Legend: Summary and Rating

           

Legend

United Kingdom

Mindscape (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS

Published in the United States as The Four Crystals of Trazere

Date Started: 7 April 2018

Date Ended: 21 May 2018 

Total Hours: 33

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 37

Ranking at time of posting: 221/290 (76%)

I really struggled over whether to quit this one. On the one hand, it was getting a little better. On the other, it was simply exhausting. Combats in Kilijan's Dark Tower became difficult enough that each one was a nail-biting fight to the death, requiring all my best tactics and spells, and even then I had to reload half of them. Most RPGs give you maybe 10 throw-away battles punctuated by the occasional significant battle. In Legend, none of the battles are throw-aways. A random encounter in a corridor you just cleared can absolutely destroy you, with enemies pouring in from all sides, a new one arriving to replace every one you've slain. I swear, some battles go on long enough that the game decides to generate a new random battle while you're still fighting the old one.

My inventory got so overloaded during the third level of the Dark Tower that I decided to make the journey back to the main map, with all of the random combats in between, to sell the excess goods, donate money at temples to restore luck, and level up. I did all of these things, then couldn't force myself to re-enter the tower and wind all the way back up. I sat on it for a couple of days. Finally, I decided I'd quit if someone else online had documented the endgame.

               

As far as I made it: the stairs going up to Level 4 of the Dark Tower.

            

My, has someone. Starting in November 2011, a YouTube member named Dzyu played the game over 102 videos, ending in May 2013. His videos were invaluable in documenting the endgame. (Another worthy LP series was started in June 2015 by FSSZilla, but as of her 83rd video in November 2017, she hadn't won.)

The Dark Tower turns out to be five levels. At the top, the player defeats Kilijan (who is immune to "Disrupt" and "Paralyze") and gets his magic staff, either keeping it or turning it in to the Ancient for a reward. Somewhere in the Dark Tower, the player finds a skull key that opens up Levels 3 and 4 of Fagranc. Once you clear those, you have to visit taverns to hear of the discovery of a "power gem" in the sewers of Balenhalm by some "ratmen." Balenhalm is a single large level.

Next up are two levels of Moonhenge in the northeast corner of the map. It provides the keys necessary to explore Levels 5 and 6 of Fagranc, which in turn provides the items necessary for the two levels of the Unshrine (which jumps around the map), where the party contends with Tetrahagael, the Chaos Lord. This is apparently an exceedingly difficult battle, as the Chaos Lord has magical protections (which you have to dispel), immunities, and very high hit point total. The Chaos Lord has the key necessary for the eighth and final level of Fagranc.

While exploring the dungeons, the party members also find the titular four crystals of Trazere, each of which boosts the defenses of one of the towers on the overland map. Between dungeons, the party has to reconquer cities seized by the enemy and provide gold to boost staffing at the towers.

      

This is the kind of statement that would make a robot's brain explode on the original Star Trek.

       

After delivering the fourth crystal, the party discovers that King Necrix himself is responsible for the evil taking hold in the land. ("Necrix" always sounded like a suspicious name.) The party must assault the king's fortress, fight up three levels, and slay him at the top. It took Dzyu over half a dozen attempts. Watching this part of the video gives you a sense of the complete chaos that is combat in this game. Even watching instead of playing, I can't tell what's happening most of the time. Spells are exploding all over the place, characters die in seconds. It's so crazy that in the fight where he finally kills the king, he doesn't even realize it for a few seconds.

          

A typical shot from the final battle.

            

Even after killing the king, Dzyu has enough trouble with the chaos beasts that he runs into an adjacent room hoping for better terrain, and in the midst of combat accidentally reads a sign--and unwittingly concludes the game. (To his credit, he recorded a final video in which he completed the combat before reading the sign.) He's clearly let down by the lack of denouement after so many hours ("I think I would have preferred at least some artwork"), but he remarks that he should have expected it given the sparsity of story throughout the game.

             

The winning screen.

        

The sign, of course, confirms Legend as a prequel to Bloodwych, the idea being that the Bloodwych now take over in the place of Necrix, reign peacefully for a while, and are then usurped by Zendick in the first game.

           

Dzyu's late-game spellbook.

       

Throughout the videos, Dzyu clearly enjoys the game for its spells. A late game screenshot shows his current recipe list, which I make out as:

1. "Missile-Disrupt-Disrupt-Disrupt-Damage-Damage-Damage." An all-purpose "blast the hell out of a targeted enemy" spell. "Disrupt" is more powerful than "Damage" but some enemies are immune to it, so I'm sure the goal here was to have a spell that would devastate anyone.

2. "Surround-Damage-Damage-Damage-Missile-Damage-Damage-Damage-Surround-Damage-Damage-Damage-Missile-Damage-Damage-Damage." This one is similar to my "fill the room with fire" spell, but jacked up to the maximum possibility.

3. "Heal-Heal-Heal-Continuous-Heal-Heal-Heal." The best I can figure, this immediately triple-heals the caster, then creates a square of healing magic in the room that other characters can walk or teleport into.

4. "Missile-Surround-Vivify-Heal-Heal." This allows the caster to resurrect any dead characters in a 9-square radius and then immediately heal them a bit.

5. "Regenerate." His only single-rune spell lets the caster regenerate quickly.

6. "Missile-Teleport-Speed." Allows the caster to send one of his colleagues to another place in the room and simultaneously give him extra attacks.

7. "Teleport-Regenerate-Speed-Antimagic-Surround-Teleport-Regenerate-Speed-Mystic Weapon-Antimagic." A kind of holistic pre-combat spell that gives each character the most important buffs and allows him to place himself anywhere in the room at the beginning of combat.

8. "Missile-Forward-Missile-Teleport." No idea. I'm guessing this was a solution to his last puzzle somehow. He doesn't have any of these mixed, which bolsters my hypothesis.

9 & 10. "Missile-Paralyze" and "Missile-Dispel." Both quick spells to affect a single target.

Analyzing some of the videos, "Teleport" is the real workhorse, and it makes sense that "Cloud" objects (rings, potions, wands, helms), which cast the spell, are vital to the party's success. They're the key to placing characters in strategic positions at the outset of combat, and to ensuring that the assassin is well-placed to use his backstabbing abilities. The spell also gets wounded characters out of combat and to healing squares.

My GIMLET combines both my experiences and what I observed in Dzyu's videos.

1. Game World. Neither the game world nor the story is well fleshed out, consisting primarily of allusions rather than real descriptions and sensible bits of lore. The game's "twist"--Necrix being the evil lord behind the invasion--doesn't really make any sense. Why didn't he undermine the "good" armies? Why did he send the party to Fagranc? It's too bad, because the connections to Bloodwych would be more meaningful if the story in either game made more sense. Score: 3.

2. Character Creation and Development. There are limited options during creation, and I feel that the number of levels achievable during the game (about 12) is a little low given the difficulty of combats. You have no choices while leveling up--you just get a random selection of stat upgrades. On the plus side, each of the four characters plays a pretty stark role. You can't just treat them all like fighters. You have to carefully equip and position them in ways that call on the strengths of their classes. I also like that the four classes--berserker, troubadour, assassin, and runemaster--are just a bit different than the standard fantasy RPG roster. Score: 4.

             

A late-game troubadour, from Dzyu's LP.

         

3. NPC Interaction. I'll give a point for a few people in the various towns, but really those are more part of the "encounters" or "economy" than true NPCs. Score: 1.

4. Encounters and Foes. As a somewhat non-visual person, it particularly annoys me when games don't name their monsters or use color to distinguish types or difficulty, and this game does both. The monsters in the game are a varied selection of humanoids and beasts, some of which do physical damage only, some of which are capable of magic, some of which have magical immunities and protections. I suspect it becomes important to note which is which, and I don't like having to fill notebooks with things like "bluish guy that looks like a minotaur--can self-teleport." 

The other aspect to "encounters" is the puzzles. I ran hot and cold, as I do with almost any game that features these sorts of mechanical puzzles (cf. DarkSpyre, Chaos Strikes Back). I thought some were too difficult and others offered the right level of challenge. They seem to get pretty crazy towards the endgame. Score: 4, but those who like puzzle-oriented games might boost this to a 6 or 7.

5. Magic and Combat. The magic system is obviously the highlight of the game, offering potentially thousands of creative combinations. I would love to have this type of spell system, maybe with a few more effects, coupled with a proper tactical combat system--either turn-based like the Gold Box games, or real-time-with-pause, like the Infinity Engine games.

The combat system actually offered in Legend has too few tactical options for non-spellcasters, is too chaotic and confusing, in too tightly-confined territories, with poor pathfinding and AI. It undermines most of the positives of the magic system. Score: 5.

6. Equipment. A positive that I probably didn't focus enough time on. Each character gets a variety of weapons, shields, armor, helms, gloves, boots, amulets, rings, wands, potions, and special items like the troubadour's various instruments. Upgrades are fairly regular. For regular weapons and armor, you can easily see their effects on your various statistics. For magic items, you have to experiment and study the effects (or take them to the Ancient for identification), but the totality of the items allows all characters to wield some magic and thus increases combat tactics. I also like that the available items in shops changed throughout the game, and that the treasures were randomized rather than fixed. Score: 6.

7. Economy. Another strong point. Between equipment, leveling, runes, reagents, donating at temples for "luck," and fortifying towers, money remains relevant until the end of the game. Score: 6.

8. Quests. There's a main quest with multiple stages, but I don't think there are "side quests." One of the stages, at least, gives you a single choice, but in general you're on a linear rail throughout the game. Score: 3.

           

You have to love "I shall kill you all myself . . . Guards!"

          

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. I rather like the oblique-angle graphics and the various dungeon scenes they create, and I didn't have any problems with the interface, which offers redundant mouse and keyboard options--with the exception of targeting (sometimes). Sound, on the other hand, is only serviceable, consisting of the "ding-ding-ding" of weapons while the same troubadour tune drones endlessly in the background. Score: 4.

10. Gameplay. Here's where it all falls apart by hitting every element of the Unholy Quartet: too linear, too hard, not replayable, and above all, too long. I'll give a point in this category in recognition of the outdoor map, which allows relatively free exploration between the dungeons. Score: 1.

That gives us a final score of 37, just above my "recommend to check out" threshold, but not quite all the way to "good."

Anthony Taglione, responsible for both this and Bloodwych, is clearly a talented programmer with some good ideas. Both games started with a popular base (Dungeon Master in the case of Bloodwych) but brought their own innovations. Neither Bloodwych's cooperative multiplayer nor Legend's magic system have anything quite like it among their predecessors. But both games commit the fatal sin of not knowing when to quit. Neither 1989 nor 1992 was ready for 100-hour games; the hardware and software of the time simply didn't support enough content. Even today, I regard a game that requires 100 hours with a jaundiced eye, although I have no trouble with games that allow for that length. I trust you can see the difference.

Of course, even given any memory- and space-based limitations, this small series is still pretty paltry when it comes to actual story. And both games reward dozens of hours of gameplay with a single screen of text at the endgame. I would have shared Mr. Dzyu's expectation for at least some artwork, particularly since Legend featured an animated introduction.

Computer Gaming World overlooked this one, but Dragon got to it and gave them an uncharacteristically-low 3/5 stars, calling it a "decent effort" with an original magic system but "limited character creation," confusing combat, and an unintuitive interface. European reviews mostly ran in the 80s and 90s (though the German Play Time gave it a 56). Unfortunately, I can't quote any of them because the site I use to find full-text magazines from the period is down. Given the light standards of journalistic integrity that we've seen in most European Amiga magazines, it's hard to imagine that many (if any) of them made it to the end before reviewing the game, and I feel that the interminable length and abrupt conclusion are key parts of the game.

We aren't done with the world of Trazere. 1993 will bring Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire. Judging by the screenshots and game description, it is simply Legend with different maps, featuring a quasi-East Asian theme. In 1994, we'll face Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard, which appears to be an updated variant of Bloodwych. Those will be our last experiences with Mr. Taglione, as the other offerings from both him and co-designer Peter Owen-James are action and adventure titles (1993's Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1997's Alpha Storm).

We'll clean up a couple of 1988 offerings before getting to the next 1992 game, starting (maybe) with Seven Little Horrors, a bizarre German game from Motelsoft. I'm having trouble with the interface and have written to the publisher for help. If I can't figure it out in time for an entry, we'll move on to the easy-but-bland Talisman, a roguelike for the Atari 800.

*****

I was really looking forward to trying the first version of the long-running UnReal World. Released in 1992, version 1.00b is completely unrecognizable to a player of later versions, with a vastly different interface, different rules, and a high-fantasy setting (rather than real-world Finland). But I can't get it to run. I can run the character creation program and the world setup program, but the main program offers four options, each tied to a function key, and none of them activate. I've verified that the function keys work in DOSBox with other programs. If I can't get 1.00b to run, I have to wait until 1994 for the next major release.

Legend: Picking Up

Seventy percent of all evil-killing is done in the library.

           

I nearly called this one "Summary and Rating," except for one thing: I started having a lot more fun with the game. Not epic levels of fun, mind you, but more fun. I started to think of it as a game that takes a while to digest, but picks up momentum at the midpoint. Then I investigated how much of the game I had left, and I realized I was nowhere near the "midpoint."

It's taken me nearly 30 hours to clear 6 dungeon levels, and there are 22 dungeon levels in the game. At that rate, by the time I finish, it will be the third-longest played game on my list, at over 100 hours. That's okay for a game with a lot of plot, but Legend is largely the same thing, room after room. If I don't quit, you'll have to suffer through 15 more entries of a couple paragraphs each, amounting to "cleared another level, solved this puzzle, found a magic sword." But I have enough good material for this entry, at least, so I'll give it just a little longer. It would be a shame to stop at the point that I'm finally getting into it.

Let's talk about why I've started to have more fun. First, the accumulation of more runes, enough spell reagents that I don't have to scrimp, scrolls to give me ideas, and my commenters' advice has made the spell system "click" in a way that it didn't before. In my defense, the spell system starts out slow, but then again, I suppose it has to, since it's so complicated. Mixing runes and reagents can be confusing enough without adding "Heal-Missile-Teleport" to the equation.

I learned that casting "Antimagic-Surround-Antimagic" every once in a while (it lasts for a few rooms, at least) meant that I don't have to be afraid of my own spells. (In one of the game's annoyances, you can't just mix "Surround" and the spell, because that only applies to the three characters around the runemaster. You have to cast "Spell-Surround-Spell" to get it to apply to everyone.) In the way that "Fireball" never gets old in the Gold Box games, I swiftly found that "Surround-Damage-Missile-Damage-Surround-Damage," also known as "fill the room with fire," never failed to put a smile on my face--and started seriously compensating for the experience point imbalance that the mage had been experiencing.
             

This is also known as the "Overkill" spell.

             
Now I find myself looking forward to other combinations. I've barely used "Continuous" at all. What happens if I string a "Missile-Surround-Paralyze" to the spell above? That sort of thing.

I also started finding so many magic items--helms, scrolls, wands, rings, potions--that I was constantly trying to find ways to use them. This made combat more tactical than before. For instance, I gave my assassin a "Cloud Ring," which teleports to a square of the player's choosing, and started looking for opportunities to better position him for backstabbing. My troubadour gained a "Holy Helm," which causes the enemies around him to become enslaved and fight their comrades. Combined with a "Missile-Teleport" spell from my runemaster, I can put the troubadour on the other side of a room and then immediately convert several enemies to her side.

Finally, and perhaps most important, I found an option at the Guild that I had missed before, allowing you to "re-clothe" your characters by changing their colors. The default colors made three of the characters look the same to me, but with some tweaks here, I can now actually pick them out of the chaos of combat.
            

Finally: something I can see!

           
I don't mean for a second to suggest that these additional options excuse the aforementioned chaos. There are still plenty of problems. Pathfinding remains abysmal; characters and enemies frequently pass a few minutes running randomly around the room because they've decided they want to attack particular foes and those foes have set their sights on different characters. There's no way to tell a character to attack a particular enemy; you have to get him close and hope for the best. A lot of enemies are capable of self-teleporting, which simply prolongs combat as they poof around the room. And as I've said before, enemies are unnamed and don't necessarily behave reliably based on color or icon. There's no way (that I can tell) to distinguish a dangerous priority from a low-level mook. When enemies cast spells, you have to figure out what they're doing from visual effects rather than any text (some players wouldn't mind this, but it's tough with my colorblindness and general difficulty with purely-visual signals).

One issue I haven't talked about is the difficulty targeting. When you target an enemy or character (or, for that matter, target an object to open or loot), you have to make sure to click on the base square--where his feet are planted. Because of the oblique angle, his head is probably over a different square, and some other enemy's (or character's) head is over his base square. It's very easy to get this wrong.
            

The "Make Weapon" rune is an odd one that simply makes a magic weapon. Since it can be dispelled by spell-casting enemies, I'm not sure it's a good investment. But I wonder if you can sell them.

          
Still, you could see how, with a few tweaks, the combat system could be better. Allow selection of characters and issuance of orders while in "pause." Give the enemies names, and show their actions, as well as the characters', in the message window. Increase the field of combat and improve pathfinding. Highlight the target when you hover the mouse over it. When you were done, you'd have something that looks a lot like the Infinity Engine system.

In this session, I explored a couple levels of Kilijan's Dark Tower. I was pleased with my solutions to a couple of challenging puzzles. In the room below, for instance, there's a rune in the northeast corner that I needed to hit with a "Heal" spell to stop the spikes on the bridge. The problem is, the table blocks the spell from reaching the rune. It turns out that the square to its left is targetable, but only from the square in the southwest corner (you have to have a clear diagonal shot like a bishop on a chessboard). So the solution was to mix up "Missile-Surround-Heal" and cast it on that blank square, assuring that the effect hit the healing square.
               

Owing to targeting issues, I accidentally hit the wrong square on this casting.

         
This one took a while. The rune in the southwest corner wanted a "Teleport" spell. This caused the teleporter on the east side of the south end of the room to activate, sending the character across the water--and then immediately back again. Now, I knew from previous experience that teleporters don't work if someone is standing on the destination pad, so the trick was to get another character to immediately move on to the eastern transport pad after it was activated, preventing the first character's return. That, in turn, meant that I had to cast "Missile-Teleport" from as far away as possible so I had time to select the second character and click frantically on the pad so she'd move to it as soon as the first character teleported. Later, I had to fill up all the pads with characters to prevent the one in front of the lever from teleporting anyone.
            

Teleport pads in real life would be so cool.

          

The second level of the tower brought what I think are the first non-humanoid enemies in the game--not that it matters since they still have no names. A message in an early room noted that "Anything that vanishes in a puff of blue smoke deserves to die!," which seems to be a joke about how slain enemies disappear in this game.
               

This seems tautological.

             

The level ended with perhaps the most challenging puzzle to date. I had to experiment a lot to solve it, and I was just on the cusp of looking for a hint when I figured it out. You can see there are four doors. To open them, you have to hit each of four "Damage" runes on the strip on the north side of the room. But you can't just use "Missile-Damage" because spells don't cross chasms.
            

A difficult puzzle room.

           
It turns out that the rune on the east side of the room, behind the pillar, teleports any spell cast upon it and causes it to come jetting out of the pillar to the west of the northern rune strip. So I had to get a "Damage" spell to hit that rune. But there was no way to target it directly because it was behind a pillar. What I had to do was cast a spell starting with "Missile-Surround-Missile." This causes a missile to land at a targeted location and then spawn four more missiles in the cardinal directions around it. Three of these were wasted, but the fourth coasted up the eastern wall to hit the rune. After that, it was a matter of appending the right number of "Damage" spells. "Missile-Surround-Missile-Damage" hit the first rune in the strip. "Missile-Surround-Missile-Damage-Damage" hit the second, and so forth.

Part of the reason that the solution took me so long is that it doesn't look like I should have been able to cast the spell on the southeast "chasm" square. You generally can't target blank chasms. But you can target regular depressions with water or ground at the bottom, and since we can't see what's at the bottom of those squares, it's probable there's solid ground there.

A few hours ago, I never would have solved that because I wouldn't have understood the spell system well enough. There's a lot that you have to intuit when it comes to these puzzles, such as the directions that "Missiles" take when you pair them with a "Surround."

There's still a lot that confuses me. For instance, take a look at the screen below--the last screen on Level 2 before going upstairs. It isn't a puzzle room; it's just a regular room that had a few monsters and treasures. Why are there four squares that look like teleport squares? They don't actually teleport. They're just inert. A lot of other rooms have squares with rune symbols that similarly don't do anything.
             

Why are there inert teleport squares here?

            

And what's the point of the compass rose in this room that has rune symbols in the corners?

               
I'm trying to decide now whether to hike out of the dungeon and divest myself of excess goods, plus level up and replenish "Luck," or press on. The thought of fighting all those random encounters on the way out is a bit exhausting, but I'm going to run out of inventory space if there are too many more levels (plus, I'm dangerously low on brimstone). Either way, I suspect by next time--which may be the final entry--I'll have conquered the Dark Tower.

Time so far: 29 hours

Legend: In Its Own Mind

One of the two levels that took me 9 hours to finish.

         

I've had a lot of enthusiastic commenters heaping praise on Legend, so I've done my best to give it a fair shot. But I'm simply not feeling it. Gameplay sessions are mildly torturous, and I have to have something else going on--a television show, a "Great Courses" series, another game--while I play it.

The game is far too combat-heavy for a title that gives you so few tactics in combat. Most rooms and most corridors in between rooms feature at least one battle. If you linger too long afterwards, you might even get a second battle. Even after you "clear" a room, there's around a 50% chance of an encounter on a subsequent visit. I started counting the number of battles I fought in the two levels of Fagranc. I lost track at some point, but it was well over 100.

There are a few factors that make the combats annoying, and I mostly covered them in my last entry. I suppose in the broadest sense, they're annoying because most of the time, there's nothing for you to do but watch. But just enough of them are dangerous enough that you have to jump to the rescue with a spell, potion or magic item. So you can't just let them start and then go get a snack, but when you do watch them intently, it's like waiting for a pot to boil.

             

A reminder of what combat looks like.

         

As I've reported before, a lack of enemy names or really any differentiation means that you really don't know which combats are going to be dangerous until they start. There's virtually no correlation between the location and the difficulty--random combats in hallways are often more deadly than fixed combats in important rooms. So you end up reloading a lot after you've learned, the hard way, that this combat is one that needs your full attention.

Not that "full attention" always saves you. With respect to those that love the spell system, I still don't have a lot of luck except with a healing spell that heals the caster and damage and paralysis spells that target the enemy directly in front of the caster. The utility of something like "Forward-Missile-Surround-Damage" or "Forward-Forward-Forward-Paralysis" is lost in a game where you cannot reliably position or face the characters. By the time I get the caster nudged into the right place, the enemy I wanted to target has moved somewhere else.

If there's one positive to the game, it's to be found in the puzzles. I covered a pretty hard one a few entries ago, and I still maintain that it was a little too hard for being so early in the game. Now, I see better how I might have figured out the solution on my own. The puzzles in Fagranc weren't nearly as hard, but they were still challenging enough to be fun. For instance, the screenshot below shows a puzzle where casting "Damage" on the western rune causes the person standing on the square above the face to teleport to the closest pad across the water. If someone is already standing there, he teleports to the other pad on the eastern side. Both pads have levers nearby that raise squares from the water, and the ultimate goal is to get someone over to the chest.

            

Casting a spell at a rune shoots a teleportation spell out of the northwest pillar.

       

I was able to figure this out through testing, and it was a lot of fun, but there were only a couple of puzzles like this in Fagranc. The issue is confused by the fact that a lot of the rooms have floor tiles that look like they're parts of puzzles but really aren't.

           

Trying to get to that chest when there's a teleportation pad in front of it. I think I just cast a "Teleport" spell from a scroll.  I don't know if that was the solution or if I just circumvented the puzzle.

         

Some of the rooms are beautifully rendered, and it makes you wish there was more to do than simply search the various pieces of furniture for treasures. As for those treasures, equipment rewards have been frequent enough to count as effective character development. I also find a lot of magic rings (which duplicate spells, but anyone can use them) and potions. I don't really understand potions. Their effects are based on their names--"Serpent" potions always heal; "Moon" potions always make you invisible--so I don't know why they're different colors. I guess maybe the color denotes the strength of the potion?

           

A pretty room, but there's still nothing to do but search.

        

I always like finding Golden Helms, which blast enemies in front of you hard enough to kill most of them. Finding one is the only time I can micro-manage my troubadour. I burn through them pretty fast.

I've been experimenting with different troubadour songs, but it's hard to see the effects of most of them. The default, "March of the Bold Ones," which regenerates hit points, is still the most tangibly effective of the group. 

The two levels of Fagranc, representing about 120 separate room and corridor screens, took me well over 8 hours to fully explore. At the end of Level 2 was a stairway down to a single room on Level 3, full of doors I couldn't open. I found a "Dark Key" in the room along with a note that said "Come and see me at The Dark Tower. --K." The Dark Tower is in a different dungeon in the northwest of the map. I guess it will be a while before I can report to the king that I've destroyed all the evil in Fagranc. He didn't even want to see me when I returned to his castle later.

               

Sorry, but your evil is in another castle.

         

Back outside, I stopped in several towns to sell my excess equipment and purchase more spell reagents. A bartender told me that The Ancient wanted to see me, which is fine--I needed to visit him to buy more runes anyway. Stopping at various cities, I slowly made my way back to the game's starting area.

          

Beginning the long trek home.

        

In Treihadwyl, I was disappointed that each character could only level-up once or twice. I thought I'd been in Fagranc so long that I was due for a major upgrade. On the other hand, leveling is becoming expensive enough that it's probably a good thing I didn't have many to gain. I wouldn't have been able to afford another round. My berserker and troubadours are now Level 5 and my assassin and runemaster are both Level 4. The experience point variance is significant, from almost 18,000 for my runemaster to about 50,000 for my berserker.

            

            

The Ancient, meanwhile, wanted me to recover his "mystic staff" from his evil cousin, Kilijan, who lives in the Dark Tower. Good thing I was headed there anyway. I was also able to purchase the "Teleport" rune from him for 4,000 gold, which I hope will get my runemaster out of more life-threatening situations. Of the runes, at this point, I'm only missing "Regeneration," "Vivify," and "Disrupt."

           

"Kilijan" joins the game's long list of names that just don't quite work.

           

I have a few new spells to experiment with, so I suppose I'll give the game another few hours and see what the Dark Tower has to offer. But I suspect you may see me end this one prematurely in favor of making more substantial progress in 1992.

       

Time so far: 19 hours

Legend: Getting Nowhere

My depressingly small map of the second dungeon.

               

The spell system described in hyperbolic terms by some of my commenters is indeed impressive, and it's made me think a bit about magic in general. This game treats magic as a series of effects, intensities of those effects, and systems for delivering those effects, and it's up to you to string them together into recipes that we think of as "spells." Most games just offer only the spells themselves. That's never made a lot of sense to me. If your Dungeons and Dragons wizard truly understands magic, he should be able to cast a "Double Bless" that increases the "to hit" rolls by 2. If he knows how to create fire, he ought to be able to mold it into a single small projectile or a large explosive ball, and in the latter case vary the size of the ball, not just cast a single ball of the same size and intensity every time. But he doesn't. He's like a cook who only knows how to make things from a set of defined recipes and can't figure out for himself even how to double or halve the ingredients, let alone how to add new ingredients.

I suppose this is explained in-universe by saying that the adventuring wizard isn't much of a researcher. He's on a quest--he doesn't have time to study and catalog spell effects. The only thing he can do is take the recipes developed by others and cast them exactly.

Oblivion offered something like Legend's approach to spellcasting. You could buy pre-determined recipes, but you could also make up your own, deciding for yourself the target of the effects, how far to extend them, and how to combine them. It was too bad Skyrim didn't keep the system.

              

Another key, another door. When will it all end?

           

However, there are a few problems with this system. First, the more effects you attach to a single spell, the less flexibility you really have. Sure, it's nice in theory to be able to craft a spell that first heals the caster, then casts "Anti-Magic" on everyone around the caster, then blasts the approaching enemy. But it's somewhat rare that I'm going to encounter a situation in which I need all those effects in that order. It's much more common to encounter situations in which I want just one of those effects independently. And since there's only a slight delay between casting, and mixing a complicated spell requires the same number of reagents as a bunch of individual spells, it hardly makes sense to combine multiple effects in one spell. Better make the spells individually and cast them in rapid succession when you need to.

The worse problem, however, is that the nature of the combat and movement systems makes it nearly impossible to do what you want with spells in combat. Consider these variables:

               

• Most rooms are small and offer little maneuverability.

• You cannot control what paths your characters take to destinations. You can only set destinations. Often, they are blocked from reaching them, give up, and just do their own thing.

• Characters can only move at square angles. And I'm not sure about this part, but from observing them, I think they can only change facing direction as part of a movement. So if a character kills an enemy and another one attacks him from behind, he can't just turn around. He has to walk forward into an empty square, turn around, and come back.

• You cannot exempt characters from negative spell effects.

• You cannot exempt enemies from positive spell effects.

• You cannot identify the enemies even by name, let alone by armor class, combat effectiveness, or magical capability.

             

These factors come together to create an utterly chaotic combat experience. Chaotic combat does not well-serve a spell system in which the spells must be carefully targeted. It's cool that I can cast a "Paralyze" spell that affects every enemy in a radius, but I'm almost never in a situation in which only enemies are in my radius. Similarly, it's theoretically useful that I can "rally" characters around a single character and then heal them all with a single spell--except there's virtually no way to avoid catching enemies in the healing effect. Any ranged spell is almost certain to hit an obstacle before it hits is intended target.

           

Mixing my first "Surround/Paralyze" spell.

             
Let's say I want to cast a targeted healing spell on a fellow party member. First, I have to identify the right character in the sea of combat. The "pause" option helps a little with that, I admit. Second, I have to hope that he's not behind any of the physical obstacles in the room. Then I have to find an unobstructed path from the caster to the character--no objects, room gaps, enemies, or other characters in between. I might try to maneuver the caster around the periphery of the room to get a clear shot, but while I'm doing that, the position of the enemies and characters in the melee is constantly changing. Also, the character I'm trying to move doesn't necessarily follow the clear, unobstructed path to the destination. She might just wander directly into the melee that I'm trying to avoid. At this point, enough time has passed that the original character is probably dead.

The same considerations are true of targeting enemies, with the additional consideration that I don't really know who to target. I don't want to waste my spells on trivial mooks, but I can't distinguish them from their harder leaders. I could try to watch them, but enemies are always moving and teleporting and whatnot, and the overall chaos of combat makes it difficult to track what any one enemy is doing. Maybe some of you will be better at it than I am. My colorblindness and general . . . whatever . . . make me less responsive to visual cues. Tell me that I'm facing a "ghoul," and I think, "Oh, hell. Those guys can paralyze. I'd better be prepared." But just show me an image of a ghoul that's barely distinguishable from every other undead image in the game, and I don't have the same reaction.

I just fought a large battle with what looked like a bunch of little guys in stocking caps. Some had green pants and some had blue pants. Was I supposed to carefully note which enemies were fighting which characters and write down "green pants=easy; blue pants=HARD!" If so, that's more effort than I'm willing to put in.

         

A reminder of what combat looks like. I can barely distinguish enemy from friend, let alone position characters carefully in such a cramped room, or identify a path from my spellcaster to a particular enemy that won't be blocked by another person.

          

Thus, I find I only get use out of a couple of spells: First, those that heal the caster. Since the runemaster has the smallest number of hit points, she's always in danger of dying, and a simple healing spell can keep that from happening. Second, I get some use of out of spells that affect the square directly in front of the caster. There's no targeting necessary with that one. As soon as you see that your runemaster is facing an enemy, you can cast "Damage" or "Paralysis" knowing that no one else will be hit. Third, a "Surround Speed" spell is a good option for when the enemies start entering the room, just before the party breaks up in whatever direction to go fight them. But that one's pretty expensive, reagent-wise, so I almost always make sure a combat is actually going to be hard (by someone dying) before I reload and cast it.

I do occasionally cast a "Surround" healing spell, figuring it's better to heal both my characters and the enemies than let the characters die. Beyond that, I don't know. Maybe there's something I'm missing? Maybe I just need more practice? I don't have all the runes yet, either. I should also point out that reagents aren't cheap, so the game doesn't encourage a lot of experimentation.

When I last wrote, I was in Fagranc, but I wasn't getting very far. I got tired of getting my ass kicked in every combat, so I decided to march all the way back to the starting point to see about buying more runes. I soon found that I couldn't even get back to the entrance of Fagranc without save-scumming. The random encounters kept overwhelming me. At last, I had to move carefully from one screen to the next, save if no random combat appeared, and reload if it did.

Back on the surface, I marched back to Treihadwyl and then to the mountains to the east. I attempted a couple of banner encounters along the way, but they were way too powerful for me. I notice that sometimes evil forces capture a city, but then good forces often liberate it again. I assume that the worst that happens is the enemy holds a city and I can't enter it until I can defeat the forces there or some other good army comes along and does it for me.

             

I would, but I can't.

          

I found The Ancient without much trouble, but his runes were way too expensive (especially after I spent most of my accumulated funds on bard songs). So I returned to Treihadwyl and grinded for a while, earning enough experience to get most of my characters to Level 4 and enough gold for all of the directional runes plus several new effects: "Speed," "Paralysis," and "Anti-Magic."

On the way back to Fagranc, I tried a few more banner combats and won a couple, although almost always with my runemaster dying. Fortunately, resurrection is free. It will be nice when I can afford the "Vivify" rune, but of course that won't help the runemaster herself, who needs to be alive to cast the spell.

Fagranc was a little easier on my return, but still not easy, and my reload count would horrify most of you.

Some other notes:

• The only guild, where you can level up, seems to be back in Treihadwyl. That's a little annoying, since I seem to be earning some solid experience in Fagranc.

• The game shares Dungeon Master's tendency to give you cool-sounding equipment and tell you nothing about what it does. I found a pair of "Chaos Gloves" that only my runemaster can equip. The only thing they seem to do is reduce her armor class by 2. Surely there must be more to them than that?

            

Of course, this entire game is chaos.

            

Fagranc is much like the first dungeon, though larger, where the purpose is to find the right sequence of keys to find the right sequence of doors. There are fewer puzzle rooms so far. One of them required me to step on a couple of pressure plates, but invisible squares throughout the room teleported my characters back to the beginning. I had to mentally remember the right path to avoid the squares--and still couldn't figure out any way to open the chest in the room, since it has a teleport square right in front of it. But there must be some way to open it because I'm out of keys and can't progress anywhere in the level.

         

The room in question.

          

I really feel like I'm getting nowhere with this game, which despite all my negativity has some good points. The economy is well-structured, for instance. I like the contrast between dungeon exploration and the strategy-game-like mechanics happening on the surface. And, of course, in a game where you could more effectively position your characters and target spells, the spell system would be wildly innovative and fun.

Time so far: 10 hours

Legend: Very Silly Parties

I wonder if "Beamday" is anything like "Sunday."

          

There are a number of promising elements in Legend, but they just don't create a satisfying gameplay experience. To start, the puzzle difficulty is severely unbalanced. When I broke after the first entry, I was trying to figure out the final major puzzle in the first dungeon. It involved casting "Missile Damage" spells at a rune, which caused flames to belt out of a couple of pillars, which struck other runes, which caused other things to happen. Ultimately, I had to hit the runes in the right pattern to create a path across the water to the room's exit.

           

Apparently, after choosing the path, you can choose multiple effects, including the same effect multiple times.

          

Even with the hint that I had to use some "Double Missile Damage" spells, I couldn't figure it out. I had to look up a walkthrough to see the correct pattern, which was:

          

• Cast "Missile Damage" at the rune.
• Cast "Double Missile Damage" at the rune.
• Have a character other than the caster pull a lever.
• Cast "Missile Damage" at the rune.
• Pull the lever again
• Cast "Missile Damage" at the rune.
• Cast "Double Missile Damage" at the rune
• Pull the lever again.
• Cast "Missile Damage" at the rune.
• Pull the lever again.
• Cast "Missile Damage" at the rune.
• Cast "Double Missile Damage" at the rune.

          

I mean, seriously? This was supposed to be discernible by a player playing blind? I get the idea of trying things and testing effects, but that only works when the effects are consistent and repeatable. When different things happen in response to the same spell in different strengths or at different times, it's pretty frustrating to figure out. And when the right sequence involves 12 friggin' steps, that frustration turns to fury.

            

Casting one of many spells on a rune.

          

With the puzzle solved, I was able to get the final keys necessary to shut off the traps and claim the treasure in the final room. The treasure turned out to be a "permit" giving me permission to visit King Necrix III.

         

Gasp. It's all been a test!

         

Necrix's castle was a brief hop back on the main map. There the king gave me some money and a key and told me to destroy the evil in the city of Fagranc. Developer Anthony Taglione doesn't really have a gift for fantasy names. "Trazere" is okay, but "Necrix" and "Fagranc" are both goofy, as was "Bloodwych" and its villain "Zendick."

             

The first quest.

          

Fagranc turns out to be on an island at the top of the map. It's only about half a map away as the crow flies, but to reach it, the party had to basically circle the entire land--around a couple of mountain ranges, through a narrow valley, and across a causeway to the island. I did it in stages, stopping in each city along the way to see what I could find.

          

My party and various armies roam the game map.

          

In one, the bartender told me to see his colleague in Groghurst for some news; the Groghurst (there's another one) bartender told me that the Druids have the "key to the secrets within MoonHenge" (and another). In another, I stopped in a temple and donated money to increase my "luck" score. I didn't really talk about it last time, but every character has a "luck" attribute that will save them from death in combat, depleting one point for every save. My assassin and runemaster were at 0 after the first dungeon.

In some tavern at the south end of the map, I ran into a minstrel who offered to teach the game's other songs for a fee. Not knowing when I'd see him again, I bought them all--exhausting my finances in the process. They include "The Thief of Dolik Pass," which increases everyone's dexterity; "Smithy Song," which increases armor class, and "Dance of the Faerie Queen," which increases speed. Others increase strength, defense, constitution, and intelligence. I'll have to experiment with their utility, but I can imagine keeping the original song, which regenerates health, most of the time.

            

Better than "The Thief of Buckblow Pass," I guess.

          

In Eb's Pass, I bought horses for the characters, improving the speed of overland travel.

            

"Eb's Pass" is, at least, two short to be risible.

          

As I approached the island, I decided to try my first "banner encounter." As the characters march across the map, so do various armies, both good (blue) and bad (red). The sigils displayed by these armies give a sense of their relative strength. There are 7 such sigils, ranging from hawk (weak) to skull (strong). I attacked an enemy with a pair of serpents, indicating the second-lowest difficulty.

             

Encountering a foe in the wilds.

          

The ensuing battle wasn't really any different than a long combat in a dungeon room. The same options applied. We won in a couple chaotic minutes. The runemaster died, but I got her resurrected in a nearby town. I think the banner encounters are necessary in a way; if you don't kill the evil armies occasionally, they eventually take over the land. 

           

A "banner fight."

        

As I close this unfortunately brief entry, I'm in the Fagranc dungeon, convinced I made a big mistake. The combats are so much more difficult here than the first dungeon, and the runemaster dies in just about every encounter. I clearly need to boost my use of magic, and in consulting the manual, I see that the mage "Mantric" (yep), who sells additional runes, is located somewhere way back near Treihadwyl (uh-huh). I also spent most of the money I'd use to buy runes, so even if I traipse back there, I'll probably have to grind in the starting dungeon for gold and perhaps a level for my weak runemaster.

            

If they were going for an anagram of "Fragrance," why not "Grafcenar"?

       

I want to get far enough into the game to experiment with the storied spell system, but navigation and combat are so joyless that it's tough to force myself to play for more than a quarter hour at a time. I don't have a lot of faith that more complex spells will change much, but I'll let you know.

Time so far: 6 hours