I think this place is bewitched" isn't really the clue that you need to cast "Exorcism." (Oh, yeah, we had to do that once in Shandar's place.) Did the translators not know the word "cursed," or were they trying to make it harder for the player? I have the same question about the "Ent Alarm" potion. There are countless such examples.

     

We were supposed to get from this that he was practicing a password.

      

Let's give it a go:

     

• 3 points for the game world. There's a bit of lore, but most of it is derivative of Tolkien or unnecessarily vague. Early in the game, I didn't really understand what the story was about. By the end, I did, but I still found it incompetently told, mostly through sparse, poorly-translated text.

• 3 points for character creation and development. I rather like the idea of selecting party members from NPCs, but the game ruins its own ideas here by failing to fully develop them. The "voting" system is just silly, and I didn't find any consequences whatsoever from the party affinity score. There's no point in having good and evil characters when there are no role-playing choices in the game. Character development is mostly important for the acquisition of spells.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. Most of the NPCs in the game offer a couple of lines of hints. The ones occupying the streets of the cities have no purpose whatsoever, and I later learned that they can simply be slaughtered with no consequences. I liked that you could have NPCs join the party.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. I never like games that don't name their enemies. The foes that the game offers have a decent number of strengths and weaknesses that require mostly spell solutions. I give a couple of points for the puzzles. I found a couple of them too obtuse, but a few were well-clued by NPC dialogue if I paid attention, and I always like when Dungeon Master descendants go beyond purely mechanical puzzles like levers and pressure plates.

     

The "skull puzzle" on Akeer's Island.

         

• 3 points for magic and combat. The game messes up its Dungeon Master roots by making the "cool down" period so short that you really just need one character to repeatedly attack. That leaves all tactics associated with spells, and I admit that the game offers a decent variety of these, requiring the player to carefully experiment to find the right tactics. The grid for assigning positions is unnecessarily complicated (or, to look at it another way, doesn't use its full potential). It really only matters whether the character is in the front rank or not.

        

Some of the enemies in Shandar's place. Note that I have all the spell panels open.

          

• 4 points for equipment. The system is all right. You have a satisfying number of slots among five characters, and it's pretty easy to tell what's best via cost and the name of the item. The reagent and potion system could have been better developed, for instance by allowing the player to mix potions before he needs them.

• 4 points for the economy. I can't complain that it runs out of utility. You need money for equipment, food, lodging, and even certain plot points. I ended the game well before equipping my party with all of the best stuff. But it's somewhat absurd that the only respawning enemies who drop gold are found on Zach's Island in just a couple locations, and it's ridiculous that you cannot sell items.

       

I could have spent a lot more time in here.

       

• 2 points for a main quest. I don't really see any side quests. There are a couple of ways to solve some of the puzzles, and I give credit for that in "Encounters and Foes," but there are no real role-playing choices to make in the quest.

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets most of that for the graphics, which offer more detail and artistic quality than 90% of the games in its era. However, looking over my entries for the first Ishar, I almost prefer its graphics for monsters. They were far more straightforward and less stylized. As for sound effects, it has a few, mostly in combat, nothing worth getting excited about. I do, however, give it some extra credit for its use of ambient sound, which we still aren't seeing in the average game. I was not a fan of the mouse-driven interface (it has some keyboard backups, but not many).

        

I love that Shandar took the time to decorate his dungeon with stained-glass windows of himself.

        

• 5 points for gameplay. I give it some credit for some nonlinearity, a small amount of replayability (trying different party members), a modest difficulty, and a short playing time.

   

That gives us a final score of 36. In years past, I would have said that it was on the cusp of what I call "Recommended," but as we get deeper into the 1990s, I think that the "Recommended" threshold has to be raised. I can't find the entry where I offered a more complicated formula, but it was something like the game year minus 1952, which would put the "Recommended" threshold at about 35 for 1987, but more like 41 for 1993.

     

I ranked the original Ishar at 38, which goes with my memory that I liked it a bit better, although the differences in specific GIMLET categories are slight enough that I may have just been in a better mood on that day in 2020.

    

I still don't know how we were "messengers of doom."

      

If MobyGames and Wikipedia are to be believed, Ishar 2 never had a North American release, which explains why Computer Gaming World never got to it. The magazine did offer a preview, in a larger article about European games, in the January 1994 issue. Calling the two previous titles "pretty grim" and "very continental in approach," it didn't predict good things from Messengers of Doom. MobyGames's round-up of reviews shows a lot of them, ranging from 54% in the German Power Play to 93% in the English CU Amiga. The average is about 80%, but wow is there a bifurcation, with almost all the German reviews below that mean and almost all of the English ones above it. The English reviews, particularly the Amiga ones, are predictably in love with the graphics ("among the most breathtaking seen on the Amiga" says CU Amiga), which I've already agreed with, but they're not, you know, everything, particularly when it comes to RPGs. The German ones are more in line with my own feelings, still praising the graphics but noting weaknesses in the gameplay and story. The one French review on the site, from the December 1993 Tilt, weighs in at exactly 80%, which I find refreshingly non-jingoistic. 

    

A modest review in the July 1993 The One (86%) has an important insight: "It's still very easy to lose the thread of the plot and end up wandering around without a clue as to what you're meant to be doing." This is exactly what I mean by the relative incompetence of the storytelling and game world.  

    

I put Ishar 3 on the 1994 game list, I guess mostly because it seemed silly to play two games in a trilogy and not the third, but I can't say I'm looking forward to more warm tears and ding-dong-dings. YouTube videos suggest that it has the same engine as Ishar 2. It appears to let you both import and create party members. The graphics seem mostly as nice as ever, but reviews appear to be even worse than for Ishar 2.

     

It's nice to have won a game. It's been a couple of months. I'm going to need you to be patient for just a bit longer, though. One calamity after another has rolled right into the busy opening month of the fall semester, and as you can see from the dates on this entry, I've been having trouble finding time to write about game sessions that have already taken place, let alone playing new games. Things always improve by Columbus Day.