Star Trail: Road Warriors

In real life, maybe wait a few minutes before concluding that there's "no hunter or predator anywhere."

         

Based on comments from the first entry, I decided to start this game with the new characters I previously rolled. Thus, the next step was to see about my equipment and explore the starting town, Kvirasim, which unintentionally rhymes with the name of my Thorwalian and looks like it rhymes with the name of my warrior, Xamidimura, which the game abbreviates.

   

We start our explorations at the Lovely Meadow tavern, which probably offers more options than any other tavern in RPG history. The player first has to decide where to sit (at the bar—always my preference, at an empty table, or at an occupied table), then what to do there, including ordering food, ordering drinks, buying a round for the house, or performing feats of music or acrobatics for money. Add a little more complexity, and you could make an RPG set entirely within a bar.

      

Just like my first visit to a British pub.

      

I can't say I accomplished much. Talking to the bartender, Gilbert of Norburg, brought us to a full dialogue screen, but he had nothing to say about any of the keywords, and he ended the conversation after three of them. Most NPCs do this, making it all the more annoying that "Salamander Stone" and "Salamanderstones" appear as two separate options. We bought a round of drinks, which earned us some temporary good will but no intelligence. Toliman made back some of the money by doing somersaults or whatever. 

   

As we headed back into the world, I noted that the automap automatically labels commercial establishments, although apparently only if you've gone inside or faced the front door or something. Still, it's a nice feature. The player can write his own labels for other locations, including key NPCs. The detail of the automap meant that I didn't feel compelled to make my own map.

       

A shop labeled by the automap.

      

It was dark when we exited the tavern, and most businesses were closed, but I still made a circuit of the town and tried to enter each building. Some notes:

    

• Most houses are occupied by generic NPCs who dismiss you with comments like: "Go visit some inns and taverns and leave me alone!" or "Go look somewhere else." What I like is that the images of these NPCs depict them as confronting the party at the front door. The party is just knocking, not barging into their houses. 

• There were a couple of frames indicating uncompleted houses under construction.

• A harlot propositioned us randomly. We said no. 

• Fladim Peterman: "When Elves and Dwarves are fighting, there will be Orcs delightin.'" Sounds prophetic.

        

You're a poet, and you were not aware of this fact.

       

• Marje from Thorwal: Bring a net when you go into swamps. "You can catch all sorts of things in swamps."

• There was an inn run by Mariaka Windbreker. I didn't get anything out of her. I was going to stay the night, but the interface suggested that the rest periods were in 24-hour blocks, which would have left me no better than when I started, timewise.

• Daleone Moringdew, the healer, agreed to treat us, but "it'll cost you more if you still want to be treated at this late hour." Fortunately, we didn't need anything.

• Asgrim Kollberg: Suggests we hide out from the evil in the mountains.

• Eida Matjus: "Anyone who's allied with Rondra need fear no Orc in the long run." Rondra is the goddess of battle in Das Schwarze Auge setting.

      

That's quite a difference between the large screen image and the mini-portrait.

     

• Heralja Olafsen: "The Elven king will come to our aid. But will even his power be sufficient against these Orcs?" 

• Rumhild Rohalsdottir: Suggests we prepare for bad weather lest we get diseased by it. 

• Ingram Son of Utzlesch: "It's always better to spend the night in an inn than under the stars." Amen. I haven't been camping for a single night in my adult life and have no interest in doing so.  

    

We had to wait until morning for Jadwina Greenston's general store to open. Each character started the game with a blanket, a waterskin, and two ration packages. Gnomon (dwarf) had a prybar and a hammer. Remembering the "environmental simulation" aspects of the first game, we loaded up with additional rations, waterskins, oil, a key ring, a net, two coils of rope, a rope ladder, a mattock, charcoal, a few torches, a fishing hook, a shovel, a whetstone, writing utensils, and a grappling hook. 

       

Trying to plan for every contingency.

    

If there was an armory in town, I didn't find it. I was a bit disappointed, as I wanted to swap out some of the default weapons to better match the skills I had given each player. But finding no such options, we exited the town, which in this game you do by walking into a signpost.

    

Travel in Blade of Destiny was handled by selecting a destination from a menu, much like Curse of the Azure Bonds. In the sequel, the party moves across the landscape in segments, either by planning a route in advance or by handling it one segment at a time. The manual curiously makes this choice about gender: "Male characters do not need to [plan in advance] because they always insist they know where they're going." I think this is probably just a joke, but in a game that makes distinctions between "warriors" and "she-warriors," you never know. In any event, even though a woman leads my party, I did the stereotypical male thing and chose to do one segment at a time, even though you really don't have any choices: only one road leads out of Kvirasim.

       

Being a man, I simply commence marching.

       

No sooner had I pressed the direction for south than a special encounter game upon me: the sounds of fighting from "somewhere to the left of the road." We chose to investigate, and found a priestess of Rondra beset by five orcs. We had options to intervene (even though she explicitly did not ask for our help) or let her fight alone. We chose the former and soon found ourselves in our first battle.

     

The battle starts well enough.

       

Combat is mostly unchanged since Blade of Destiny. Both games use a turn-based system on a tactical grid, rotated 45 degrees and inclined, a perspective almost unique to British games until Arkania. Characters act in initiative order and can move, guard, attack, cast a spell, and change weapons. One significant improvement between the games is that missile attacks and spells no longer must be targeted along direct lines (which in Blade was impossible if another character stood in between). They work from anywhere.

    

Combat options (from a later battle).

      

I used the occasion to try out a couple of spells, like "Lightning" (which is not the lightning bolt of D&D but rather a blinding spell) and "Iron Rust." But the battle overall went mysteriously horribly. My warrior and Thorwalian, with the highest strength and highest scores in their chosen weapons (which they had equipped) couldn't seem to land an attack to (literally) save their lives. Gnomon the dwarf, meanwhile, did the most damage despite being equipped with an edged weapon (a mace; we'll talk about whether that should be an "edged" weapon later) and not his favored axe. Toliman the elf did respectably with his bow, until an orc decided to make him a target. 

   

Overall, my first battle ended in a full-party death, which is accompanied by a cute poem.

         

That is some nice artwork.

         

On a reload, I decided to see what the computer would do. The game has several different modes of computer-controlled battle. You can put individual party members under the computer's control, deciding as you do so whether they will use magic. You can also have the computer fight the entire battle in front of you, controlling every party member. Finally, you can have the computer engage in a kind of "quick combat" on a summary screen.

       

Options for computer control.

      

The computer prioritized different spells, including "Evil Eye" (turning one of the orcs to my side) and "Fulminctus" (an attack spell). It seemed to have more luck with melee attacks, so I'm not sure what I was doing wrong there. But Gnomon was still killed, a fact I didn't notice until after I had spent a good 20 minutes manually leveling my first two characters' skills. I killed everything and started over.

   

On the third attempt, I used the "computer combat" option, and it delivered a victory with no party members lost, although my warrior was at death's door. The only lesson I can take from that is that in the aggregate, my party should have done well, but my particular tactics just sucked. I'll try to get better. I've used auto-combat occasionally in Gold Box games when the outcome was inevitable, but using it too often feels like abdicating a responsibility. I might as well just let the computer play the whole game. (The issue becomes confusing with games that have scripts, like the Infinity Engine titles, but that's a problem for Future CRPG Addict.)

      

The "computer combat" option.

      

We tended to the priestess after the battle. Some god or supernatural entity spoke through her, noting that we had proved our courage but had little experience. "You would be going to your death," it said, "But we cannot allow this to happen to such upstanding heroes." The spirit then "loaned" some of its experience to us, enough to raise us to Level 3.  

     

Some gold would have been nice, too.

        

It would have been nice to save after the computer-controlled "victory" and then try it a few additional times the long way, but Star Trail follows its predecessor's policy of immediately leveling-up characters who have earned enough experience in the preceding combat. This means if you bollix something during the allocation of skill or spell points (which isn't hard to do when leveling six characters in a row), you either have to suck it up or kill the game and fight the battle again. I didn't feel like going through the leveling process twice, so I sucked it up and accepted the victory. It took me almost an hour to then allocate all the spell and skill points across six characters for two levels each.

      

That seems low, but I'm not going to fight the entire battle again just to get a better roll.

      

We kept marching south after the encounter. I was prompted to camp three times in a row, each time restoring a few hit points and spell points. The morning of the fourth day, we encountered a man laden with all kinds of weapons. His name was Iwain Basiliskslayer. He had a few things to say about elves (they've been driven into the Salamander Stones by orcs) and dwarves (they have little influence on the north), but nothing that explained his load of weapons.

         

I expected more from this encounter, especially given his name.

      

After the encounter, the game said we'd reached the next crossroads. The road continued southwest towards the city of Gashok, but there was a path to the south heading towards a river, which I took. A number of messages popped up indicating that my characters ate and drank; I guess if you don't feed them manually, they'll handle it automatically eventually. I was alarmed to find that our water skins were mostly empty already. I guess maybe I needed more than two each.

  

I played with some of the camp options, which include hunting (Toliman found some water and game) and foraging (Lyra found a few herbs). Lilii Borea treated Xamindimura's wounds. 

      

Isn't that cute?

     

The next day, we continued to follow the river. The game noted that we filled our waterskins, which is a nice touch of realism. Then, we were attacked by a dozen goblins, and I had my second chance at battle. This time, I experimented a bit more with spells. "Acceleratus" turns out to be a nice buffing spell, and "Evil Eye" (charm) works better here than it ever did in a Gold Box game. "Fulminictus," a damaging spell, is so effective that it's hard not to cast it exclusively, though it takes a lot of spell points. Anyway, goblins are a lot easier than orcs, and it wasn't long before I was mopping up the dregs. It felt good to win a battle legitimately. They dropped a bunch of sabres. I didn't lose many hit points, though almost all my magic was gone.

     

Towards the end of the goblin battle.

     

I continued following the river even though the map suggested it was going to dead-end in the mountains, and I might have to trek all the way back. Fortunately, an unmarked western path took us towards the road again.

   

After a few more days of rest—over a week on the road at this point—we came across a bear cub playing in a field. We had options to kill it for food, capture it to sell in town, or leave it alone. I left it alone. I wonder if these little encounters are location-specific or drawn from a random pool.

       

Which of you sociopaths would choose the first two options?

       

Toliman contracted a disease at some point (I didn't notice), but Lyra was able to heal it. Gnomon caught another disease getting his feet wet while crossing a brook, but Lyra was able to heal that, too. By now, I had rested about six nights since the goblin fight, and the characters were still recovering hit points and spell points from that fight. I'd better learn potions, and fast. 

       

A couple of my characters are a bit cuddlier than I would have desired. I guess we'll say that's Toliman and Lilii?

       

I had been hoping to find the so-called "Dwarven Pit" during my explorations; it's still possible it's in those mountains. There was an eastern path I didn't take. But by now, I was anxious just to get to the next town, rest up, and hopefully find some weapons and armor. By taking the river route, I think I missed some towns on the main road. The next big town on the map, at a major crossroads, was Gashok. 

   

A wounded antelope came bounding from the trees and collapsed dead in front of us. Thinking waste not, want not, we gutted it. This put us in battle with three forest lions. I blinded them with "Lightning" and did my best. I got through it, but my warrior fell unconscious and contracted some disease, and my druid suffered significant hit point loss. My spell points, never recovered from the last battle, were almost gone. Xamindimura lost 2 strength points from the disease, which I trust isn't permanent. The next night, Lyra was able to heal the disease (rabies). I hope we threw away that antelope meat.

       

Could armored warriors prevail against lions? Discuss.

       

A few more nights of this, and we finally reached Gashok, where we were "greeted" by a crossbow bolt, fired from an ambush, that halved Toliman's hit points. But overall, I was happy to be on safe ground again.

      

It's almost like we admire the guy who fired it.

     

This session reminded me that traveling between cities in the Arkania series is a frightful undertaking in which all kinds of horrible things can happen, and you'd better be prepared. I think I did all right with my equipment purchases overall, but I needed to bring greater quantities of food and water, and I need to learn about herbs and potions sooner rather than later.

   

Hopefully, someone in this town will know about that Dwarven Pit.

   

Time so far: 6 hours 

     

Game 566: Tower of Alos (1982)

A pointless game begins.

        

Tower of Alos

United Kingdom

Independently developed; published by A&F Software

Released 1982 for BBC Micro

Date Started: 13 January 2026

      

Tower of Alos is yet another example of the tedium that early CRPG players were willing to put themselves through just to get the faintest hint they were inhabiting a world similar to Middle Earth. If you don't get a tingle at just seeing the word "orc," this is not the game for you. And it's plagiarized, too—from The Valley (1982), a game that also fits my opening description but at least has the excuse of being a type-in game published in a magazine. The Valley had more features than Alos, though, meaning Alos was simplified. Imagine being the kind of developer who has to simplify a type-in game.

     

The Valley originally appeared as code for the Commodore PET in the April 1982 issue of Computing Today. It was advanced for a type-in game, offering multiple character types, multiple dungeons, a long backstory, and winning conditions. The magazine updated it for the TRS-80 and Sharp MZ the following month, and other variations followed over the next year. Meanwhile, Computing Today's publisher, Argus Specialist Publications, issued disk-based releases for multiple platforms in 1982 and 1983. (Thanks to El Explorador de RPG for much of this background research.) Clearly, ASP owned the rights to the game. It was created by their own employees: Henry Budgett, Peter Freebrey, Peter Green, and Ron Harris, themselves inspired by another early UK RPG: Halls of Death (1981).

      

The world map as a new game begins.

     

These rights did not stop Manchester-based A&F Software from publishing its own adaptation (Alos) for the BBC Micro within a couple of months. Games for this minor platform are only recently being discovered and cataloged (mostly by frequent CRPG Addict contributor Dungy), and I now have a handful on my backlist. Other "adaptations" of The Valley include Kayde Software's The Kayde Valley (1982) and Numenor's The Amulet (1983).

     

The basic features of these games include:

   

• A single-screen game world with at least one "safe" location.
• Multiple indoor locations.
• A multi-stage quest that involves exploring each of these indoor areas.
• Random encounters as you move across the screen. 
• Very limited RPG mechanics 

          

One of the indoor locations.

      

Other copies of The Valley mostly kept the action in a valley, Alos moves it to a large, wooded area, though it still references "the valley" in the backstory. It was once ruled by "a fair but not-perfect king" named Alos. He built three strongholds and gave one to a dragon named Temadra ("your mother"!?), one to his brother, and one to his soldiers. Finally, he built the titular tower, 13 levels high. Soon, his experimentation with black magic corrupted his nature and led to an invasion of "an army of evil beings."

     

Some time later, it is up to a hero to reclaim the land. To do this, he will need to get to character Level 7, clear Temadra's Den, clear the Temple of Bragi, clear the Tower of Alos, collect four magic items along the way, and finally return to the "safe castle" (the one Alos gave to his brother).

         

The in-game backstory.

     

Gameplay starts at this "safe castle," once the player inputs a name. You start with 20 hit points and no other resources, although you're assumed to be carrying a sword.

  

There isn't much to the game after that. The Valley had half a dozen or more things that could happen to the character as he explored the map. Alos reduces it all to combat, then makes combat more annoying by having the game take you to a separate screen. This is not the "tactical" screen of later games that use separate combat interfaces but rather a poor facsimile of it. It begins by showing your enemies (e.g., 4 orcs, 5 ogres, 6 kobolds) scattered across the region, which briefly tricks the player into thinking he's going to be moving around the "map" to engage them. The player icon doesn't move on this map at all, however. As many as four of the available enemies immediately surround the player while any excess wait in the wings. 

     

As combat starts, it looks as though the enemies are scattered across the map.

        

The player's only "choices" during combat are 1) whether to participate, and 2) once it starts, which direction to attack. You pound the directional arrow in one direction until that enemy is dead, then switch to a different direction, timing your keystrokes so that you don't end up with too many attacks in one direction in the buffer. There was no reason not to just do all of this on the main screen like The Valley did. The Valley also had spells.

      

But before you can react, they've surrounded you.

     

You can check your statistics during battle with the "S" key, and you can drink a potion with the "D" key. If you find yourself losing, you can just hit ESC to save the game, and when you reload, you won't be in combat anymore. 

     

You get a few dozen experience points per enemy killed, plus gold. Leveling comes first at 2,000 experience points, then 4,000, the amount needed roughly doubling with each level. New levels give you an extra 10 hit points (from a starting value of 20) and more attack power. 

           

Once you have enough gold, you can head for the village, marked with a "V." No need to find a route through the trees; none of the environmental symbols are obstacles. The town sells exactly one thing: healing potions. A Level 1 character can possess up to 10. For every level gained, the potion maximum reduces by one.

       

Buying the only thing you can buy.

            

If you don't need any potions, you want to periodically deposit your gold in the hoard, shown on the map as an "H." Once you cross 1,000 gold pieces, you start losing combat effectiveness. 

       

The instructions outline seven conditions for winning the game:

   

• Get to character Level 7.
• Clear Temadra's Den (D on the map).
• Clear the Garrison (* on the map).
• Clear the Temple of Bragi (# on the map).
• Clear the Tower of Alos (II on the map).
• Collect four magic items (one in each of the previous locations).
• Return to the safe castle. 

 

The game lets you save and reload anywhere, which is great because the early game is nearly impossible for the player. Each enemy party consists of between 1 and 10 kobolds, orcs, dwarves, gnolls, or ogres armed with fists, axes, or pikes. It takes several deaths to learn what types of battles you can survive. A level 1 character might be able to defeat up to four kobolds armed with fists, three orcs armed with axes, and so forth. Any gnolls or ogres armed with anything are probably too much. By the time I was level 5, I could defeat maybe five dwarves with axes, but large parties of gnolls or ogres still killed me unless I wasted a lot of potions.

       

This will be okay.

       

But if random battles on the surface are tough, the indoor locations are damned near impossible. In each of them, you face successive waves of 10 monsters, including some not found on the surface (skeletons, lizard men, troglodytes). With a full stock of healing potions, I've been able to survive five or six waves of orcs or skeletons, but they just keep coming. It feels like I'm going to have to grind all the way to Level 7 on the surface before clearing any of the indoor locations is truly viable. That's about 45,000 experience points more than I have, at a couple hundred experience points per battle.

      

Not much choice at this point.

         

Thus, this Dark Age knock-off, which by all rights ought to take only one entry, has to be stretched into two. I'll catch up on the Fallout TV series while grinding.

    

My Googling for information about this game turned up some interesting background on the source of the title. Tower of Alos is the title of a 1950 Basque novel by Jon Etxaide, based on an old legend that I found recounted in several 1800s sources. In the legend, the lord of the tower of Alos, Beltran, goes away to fight a war, leaving behind his second wife (his first died in childbirth) and his young daughter. While he's away, apparently for many years, his wife gives birth to a son who clearly was not sired by Beltran. Eventually, Beltran fakes his death and has his "body" returned home. As his family stands around it on the funeral bier, the bastard boy attempts to murder the legitimate daughter. Beltram jumps to life, prevents the murder, and kills the boy. I don't know what moral we're supposed to take from that, but it's at least more interesting than this game.

       

Time so far: 3 hours 

 

Game 565: Realms of Arkania: Star Trail (1994)

        

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail

Original German name: Das Schwarze Auge: Sternenschweif ("The Dark Eye: Star Trail")

Germany

attic Entertainment Software (developer); Fantasy Productions Verlag (original publisher); Sir-Tech Software (U.S. publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 8 January 2026

       

Star Trail is a sequel to Blade of Destiny, a game I played over six years ago but still remember reasonably well. I liked it but didn't love it, and I don't think I ever fully understood aspects of its magic or spell system. I can see why European players remember it with a certain nostalgia and pride. Not only is it based on a homegrown tabletop RPG (Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit's Das Schwarze Auge), but it's one of only a few European titles of the era to truly compete commercially with games coming out of the U.S. and Japan. attic, Thalion (Amberstar), and Silmarils (Ishar), all of whom had their first releases in 1992, were the only developers whose games went back across the Atlantic.

       

I've never played Das Schwarze Auge, but my understanding is that it's a bit grittier and offers more obvious parallels to European history than Tolkien-derived Dungeons & Dragons. The map of Arkania (later Aventuria, as Sir-Tech somehow got the rights to the name of the setting), the main continent of the setting, is a bit like Europe if it did not have Asia inconveniently attached to its east. There are obvious stand-ins for Italy, the islands of the Aegean Sea, Scandinavia, Iceland, the Netherlands, the Alps, and so forth. (Where Britain ought to be is a bunch of tiny, politically-inconsequential islands, which I can't imagine is an accident.) The cultures are drawn from throughout European history, including Viking Scandinavia (Thorwal), the Holy Roman Empire (Mittelreich), ancient Greece (the Cyclopean Islands).

              

Dwarves, alas, do not seem able to escape the "miners and craftsmen" label, no matter what the setting.

        

I like how the setting treats the "monstrous" races. It is impossible to imagine a Tolkien elf (surely the most insufferable of fantasy races) and a Tolkien orc sharing a drink in a tavern, but that would only be unusual in Arkania. Orcs are less incurably "always chaotic evil" and more just culturally different. They're primitive and tribal, like the Visigoths, and the primary threat of the Realms of Arkania trilogy, but they have an actual society and are capable of adhering to treaties. You could imagine some less bellicose members of the tribes quietly departing for life in the towns. I'm sure I'll encounter some of them. 

    

Blade of Destiny takes place on the northwest coast of Arkania. It involves the threat posed by the unification of the orc tribes under Chief Garzlokh. The Hetman of Thorwal charges a group of adventurers to retrieve an ancient orc-slaying blade. The party spends most of the game finding pieces of the map to the blade. At the end, one character uses the blade to defeat Garzlokh's champion, at which point Garzlokh agrees not to attack Thorwal but ominously suggests that the adventurers have simply deflected the orc hordes to another town.

     

Star Trail posits an earlier elf-dwarf alliance.

             

Neither the manual nor the opening cinematic give much hint as to the plot of the sequel, but the included map shows that it's going to take place in the Svellttal ("slender valley"), in the north-central part of Arkania, east and over the mountains from the first game's map. The opening cinematic, which kept crashing for me on one of its early scenes, appears on YouTube in full. It shows a group of dwarven smiths hammering away at a large gem, which one of the dwarves then holds up to peer inside (this is where my GOG-purchased version freezes). In it, he sees a dwarf and an elf, traditional enemies, uniting to face a horde of orcs together, then apparently later toasting their victory.

       

The player's first option is whether to play in "Novice" or "advanced" mode. The manual promises that with the former, the computer handles all the annoying details like character creation or allocating skill points while leveling up. I assume if you choose it, the game deletes itself from your hard drive and blacklists you from ever buying an RPG again.

 

Gameplay actually begins at the Temple of Peraine (goddess of agriculture and healing) in Kvirasim, where the player can create new characters, use default characters, or import characters from Blade of Destiny. This choice twisted me in knots for a couple of hours, and I will not be so far into the game that I cannot undo my decision based on your advice. New characters start at Level 1 with some basic equipment. Imported characters keep their levels (I think mine are an average of 6, but with enough experience to immediately level up) and more advanced equipment. (Although my character who had the Blade of Destiny at the end of the first game notably does not have it now.) That seems an almost game-ruining advantage. Then again, I didn't find the first game exactly "easy." 

   

The biggest reason not to use the imported party, however, is that all of the character portraits inexplicably come over as children. It is all the more mysterious because those portraits do not appear as options when selecting a portrait for a new character. The issue does not seem to be repairable. If I go into the character's setup and choose to change the appearance, my new selection doesn't "stick."

        

I thought the developers were German, not Japanese.

       

The system offers 12 different character classes: warrior, Thorwalian, dwarf, rogue, jester, warlock, druid, magician, hunter, green elf, silvan elf, and ice elf. Each of them has an unnecessary female analog (e.g., "she-jester," "dwarvess," "magicienne"). Warriors, rogues, jesters, warlocks, druids, magicians, and hunters are assumed to be human. The materials don't suggest a lot of difference between warriors and Thorwalians. Rogues are what they are in other games; dwarves seem like a warrior-rogue hybrid; hunters are basically rangers. Warlocks and magicians differ as to the source of their magic. Druids take on the roles of both druids and clerics from D&D. Elves are small, tribal, and rustic in this setting. Green elves are most likely to live in cities; silvan elves live in the woods; ice elves live in the far north. They're all skilled at missile weapons and magic. Jesters don't make any sense to me at all.

    

Each class has minimum values in some combination of attributes, which in this system are courage, wisdom, charisma, dexterity, agility, intuition, and strength. Creation works by rolling seven consecutive values between 8 and 13; the player allocates them as they come to the attributes. It then rolls values between 2 and 8 for the system's seven "negative attributes": superstition, acrophobia, claustrophobia, avarice, necrophobia, curiosity, and violent temper. There's a way to create characters by specifying the class first, but the manual warns that the values are lower than if you go through the regular process.

       

Selecting a portrait for a new character.

         

From the attribute and class choices, the game determines your base values in nine combat skills (specific weapon types); ten "body" skills like "Climb," "Swim," "Dance," and "Carouse"; seven "social" skills like "Lie," "Haggle," and "Streetwise"; and nine "lore" skills like "Geography," "Alchemy," and "History"; nine "Craftsmanship" skills like "Pickpocket" and "Locks"; six "nature" skills like "Track" and "Herb Lore"; and two "intuition" skills: "Danger Sense" and "Perception." You then get a pool of 20 points to try to increase each of the base values. You can only increase each statistic between 1 and 3 times during creation and at each level-up (depending on category), and if you fail three times, you can't increase it at all. I found failure less likely during character creation in Star Trail than what I remember in Blade of Destiny. 

     

That's going to be limiting.

       

I created the following six new characters:

   

• Xamidimura, a female warrior. Skills primarily in weapons and body skills like "Physical Control," "Self-Control.” Since she'll probably be my default leader, I tried to give her a few points in things that a leader would need, like "Danger Sense," "Survival," and "Perception."

• Mahsim, a male Thorwalian. Since he's not the leader, he was free to concentrate on almost all combat-related skills.

• Gnomon, a male dwarf. Standing in for a rogue, he has modest combat skills but also "Climb," "Hide," "Danger Sense," "Perception," "Locks." The idea is that he'll be the leader in dungeons. I also figured I should have a dwarf and an elf if the plot is about elves and dwarves.

• Toliman, a male green elf. He's my social butterfly, the leader in towns. He has the highest charisma. I leveled him in "Seduce," "Haggle," "Streetwise," "Lie," and "Human Nature" as well as some lore skills like "History" and "Read/Write.”

• Lyra, a female druid. As such, she takes on most of the stereotypical druid roles, like anything to do with nature and animals, including "Herb Lore," "Animal Lore," "Alchemy" (though she started low), "Ritual," and such. She also shares healing skills with Lilii Borea. [Microsoft Word wants me to replace "druid roles" with "drug dealings." Checks out, I guess.]

• Lilii Borea, a female magician. Anything that was arcane and not covered by Toliman and Lyra, I dumped on her, including "Tongues," "Ancient Tongues," and "Arcane Lore." 

          

I'm not even sure what this means.

       

I tried to get everyone up in their primary and secondary weapons, although you can only increase weapon skills by 1 point during creation or level-up, so I couldn't go too far. All told, it took me well over two hours to go through all the skills, map them to each character and prioritize the point assignment. I'm skeptical of the utility of a lot of the skills, like "Drive," "Bind," and "Train Animals." I believe a few, like "Acrobatics" and "Instrument" are only valuable to earn money in taverns. But my assessment is from my experience with Blade of course; Star Trail could be a lot different.

   

It took me so long to allocate the skills that I found the next section of character creation, a micromanaging of what portion of my attack values go to offense versus defense, extremely unwelcome. I welcome any advice here, but I mostly left it alone.

       

What would you do on this screen?

           

Finally, spellcasters, of which I had three, get to allocate a starting pool of points to skills in various spells. Here, I'm reminded of the Arkania system of giving every spellcaster access to every spell in the game (78 of them, if I counted correctly), but then telling them how much they suck at them. Values go as low as -20, and you can't even try to cast a spell with a skill of less than -5. Most of my characters started in the negatives for most spells. While this somewhat makes sense for Level 1 characters, it's annoying that during creation and with each level-up, you cannot increase a spell skill by more than 2 points, sometimes 1. I remember barely using spells in Blade of Destiny and having no sense which ones are useful, so I mostly concentrated on leveling spells that the characters were already somewhat proficient in already. I welcome your opinions about what spells are absolutely essential.

       

Yay! After five character levels, I'll be at Level 0 with many of these spells!

           

At last, my characters stood in the Temple before the décolletage-revealing priestess of Peraine. We engaged her in dialogue, hoping to learn something about why we were there. "Please wear fewer weapons when you next enter," she said, which was my first clue that the game had given the characters some starting equipment.

   

Blade of Destiny handled NPC dialogue by having a box show up on the main window with the NPC's statements. Sometimes, the player got full-sentence options for responses. Star Trail changes things by bringing the player to a full-screen dialogue interface with a list of keywords on the right. Normally, I might regard the change from full sentences to keywords to be a regression, but the full-sentence options in Blade were so goofy and counter-intuitive that I far prefer what they've done here.

        

That doesn't really tell us much.

        

The priestess gives me nothing and kicks us out of the dialogue window after I ask too many things she knows nothing about, so I reluctantly leave. Right outside the temple, we immediately get some answers. An elf named Elsurion Starlight welcomes us to the city in the name of his brother, King Elestir Starlight. Apparently, we've responded to a summons. Elsurion takes us to a tavern, orders a round, and gives us his pitch:

    

As you know, an Orcish uprising was crushed once before, but only by the cooperation of the Dwarves and the Elves. As a sign of their friendship, a magical artifact, the Salamander Stone, was created to mark the occasion. But the friendship has sundered, and the Salamander Stone lost. In order to resist this new Orcish threat, the Salamander Stone must be delivered into the hands of the Dwarf Ingramosch!

       

That was a weird name to give a stone meant to mark the friendship between Dwarves and elves.

         

He lets us know that Ingramosch is currently away from his people, staying in the town of Lowangen. The Salamander Stone is rumored to be in a "dwarven pit not too far to the south." He pays the tab and leaves.

    

No sooner has he left than a "wealthy businessman" named Sudran Alatzer approaches and says that Elsurion Starlight was lying to us.

       

Well, no. He said he was the brother of the king.

        

He says that elves and dwarves will never be allies, and that if we bring the Salamander Stone to Vindaria Leechbronn, he'll pay 1,000 ducats. After that, we are free to move about the city of Kvirasim, which I cannot find on the game map.

     

For some reason, the cinematic zooms in on Alatzer's eye when he says something to contradict Elsurion. Maybe it's supposed to detract us from his absurd claim.

              

At first, it seems like nothing has changed in the largely Might and Magic III-inspired interface (in terms of overall appearance, not function). A panel of nine icons offers options for splitting the party, switching between parties, reuniting the party, checking the automap, casting spells, making camp, and various disk options. The same options appear if you right-click on the screen or hit "9" on the keypad. The rest of the keypad allows for movement and looking up and down. Clicking on the portraits brings up character sheets and inventory screens. Overall, there is a satisfying amount of replication in how the player approaches different commands. 

       

You can click on the panel to the right or right-click to get a contextual menu with the same options.

          

Some differences between the two interfaces start to become apparent, and they're almost all positive: 

         

• Although the game has tiles just like its predecessor, the transition between them is animated, giving the illusion of continuous movement if you hold down the movement key.

• You can rotate the horizontal axis to look almost straight up and down. I wonder if this will ever become important or useful. 

• The automap is so much better. Blade's just had tiles and colors. In Trail, not only is it much cleaner and clearer, but you can also zoom in and out, make annotations, and move the party to different parts of the city by clicking on the  map.

     

The much-improved automap.

        

• There's a new journal that records bits of the plot and quests. You can add your own entries to the journal and find entries based on an indexing system. 

                      

The journal offers an entry that transitions between the two titles.

          

• ESC works more reliably to exit screens in Star Trail. 

• Some screens have cosmetic changes. For instance, the character sheet/inventory screen now has a texture behind it, along with some decorations, rather than a relatively plain background. 

       

The inventory screen from Blade of Destiny (left) and Star Trail (right).

      

• If you sit too long without doing anything, Star Trail activates a "screen save" that rearranges the tiles on the screen. I could do without that.

        

The 1990s obsession with "screen savers" made its way to video games.

      

• Fortunately, you can turn that option off in an "options" menu that's more extensive than the first game. Here, you can not only turn music and sound on and off independently of each other, you can also assign them different volumes. 

   

Overall, it's a solid interface, with some nice upgrades. I start relatively happy.

   

I'm going to end things here, as before I really get into the game, I want to collect your opinions about whether to go with my Blade party and, if so, whether there is any solution to the "child portrait" problem. The power level variance between imported and created characters is so significant that I can't imagine that it's not too easy for one party or too hard for another.

   

Time so far: 3 hours