Pathways into Darkness: Io Non Morii, e Non Rimasi Vivo

 

This was less of a big deal than I thought it would be.

       

To recap, I'm in this multi-leveled dungeon in the Yucatan because some aliens told the President of the United States that an ancient evil had awakened. My strike team's mission was to take a nuclear bomb to the lowest level of the dungeon, set it off, and get out. The explosion, the aliens told us, would stun the evil entity long enough for the aliens to arrive and deal with it permanently. Unfortunately, I got separated from my team due to a bad jump, and I entered the fortress long after they did. On the way down through the levels, I've seen plenty of signs of an old Nazi party that came looking for artifacts to help the war effort, but no sign of my own comrades.

     

(Note: I have virtually no screenshots for a while because I thought my recording was running when I accidentally had it on pause.)

     

That changed on the "Plague of Demons" level I was having trouble with last time. The level is swarming with invisible ghosts. To see them, you have to equip a pair of infrared goggles. There is a pair on the body of an American soldier just to the left of the arrival ladder, which would have been great except my standard pattern of exploration is to go right. So I kept running out of ammo firing blindly at invisible ghosts, dying, and reloading. To make matters worse, the level also has those evil, barely-visible phantoms from higher in the dungeon. These creatures only die if you use a crystal, but I had already forgotten that, so they kept killing me while I assumed I just wasn't hitting them enough.

    

"When / a demon bites my head / and I shoot it dead / I see la vie en rose . . . "

            

Eventually, I tried going left, and I soon found the body of John, one of my companions, who (when I spoke to him with the yellow crystal), didn't understand why I didn't remember his name. That's a good question. I had to repeat the same incredulity with the other members of my party on a later level. This is just like those Ultima games where the only word that initiates any conversation topics is JOB, but half the NPCs tell you how ridiculous the question is: "What do you mean, 'JOB'?! I'm in jail!" or "I'm a child; I don't have a job." As if it's the player's fault for asking the only keyword available.

   

John was surprised I had gotten so far by myself. He told me about using the goggles, but the ghosts had killed him anyway. His M-16 was broken. He urged me to go on and find the others, but he warned me that Steven had changed the passcode to the bomb.

   

The problem after this point was ammo.  No matter whether I went right or left, I kept running out. There was this one room with about 20 of the ghosts where I had to spend three magazines. The previous floors had offered magazines here or there; this one didn't seem to offer anything. But multiple comments had suggested some game-changing artifact would be found on the level, so I kept going different directions until I finally found . . . a wooden box.

    

I'd better get this to Lord British.

         

Muller and commenters had both suggested that this was some game-changer, so I fiddled with it until I figured out what it does. It helped that Muller had told his soldiers that once they had the box, they would need only one gold ingot.  It duplicates things left inside of it. It takes about 75 seconds, but fortunately I rested after putting an M-41 magazine in there and saw the effects almost immediately. You might think that would result in unlimited ammo, but a minute is a long time in this game and there are a lot of enemies to shoot. I think at one point I had five magazines, but most of the time, I struggled (without excessive resting) to have more than three. Is that what the cloak is for? Speeding up the clock so you can get more ammunition? I don't know that I'd risk it. Even though it's only Monday night, I'm still a bit worried about running out of time, but I have more of an incentive to at least explore every part of a level.

   

The rest of "Plague" wasn't too difficult after I could use ammunition more freely. (I should note that you have to be careful not to leave two magazines in the box after the first is duplicated, because it stops until you take one out.) I didn't find anything else of interest, though.

   

I was happy to take off the goggles for "Beware of Low-Flying Nightmares." It wasn't a bad level—very linear, lots of big rooms but with many pillars, making things feel tight and cramped. Enemies reverted to ghouls, nightmares, and oozes. I found a diamond necklace (you get points for treasure, remember) and a gold door I couldn't open. I assume it blocks the hoard of gold ingots that the Germans told me about. Supposedly, there's a gold key around here somewhere.

    

Below that was "The Labyrinth," one of the more annoying levels in the game. True to its name, it was a twisty maze. I don't know whether it's a feature or a bug, but my automap didn't work reliably. If I left the level—which I did, frequently, because I couldn't find a single save point on the level, the automap reset.

     

The level was full of these balls of electricity. No matter how carefully I tried to clear each area, they always found a way to sneak up behind me and start shocking me. I think perhaps they just spawn randomly as you explore, so you can never see them coming.

   

I don't know if there was anything important to find on the level, but I didn't finish it (or, at least, I haven't yet). If I stuck to the outer walls, it wasn't hard to get from ladder to ladder. There was one ladder in each corner, the two northern ones going up to levels I'd already explored, the two southern ones going to new levels. 

      

"Labyrinth" was easy when I was just trying to get from one ladder to the next.

     

I took "Need a Light?" first, and it was without a doubt my favorite level of the game so far. It was a simple level, with large, mostly wide-open areas where I could see enemies (ghouls, nightmares, oozes) coming for miles and easily dodge their attacks.

    

I would love it if the rest of the game were just like this.

     

Near the entry, I found another member of my team, Ed. In the southwest corner, I found four more: Jason, Steve, Sean, and Darren. They were surprised that I made it, as the doors on "Ground Floor" had closed behind them. (I guess they had remained open after the Germans used their alien pipes, then later closed after my team went through?) They had all been killed by some "blue grinning thing" that "torched them all." Only Greg, who had the nuclear bomb, managed to get away. They warned me that the code for the bomb had been changed after I was lost: the first three digits are now "658" instead of "287." (The manual gives the full code as 2870334.)

      

The team is helpful and confused.

     

The soldiers had M-79 grenade launchers and 40mm grenade cartridges. I had already found a few, so by this point I had four or five, which seemed like a lot until I realized each cartridge only holds one grenade (duh). They also had more broken M-16s, empty M-16 magazines, and radio beacons (for extraction later). I wonder if I'll ever find a live M-16 in this game (or, for that matter, ammo for my Colt .45).

   

The "big blue grinning thing" soon made himself known. I think he's the first "boss" creature in the game, although I might be misremembering something from an earlier level when I barely understood what was happening. He fires twin fireballs. He takes so much damage that I would have thought it was impossible to beat him, except that a) Jason insisted, "you can kill it," and b) there was no other way out of the area. Doors had closed behind me. Those doors posed the biggest problem. If I could have led the blue creature to the wide-open area, it would have been easy. Instead, I had to kill him in the space of the corridor before he backed me into the locked door.  

     

If not friend, why friend-shaped?

        

Reloading meant replaying the whole level, which I had to do twice before I was able to kill the thing with a combination of three or four grenades, half a dozen M-41 clips, and maybe 10 uses of the blue crystal. He self-immolated when he died, which I unfortunately didn't get a clip of. There was another brown potion, a bubbling red potion, and an amethyst ring in the chamber behind him.

     

There was no way down from this level, so I had to go back up to "Labyrinth" and across to the ladder down to "Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'intrate," a quote that anyone with a classical education will know from Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy. Specifically, it ends the first stanza of the third canto to "Inferno," which recounts an inscription above the gates to Hell. Even if you're never read it, you've heard it in its English form: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

    

This was an appropriately creepy level: Satanic, runic writing on the walls; twisted columns of dead vines; and new enemies called ghasts and skitters. Ghasts looked like zombies but were capable of damaging me from a distance without actually throwing a projectile (they raised their arms and caused the ground to quake), so it was important to kill them immediately. Skitters were gray sacks that waddled along on two spiked legs and spit some kind of fast-moving projectile that was nearly impossible to dodge.

     

The level, looking appropriately hellish.

       

Even freakier were these naked ascetics sitting cross-legged in the middle of corridors. I couldn't kill them. If I tried to walk into them, I got shocked (for no damage) but couldn't pass. They blocked a decent part of the level. I did find a red velvet bag with a blue (healing) potion in it.

     

I couldn't just step over him?

     

Unable to pass the weird guys, I took the only way down: a vine leading to "Watch Your Step." I was feeling pretty good for the first time in a while, so of course the game had to pull the rug out from under me. In addition to dozens of skitters, the level featured "violet pods"—basically landmines—on the floor. I couldn't find any way to destroy them without stepping on them, which caused a couple points of damage. Worse, there were more of those flying rats, but these didn't disappear when I turned off the light. The only way to get rid of them, it seemed, was to deliberately step on a pod. Nowhere else has the game forced me to take damage, but I suppose I might be missing something.

      

A violet pod and a bunch of dead skitters.

        

Avoiding the pods except when I (perversely) needed them, I made my way around the level, slaughtering so many skitters that I ran out of ammo for a while despite the Cedar Box. There were more ghasts, too, and more cross-legged guys blocking corridors. But eventually, I found a green crystal, which let me create my own earthquakes. This turned out to be the secret to killing the ascetics, which I guess are called "sentinels" (you get their names when you walk across their corpses).

   

In the northwest corner, I found Greg's corpse. He had been killed by a ghast. He told me he hid the nuclear bomb underneath a violent pod to the south, and I soon found it. I figured, screw it, this has to be low enough, and I tried to activate it. The game told me I wasn't low enough. Bastards.

      

It's a nuclear bomb. Does it matter that much?

      

I couldn't find a way down from "Watch Your Step," so I went back up to "Lasciate etc." and used the green crystals on those sentinels. Getting past them, I was able to find a vine down to "I'd Rather Be Surfing."

    

The level had the same textures and enemies as "Lasciate," just a lot of them. There was an especially long, wide, hallway in which I had to move slowly, doing figure 8s around the pillars, lest I activate too many enemies at once. After about 20 minutes, I got through that, past some more enemies, and into a room where the door closed behind me.

     

Despite fighting a billion of them, this is the only shot I got of a live skitter. And it's not even complete.

      

There was a corpse in the room holding an AK-47. He called himself "Pedro," but I don't know what nationality he was supposed to represent. Cuba, probably, but I believe the Sandinistas and FARC guerillas also used AKs. Anyway, he said he had suffocated to death in the room and said that would also be my fate: "Long after you've used up all the oxygen in this tiny room, the doors will open. Just like they did after I died. They will open and wait for someone else."

      

"There's no such thing as an 'assault rifle'!" -- someone, probably.

      

You know what's annoying? I knew immediately the solution to this puzzle: put on the cloak that makes time slow down for me and speed up for everyone else. But for some reason, I waited, thinking that I would start to lose health and then put it on, and instead I just died immediately after a few minutes. So I ended the session here, but I'll try the cloak next time.

     

Miscellaneous notes:

       

• I now have three weapons with no ammo: an M-16, an AK-47, and a Colt .45. 

• My inventory is a bit out of control in general. I should try to organize it with some of the containers I've found. The game makes a point about how much everything weighs, but I guess the developers never implemented an encumbrance system.

• I went from "Novice" to "Beginner" with my M-79 in two shots.

• Oddly, the Cedar Box stopped producing new M-41 magazines for a while. I panicked as I started to run low, but when I took the last magazine out of the box, it started generating them again. Something just occurred to me: does the box work with blue potions? Probably not. That would make the game way too easy.

• I didn't realize until I started timing the appearance of duplicate magazines that the game's clock operates in real time. If it weren't for resting, which speeds up the clock, the player would literally have 6 days to complete the game.

• As I wrap up this session, it's Tuesday at about 12:30. So I have a little over 3 days (I have to activate the bomb by Friday at 14:00), but I have to allow enough time to escape the pyramid, plus 20 minutes for the extraction helicopters to arrive and clear the area. It's the "escape" part I'm not sure about. If I just have to go from ladder to ladder and deal with a few respawning enemies, it shouldn't take long. But if the dungeon fills with enemies after you set the device (which is the sort of sadistic thing this game would do), then I might need hours.

      

A map of the dungeon as I have experienced it.

       

I had a better time this session than the last (there was a lot less reloading), so I guess I'll keep at it. Some of my commenters are correct that although the game isn't really much of an RPG in terms of character development (my primary consideration), it does offer a certain RPG feel in the dialogue, developing plot, puzzles, and dungeon design. For those reasons, I enjoy it. Thanks to everyone who offered assistance last time.

    

Time so far: 18 hours

Realms of Darkness: The Other Side of the Mountain

 

Between these two Darkness games, I live in a state of constant terror.

     

In the last session, we learned that to solve the next quest, we would have to take a dungeon passage to another part of the game world (I've been wondering what this second adventure disk is for). As this session began, I over-optimistically said farewell to the city of Grail and headed across the river with packs full of food and torches.

    

Little did I know that I would be back at Grail a lot—almost immediately, in fact, as I got attacked by a party of "executioners" on the way to the dungeon. This happened a lot. The dungeon is only about 12 moves from Grail, but it was rare that I could make it without a battle. Of course, when you're about to explore a dungeon of gods'-know-how-many levels, you don't want to be wounded before you even begin. So every battle had me scuttling back to Grail to restore my health and spells. (In case it hasn't been clear from my earlier entries, resting in the inn in Grail is so far the only way to reset spellcasters' abilities.) I also returned quite a few times while exploring the dungeon. Annoyingly, my Sword of Escape ran out of charges, so I have no quick way out of dungeons anymore.

    

Here's a breakdown of the dungeon:

 

Level 1

 

The level was a standard 16 x 16, with the party starting in the southwest corner and having to work their way to the northeast. Early in the level is a lady in a booth who opens a door if the party has the ticket from Stealth the Thief. There were just a few encounters on the level:

   

• A message carved into the wall: "ELF ISLAND." I have no idea what it means except that it sounds like a Middle Earth reality TV series.

    

You mean Valinor?

      

• A sign on the wall: "SAW DROPS." Still no idea.

• Luke the Locksmith wanted 100 silver pieces to unlock a door. We gave it to him, he hustled out and came back, claiming it was easy. I have no idea what door he unlocked. Maybe it was a scam.

• A "lost buckler." I'm not sure who lost it, but I picked it up.

• A message on a wall: "KILROY WAS HERE."

• A man levitating in the air wanted "the password." I tried all the messages on the walls and got it with KILROY WAS HERE. He gave me a magic carpet.

   

I'm not sure that I faced any new enemies on the level, but the game is starting to reuse a lot of graphics, so I get enemies of similar types confused. I am definitely facing a lot more enemies—that is, larger parties. I've been trying to run less, but resurrection is so expensive that I don't want to risk even a fully-healthy party against 11 trolls and 9 minotaurs.

     

This one is going to hurt.

    

The level continued the authors' fetish for one-way doors and walls, as you can see by all the arrows on the map. 

  

Level 1 of this dungeon.

      

Level 2

   

This level was a bit infuriating. The level is 16 x 24, but in two parts. While the parts fit together perfectly, the way they fit together doesn't make any sense, and hence I mapped them separately. The two halves are connected by an outdoor area. You enter it by going south from the first part of the dungeon and exit by going west into the second part of the dungeon. But the only way the map makes sense is if you were to exit the first part east or west or enter the second part north or south. Also, the exit from the first part and the entrance to the second part are on opposite sides of the combined levels. 

   

The 2 parts of Level 2. You can see how they fit together if you rotate the first one counter-clockwise or the second one clockwise. But then the two doors heading to the outdoor area are on opposite ends of the dungeon.

     

This whole thing illustrates one of my annoyances with the game: a lack of coordinates and directionality. There are a few times that an encounter makes reference to a cardinal direction, usually after you've mapped most of the level the wrong way. There is no coordinate system—no equivalent to Wizardry's DUMAPIC spell. I think gridded games should be required by law to offer an in-game way of determining the party's present coordinates.

   

The first part of the level:

   

• A pit dropped us down to a small area where we found a bone. When the game drops you down a pit, a "friendly elf" always appears to offer to help you out—for half your silver! Fortunately, the "Neutralize Gravity" spell or a set of Ropes and Hooks means that you can say "hell, no" to the price-gouger.

   

Joke's on you. I only have like 10 silver.

    

• A guy in a booth with a sign that said, "Cash your checks here." When I talked to him, he said, "You better check something out." Later, after I found a check, I gave it to him and he gave me a balloon.

• A golf club in a random square.

   

The need for the golf club became clear when we went through a door and found ourselves in another outdoor area within the dungeon, using the moving conventions of the overland map. It was only a couple of squares. The center square had a golf ball on a tee. PLAY GOLF caused Cadoc to swat the ball off the tee and into a western wall, which immediately crumbled, showing the path to the other part of the level. It annoys me how goofy the game has become, although I suspect in response to that statement, someone will come along and say that golf was played in fifth-century Scotland.

    

I must have really swatted that one.

    

As we were wrapping up the first part of the level, my characters unexpectedly started to level up at 24,000 experience points. So it seems that LanHawk's supposition is correct: the game does not continue to double the number of points needed for the next level. I guess at 32,000, we'll see if 8,000 is the cap.

    

In the level's second half:

   

• A three-headed dog blocking passage. THROW BONE caused him to chip his tooth on it and retaliate by biting Cadoc in the leg. Later, when I found the second bone, he bit it and exploded, opening the way forward.

   

I'm not sure this makes much sense.

     

• Written on the wall in green blood: "Who knows what lurks behind the door?" 

• A teleporter at the end of the hallway teleported the party back a square every time it got near a door.

• A check guarded by 4 enchantrixes, 1 apparition, 1 grand master, 1 slayer and 1 great wizard.  Apparitions are capable of draining levels, which you then have to get restored. Enchantresses can only be damaged by magic weapons and spells. It wasn't a fun battle.

      

I think "enchantrixes" are what's depicted here.

       

• Another bone. 

• There's a mysterious area in what I mapped as the north of the level, where two parallel hallways have a different number of tiles. Specifically, one is one tile shorter than the other. There's no teleportation going on. I can't explain what's happening.

     

One new enemy on Level 2 had the banal name of "corpse." But he was completely immune to regular attacks and could only be defeated with spells and dispelling undead. Later, there was an enemy called a "rocky," also immune to regular weapons. I feel like I got sold a bill of goods with my friar; the manual promised she'd be as effective unarmed as other classes are armed. But there's an increasing number of enemies she can't damage at all.

     

I'm glad that we highly amused the corpse. It probably doesn't have much to laugh about these days.

    

The second half of Level 2 culminated in a chasm that I had to find a way to cross. The obvious solution was the magic carpet, but the game said it wouldn't support all of us. I had to use the B)reak up and R)egroup commands to ferry everyone over in two groups.

    

I wonder if the game will eventually do something more interesting with the party-splitting options.

     

When I found a way out of here, it was surprisingly not down, but up. Unfortunately, my Rope and Hooks and "Neutralize Gravity" spell failed to get us through the hole in the ceiling. I figured the answer had something to do with the balloon, but I)nvoking it did nothing; neither did typing BLOW INTO BALLOON. After wasting time searching for an alternative, I tried INFLATE BALLOON, and it worked, lifting us all through the ceiling. 

      

The term "facepalm" was made for such moments.

      

Level 3—or, I guess, a second Level 1

     

A large 19 x 16 level. I was in pretty good shape the first time I arrived here, and I hoped to complete it all in one go, but that led me to overextend myself and suffer a full-party death. On a reload of the adventure disk (which is technically cheating, but this game is long enough), I had to take it in two expeditions, and even then I barely made it.

   

• A trophy case with a note: "Find my trophies and put them in this case." It was signed "Mr. Bass." I soon found a Bass Shield on the ground. 

    

The game suddenly becomes Zork.

      

• A Book of Clouds. If I read it, it causes the party to become ethereal for a few minutes.

• A dead end with a crack in the wall. Reading the Book of Clouds got us through. 

    

But how do we move?

     

• A sign on a doorway: "Rogue Alliance membership meeting in progress." A battle with 4 warlords, 4 grand masters, 4 mystics, and 1 great wizard followed. They guarded a suit of Bass Armor. This is where the full-party death occurred, incidentally.

     

These guys don't sound much like "rogues."

    

• A Magic Meter. I picked it up but have not found any use for it.

• In the corner of a large room, a pedestal with a tome and a quill. "Sign in please," a sign read. When I signed in, a secret door appeared.

• A stairway down. Is it a shortcut back to Level 2, or does it lead to a brand new area? I have no idea; I did not test it this session.

• Another door: "Rogue Alliance new recruits training center." Beyond was a battle with 5 berserkers, 5 swordsmen, 1 necromancer, 1 great wizard. They guarded a Bass Sword.

   

Returning the three Bass items to the trophy case caused a ladder to appear, heading upward. I gratefully took it and found myself in an outdoor area. I wandered around for a while until I found the City of Baddel. There, I soon found an inn and ended the session.

       

Maybe it'll have some better weapons.

    

I haven't taken a deep dive into the combat system since the first entry, and since I didn't make a lot of physical progress in the last few days, I thought I could fill out this entry with a close look at a battle. In this particular example, my party was pretty beat up, heading for the exit, when we were attacked by 2 necromancers and 4 great wizards. My party members had half their health and only a few spells.

   

Combat blends elements of Wizardry and Phantasie. In the beginning phase, your options are to fight, have "everyone fight" (an autocombat option in which no one uses spells), flee, "act friendly," bribe the enemies with silver or food, or surrender. In my experience, running works about 2/3 of the time, but when it fails, it's just as if you had selected "fight," so there's no real penalty. Similarly, "Act Friendly" only works about 15% of the time, but when it fails, you just enter combat normally. I have not tried bribing even once, as I need my food and my silver for food. The one time I tried to "surrender," the enemies took all my money and then attacked anyway.

     

The composition of this battle.

     

Once you've chosen "fight," each character goes in an initiative order that depends partly on attributes, partly on luck. Combat options for each character include fight, pass, change equipment, dispel undead (it only works with priests), use ("invoke") an item, and call upon that character's special abilities. The thief often gets to go first, which is ironic, as in most dungeon combats (including this one), there's absolutely nothing he can do. Eventually, he's supposed to get a hide-and-backstab option, but it hasn't come yet.

     

My next character to go is Faerish, the friar. He has a "flying kick" option that can only be used once per battle, but there's no reason not to use it in the first round. He also has a "stun" option, but I'll save that for the second round, since "flying kick" usually kills outright. He's been gaining priest spells lately, but I've already used his two Level 1 slots for "Heal." I'd love to be able to target the necromancers specifically, but this game doesn't let you choose the enemy you're targeting, unlike its two source games. Thus, his "flying kick" ends up killing a great wizard.

   

Presstra, one of my priests, is next. She has slots in four spell levels, but at this point, I only have two Level 2 slots left. Her Level 2 spells include "Tower of Protection" (protects the priests), "Confuse," "Trap Detection," "Gnihton Spell" (makes us "feel invincible" but probably does nothing), "Blind," and "Instant Lantern." One casting of the latter usually lasts for an expedition. "Blind" and "Confuse" are good options for large enemy parties. I try "Blind" but "no monsters are affected." Rats.

  

Kastillia, my knight, is fourth. She also has a couple of priest spell levels, but there's nothing in there that would be a better use of her round than simply attacking. She kills a great wizard.

  

Palliata, my other priest, is fifth. She's one level below Presstra, so she doesn't have Level 4 spells yet. Her two Level 3 spells are "Chameleon" and "Heal Wounds." "Chameleon" increases the armor class for the caster, and I can't imagine any situation in which it's a better option than the large healing boost that the other spell offers. She has the same Level 2 options as Presstra, and I try "Confuse." Again, no monsters are affected.

   

The game's most hateful message.

   

The two necromancers get to go next; they both try physical attacks and miss. But then a great wizard goes and casts "Sleep," putting Timid, Presstra, Sarogoth and Bilge to sleep. This is too bad, as Bilge's turn was next, and being asleep, he can't do anything except "pass." Sarogoth also doesn't get his turn.

   

Cadoc goes last. As my champion, he's usually effective when attacking, but he also has a couple levels of wizard spells. With four enemies still on the board, I decide to try "Fireball," which often kills multiple enemies at once. Here, it just kills one wizard.

   

Round two begins with half my characters asleep (Sarogoth woke up) against two great wizards and a necromancer. We haven't taken much damage yet, which is my primary concern. Cadoc goes first and hits a necromancer for 8 damage—pretty pathetic. Sarogoth goes next, and I try "Frost Byte," a Level 2 mass-damage spell, but again no one is affected. A necromancer then goes, casts "arcane magic," and blasts Presstra down to 4 hit points.

  

I kill the rest of the enemies in the next few attacks. Only my characters who are awake get to share in the experience and gold.

   

This is a little less than the average experience reward lately.

   

So that battle left me a bit weaker. I exhaust the rest of my healing spells fixing the damage and then head for the exit.

    

I have a whole new world to explore next time. I think maybe it's time to add another game to the rotation so I don't get burned out with this one.

    

Time so far: 27 hours

Pathways into Darkness: Let Hitler Have It

"Woo-hoo! A submachine gun! Nothing will touch me now!"

       

I'm not going to cut it off just yet, but it's impossible to imagine my finishing Pathways into Darkness given my experience with the game over the last few days. I spent about six hours with the game since last week's entry, but two-thirds of that time was covering the same stretches of corridor, over and over, unable to keep my character alive against the game's sadistic onslaught of foes.

     

When I last wrote, I had arrived on a level called "We Can See in the Dark . . . Can You?," where I was attacked by unkillable flying rats. The solution—thank you, anonymous; please choose a handle next time—was to turn off my flashlight.

   

So far, so good. I made my way counter-clockwise, killing nightmares (flying ghosts) and ghouls. I eventually reached a save rune. There was nothing remarkable about the chamber that held the red rune—certainly nothing to indicate that I would respawn here two dozen times.

     

I really got to know this room.

    

No matter what I did, I could not seem to make it to the next thing—stairs, another save circle, anything. I tried several different directions. The enemies weren't even objectively that hard, and I learned through experimentation that I could freeze them briefly with the Orange Crystal, then kill them in one shot. Nonetheless, they always managed to come at me from multiple directions (I think the respawn rate is higher on this level), and they always found a way to get me.

    

Eventually, I had memorized about half the level. I'd leave the latest respawn, head down a corridor, turn a corner, and say to myself, "Okay, there's a ghoul to your left. You need to dodge his attack, then rush forward and knife him before he can get off another one." And then he'd somehow still manage to hit me. It was infuriating. It probably didn't help that my experience last session had made me paranoid (for a good reason, it turns out) about ammunition.

   

Eventually, after finding a Bubbling Red Potion—the only thing I found on the level, I think—I found another save rune and, shortly after that, the ladder down. You can imagine how excited I was to take it.

   

The next level, "Happy Happy Carnage Carnage," didn't start so bad. There were no enemies when I arrived, and I soon found another dead German with ammo right next to another save rune. There was a ladder down almost immediately, but it took me to a level called "The Labyrinth" where I almost immediately got killed by a couple of electrified floating balls.

       

I did not last long here.

      

After that, though—wow. Every direction I went brought scores of ghouls, nightmares, and a new bullet-sponge enemy called "oozes." They're humanoid-shaped, with wounds in their chests. They reach into the wounds, pull out fistfuls of their own flesh, and throw them at you. Yuck. My ammo ran low, then ran out. There's no way to reliably stab nightmares and oozes.

   

Eventually, after much reloading, I found a room in the north part of the map with the bodies of five dead German soldiers, including the notorious Captain Muller, leader of the expedition. It was fun talking with them. They had all been slaughtered by monsters on the other side of three doors leading from the room. The doors, they said, opened by walking on a rune on the floor. Muller's soldiers all blame him for the disaster.

       

What a dummkopf.

              

Friedrich, Muller's second-in-command—and the only one of the party that Muller respected—said that Muller had sent some soldiers ahead to lower levels to "recover a large amount of gold and a strange wooden box" made of cedar. Muller hinted that they would need the gold for something. Their overall goal, however, was to find "a small glass vial of immense power" that supposedly contained the essence of an imprisoned demon. "Muller wanted to use it for the war, of course . . . Muller was always thinking about the war, and about the glory of the Fatherland."

   

(Elsewhere in the dialogue, Friedrich says that it was 1938 when their party came to Mexico. This is a bit odd because "The War" from Germany's perspective wouldn't start until 1939, though obviously the writing was on the wall, and Muller could be talking about The War that Germany Was Obviously Planning For. Less explainable is the discovery of MP-41 which, as its name suggests, did not exist until 1941. Or maybe the party first came in 1938 and it took them a few years to find the pyramid, during which time the war started and they were resupplied by Germany. That actually makes a lot of sense.)

      

Muller wanted to know whether the war was still happening. "You must be losing, Yankee," he said to my reply, "or you would not lie like that." Probably because he recognized me as an American, he basically lied throughout our conversation. The Cedar Box is "useless." As for Walter's quest: "I was only appealing to his sense of greed. There is no gold." The biggest lie of all was that the party had only succumbed to its wounds after successfully killing the monsters on the other side of the door. "There is no danger."

     

Bastard.

      

More important than the dialogue, one of the dead Germans had an MP-41 submachine gun, and among them, they had about eight magazines for it. I had three or four that I'd already found. Suddenly, I felt invincible again. 

   

That feeling lasted about 10 seconds. I walked over the rune that the Germans had warned me about. Three doors opened, disgorging a couple dozen oozes, ghouls, and nightmares. I hadn't believed Muller, of course, but I still didn't expect as many monsters as there were. I tried to run, but the outer doors had closed when I entered the room, trapping me here. I laid into them with my submachine gun, but they soon overwhelmed me.

     

One of my unsuccessful attempts.

        

And thus began the next phase of repeatedly dying in the same place. After several reloads, I tried to clear out as many enemies on the way to the slaughter room as possible, then return to the save rune, but even this is impossible because not only does pair of doors trap the player in the slaughter room, but also an earlier door closes trapping the player in this section of the dungeon.

   

I finally beat them by using the Bubbling Red Potion that I found on the previous level. This slows down the monsters. I found that if I walked across the rune, opening the doors, and immediately went to a corner in the outer room, and then drank the potion, the monsters would slowly emerge from the doors into the crossfire of my MP-41.

      

The outer room after the slaughter.

       

After all that, what I found on the other side of the door was a Red Cloak, a Brown Potion, and two Clear Blue Potions. A rune in the inner room opened the doors in the outer room.

    

The difficulty of the level didn't end after the horde. I still had to make my way back to the save rune (I think there's only one on the level) via a path I hadn't taken on the way here. Fortunately, I managed to make it on my first try. After saving, I took the ladder down to the next level. 

   

I couldn't get anywhere with "The Labyrinth." It was a tight, winding maze in which dodging was impossible. Electrical spheres kept spawning behind me, and they spawned so frequently that I couldn't rest anywhere. Eventually, I gave up. I remembered that there was another way down from "Ground Floor," and I figured I'd check it out.

     

I hope you appreciate what it costs me to get this close to take a screenshot.

     

The first level in this second path was called "Feel the Power," and wasn't bad. There were a lot of groups of oozes—three or four at a time—but the hallways were wide and roomy, and there were a lot of corners to duck behind. In the middle of one of these hallways, I found Walter, dead next to one of the gold ingots he'd been sent to find. He pleaded with me not to take the gold. "It's all I have to look at." He said there were 11 more ingots on a lower level behind a gold door locked with a Gold Key that Muller had given him. After he died, some Spanish-speaking soldiers came by and took the key.

   

It was the next level, "A Plague of Demons," that broke me. The moment I arrived, I started getting attacked by invisible monsters. They didn't do a lot of damage, but they were constant. I had to spin my submachine gun around in circles to kill them. That just wasted ammo, though, and soon I was completely out. Since I can't even see the enemies attacking me on the level, I certainly can't knife them. None of my stuff seems to allow me to see invisibility. When I got to the point that I started hating not only the game but my computer for running it and all of you for reading my blog, I decided it was time to quit.

     

A rock hits me out of nowhere.

     

Some miscellaneous notes:

   

• Putting on the Red Cloak seems to make enemies move faster. Why would I want to do that?

• I've figured out that the Clear Blue Potions heal. I guess I could rely on them in The Labyrinth, where I can't rest.

• You know I like item descriptions. This game has a descriptive paragraph with everything that you find. 

    

I thought that the M-41 was an anachronism. According to one site, the Walther P4 wasn't available until 1975!

      

• I've knifed and shot hundreds of creatures without advancing beyond "Expert." I suspect that's the highest level. The game's only claim to be an RPG rests on a skill system for which there are only three levels and the top one is relatively easy to achieve. Moreover, since you really don't have a "choice" of weapons—you have to use whatever you have ammo for at the time—every player is probably going to end up an "Expert" in everything. I should have just BRIEFed this.

• It was Monday evening when I wrapped up. I've stopped being paranoid about the time—running out would be a blessed mercy—and started being paranoid that by not exploring every little nook of every level, I might be missing some key item. I don't see how you possibly avoid running out of ammo if you insist on exploring every nook, though.

     

With RPGs, it's rare to encounter a title that I'm afraid I simply cannot win, no matter how hard I try. If tactics don't lead to victory, there's always grinding and luck. Neither is an option in most action games (at least, not the type of luck I'm talking about, where you roll a 20 on a backstab), and thus while I plan to take a couple of days before deciding whether to quit this one, it's likely that the game will make the decision for me.

   

Time so far: 13 hours

 

Realms of Darkness: #$@* the Lemons and Bail

 

The game's fourth questline opens.

      

This session began with the party in a new land with a quest to defeat someone named "Gorth." I entered one of two dungeons available, and it turned out to be the correct one. Let's take it level by level. I returned to the town for healing and to restore slots once or twice per level.

   

Level 1

 

A small 11 x 12 level with a little tail sticking off of it. There were a couple of teleporters to confuse the party, but one of them had a map near it that said, "You are here," so it helped to figure out where I was. Early in the level, a woman said: "Don't throw away your lives in vain because Gorth can't fell [sic] any pain." Another message, somehow "spelled out in microprocessors," said, "RRDD is the right way."

   

Gorth attacked early in the level, and the characters couldn't do any damage to him. Gorth was depicted either as a guy in a suit or a robot. His right-arm seemed to have a flamethrower while his left ended in a giant mace. He attacked several times as we explored the dungeon, and we had to flee each time.

    

Klaatu barada nikto?

      

Other enemies on the level include great lizards, baby rexes, flames, manglers, blackguards, grim reapers, deaths, sorcerers, pieds, and warriors. Pieds are particularly annoying because they poison, which always means a trip back to the surface, as I don't have any spells that cure it. I noticed that Bilge, the barbarian, got his "berserker fury" attack with his most recent level-up. It does a lot of damage but can only be used once per "expedition," so it's a bit like a spell. My spell use continued to be rare, as even this far into the game, my spellcasters only have 7 total spells each per expedition. The priests' must be saved for healing despite some valuable alternatives; the sorcerer occasionally gets lucky with a "Fireball," "Frost Byte," or "Flames."

   

To go downward, I had to fall into one of four pits, each leading to its own sub-area.  

        

It took me a few tries to catch this in-motion.

     

Level 2

   

This level had the four areas accessed from the Level 1 pits. To get back up, I just had to use my rope-and-hooks or cast "Neutralize Gravity" (a Level 2 sorcerer spell). Together, the four areas had about 400 squares, but a couple were less than 50 each and a couple were around 150 each.

  

• The first area, a large one, offered an elf NPC who told me that "Gorth is controlled by a control center."

   

Not just an elf, an exquisite elf.

      

• The second area, a small one, had nothing except a single encounter at a wall with some draperies and a string. PULL STRING resulted in: "A terrifyingly ugly beast with a menacing grin attacks the party!" And then: "Oh, I'm sorry! It's just a mirror."

• The third area was another small one. The only things I found were a bullwhip and, oddly enough, a lawn mower.

• The fourth, a larger area, had a locked door that made me waste an "Unlock" spell (nothing behind it), a bunch of one-way walls, a rope that every time I pulled it generated a new encounter, and a sign that read: "Remember the robot for directions." Assuming that meant the "microchips" from Level 1, I went right through a secret door and then down some stairs.

      

The python looks awfully friendly.

     

Enemies in these areas were mostly the same as the upper level, but new ones were pythons and nightcrawlers.

     

Level 3

   

The stairs from Level 2 brought me to an area with an immediate stairway downward. The instructions had said to go "down" twice, but I had to explore the area. It was a small 5 x 5, full of one-way walls and doors (as well as one door that turned the party around and faced it the other way, the first time I've seen that). There was nothing to find, and I wasn't on it long enough to fight any battles.

   

Level 4

    

The largest level of the dungeon was 16 x 24. I was a bit beat up the first time I arrived, didn't last long in combat, and had to restore the party from a backup disk. When I tried again, encounters included:

     

• A gold ring that turned out to be a Mushroom Ring. In combat, it cast "Destruction," a terrifically deadly spell that affects multiple enemy groups, but it disappeared after one use.

    

I made good use of that one use.

      

• A sign warning that we were at the "laboratory of the evil, demented scientist, Gene Yus." Behind this magically-locked door, we found an experiment in progress and a flask of "dehydrated demon slayer." Instructions told us to "add milk, approach the victim, and shake."

• Elsewhere on the level, a demon blocking the way. We had to find some milk in a storage area on Level 5 that opened with a Green Key found on Level 4. Adding the milk to the flask and shaking it caused a monster to appear and drive away the demon.

      

We're either getting rid of the demon or making a White Russian. So win-win.

      

• An area of the dungeon that led to a series of five "outdoor" screens, each describing a garden. One of them noted that the grass was too long. I typed MOW GRASS with the lawnmower found on Level 1, and the mower kicked up a Gold Key necessary to open doors past the demon.

      

I wasn't expecting an outdoor screen in the middle of a dungeon.

     

Random enemies on the level included grand masters, mothons, gremlins, spooks, ghosts, and mummies. Gremlins, in defiance of the Ultima template, are very tough creatures that cause poison. I loved getting parties of spooks, ghosts, and mummies, as my two priests could dispel most of them.

    

The power of Christ compels you!

             

Around this time, though, we ran out of food. I returned to town (via the Blade of Escape), but owing to the money we'd had to spend on neutralizing poison and resurrection, I was broke. I had to go through the ignominious process, 20 hours into the game, of grinding for money to buy food.

   

Eventually, we returned to the dungeon. The Gold Key opened the way to a small teleporter maze, which spit us out in an area of concentric, shrinking rooms. There were a couple of tough fixed battles in this area, one with a bunch of warrior types, one with undead. I used that Mushroom Ring in the warrior battle.

       

Right. There was a helpful skeleton in the teleporter maze.

       

The final room had a single grandmaster, easily defeated. When he was out of the way, we were told that "a lemon PC Junior computer sits on a small desk." I know what a PC Jr. is, or was, but I'm not sure what the "lemon" reference is. Either the author was saying it was a bad computer (i.e., a lemon) or he was suggesting it was made by a company called Lemon, a joking play on Apple.

    

Was it capable of anything other than ALL CAPS? If so, it was better than this one.

    

Either way, examining the computer revealed that it was running the Gorth program and was "plugged into the wall." We tried a couple of things before REMOVE PLUG somehow "reduced [it] to a useless collection of circuit boards." Gorth, who I guess was a robot after all, "receiving no further instructions, crashes into a wall." I guess it really was a lemon if simply unplugging it caused all of that. Although it does make me think of a few computers that had been running for over a decade at an old employer, and everyone was terrified what would happen if the hard drives actually ever spun down.

  

I used the "Blade of Escape" to get out of the dungeon and headed back to town. At the entrance to the town was a new notice: "Adventurers wanted: Visit Stealth the Thief, in the city jail, behind the guardhouse." In the guardhouse, the guard congratulated me on my "victory over Gorth" and told me to go ahead and visit Stealth in his cell. There was a new way out of this room, to the north, that hadn't been there in the past.

     

What a friendly guard.

     

Stealth the Thief told me that he was accused of stealing the bartender's silver. He said the only way to prove his innocence was to get the Amulet of Truth from his brother, Eldritch the Sorcerer. (Eldritch is the main character's master in Tangled Tales.) Eldritch, he explained, "lives across the mountains," which we would have to reach by going through the other dungeon on the other side of the river. He gave us a letter and a ticket and warned us to beware the Rogue Alliance, "a group of fanatics who are determined to rule the world." The ticket, when examined, said: "Admit one party to their deaths. Signed, the monsters."

     

You are a "thief," though, right?

    

During the last quest, only a few of my characters leveled up, and only at the end. I was getting low on food again, so I decided to stay in the area of Grail and grind a bit more before heading out on a long expedition. I was still doing that when I ran out of time and had to post this entry.

   

Probably one of the reasons I have to grind is that I fled from a lot of battles in the dungeon. I came to realize at some point during the previous session that running carries virtually no risk. If you fail, the enemies don't get a free attack or anything; you just enter combat normally. Maybe because I didn't grind enough in previous sessions, I was routinely encountering enemy parties this session that could absolutely wipe the floor with me. While trying to map large dungeon levels, it was easier to flee from such parties than to take time to fight them and probably lose. But that obviously just exacerbated the problem.

     

You want to grind in squares with no immediate walls so that everyone can attack.

     

I still like the game, but I have to admit that it's dragging a bit. The long periods of time between level-ups are a bit discouraging. My sorcerer is just about to cross Level 6 at 16,000 experience points. If he's ever going to get even one Level 7 spell, he's going to need to be character Level 15, which will require 8,192,000 experience points. My best battles are netting me about 250, so you do the math. Either this game has dozens of hours left to it or experience rewards really heat up on the other side of the mountain.

   

Time so far: 21 hours