Crusaders of the Dark Savant: Summary and Rating

Kind-of a weird image choice for the box. Is that supposed to be one of the "maps"?

         
Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant

(Generally known as Wizardry VII but never called that in the game or documentation)

United States

Sir-Tech Software (developer and publisher)

Released in 1992 for DOS, 1994 for FM Towns and PC-98, 1995 for Playstation, 1996 for SEGA Saturn; re-released in 1996 for Windows and Macintosh as Wizardry Gold

Date Started: 20 August 2018
Date Ended: 2 December 2018

Total Hours: 108

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)

Final Rating: 60

Ranking at Time of Posting: 303/310 (98%)

In my many entries on Crusaders of the Dark Savant, I've painted it as a game that tells a mediocre story, does so ineptly, and usually doesn't take its own story seriously--at least not until the end, when it becomes almost comically full of pathos. It also has a way of feeding the player over-wrought prose, often one line at a time, multiple times, with no way to escape. I hold to these criticisms as we enter this final summary, but as in the case of many other games we've seen on the blog--the Ultima series primary among them--my criticisms have to be understood in the context of the fact that few other games of the era offered enough of a story to make such criticisms possible. A game that offers no backstory offers nothing to make fun of. One that puts itself out there with a detailed backstory and complex plot offers dozens of things to react to.

I don't apologize for a blog whose purpose is to chronicle these reactions, from the perspective of a modern player, but I do apologize if I don't put sufficient context around my criticisms, or if I don't balance them by highlighting the positive content and mechanics of the game. Looking over my previous entries on Crusaders, I don't think I conveyed often enough that even though I had some issues with some of the storytelling and other content, those reactions were in the context of a title that kept me up all night playing. Even in the "game world and story" category, Crusaders is going to perform well.
           

One of the more broadly-drawn and poorly-explained factions in the game.

         

Part of my reaction to the plot is personal preference. I will always prefer the low-key, locally-relevant story to the world-threatening catastrophe. Give me the party trying to clear out the slums of New Phlan instead of the one trying to save the universe. You think that higher stakes might make a more epic game, but I find that the opposite is true--that there's more opportunity for deeper and more realistic characterizations of people and places when the scope of the game is smaller. The Fallout games all do a good job in this regard. None of them invite you to save the world from a nuclear war. You just get to make your little corner of the world a little better.

In this case, though, the nature of the threat isn't even really clear, partly because the characterizations of key NPCs are so thin. Who is the Dark Savant? Where does he come from? What are his motivations? Again, what the game gives us is, unquestionably, better than the standard "evil wizard" with no background who appears in 90% of the games before this one. But in some ways that just makes this experience all the more unsatisfying.
             

Is it a time for a new purpose, or a new perception of purpose?

          

Nothing in the game is more frustrating than the character of Vi Domina. She shows up in the backstory, scantily-clad, sporting a mechanical arm and visor, like someone's cyberpunk cosplay fantasy. When she finally appears late in the game, she's more of a naif than someone whose name all but demands that you add a "trix" to the end. You're told repeatedly that she's a "warrior," but she never seems to fight anything. For the final chapter, she's everywhere, and the game trips over itself telling how awesome she is and how much you love her. Literally some of the last lines tell how you "are pleased to be in the company of such a pleasant traveling companion and new partner." I don't like it when games tell me what my characters think, especially when they haven't earned that right by giving me any insight into the character's backstory or motivations.
             

This is laying it on a little thick.

            

The story is attributed to David Bradley, although I don't know how much of it is wholly his creation. It's no secret that I had a near-immediate negative reaction to Bradley when I first started playing Wizardry VI, what with the ridiculous photograph and cringe-worthy interview that appeared in the game's cluebook, plus his insistence on dropping his name on literally every page and calling the game a "fantasy role-playing simulation." Too much authorial presence breaks the fundamental illusion of a game, book, or even a blog. I've run afoul of this myself. Audiences want to be able to take what they read seriously, authoritatively, and they can't if they feel that someone ridiculous is feeding them the story. (I often wonder how many readers Terry Goodkind lost by putting this picture on his books.) I realized writing this that I have no idea what specific individuals to credit for most of my favorite RPGs, like Baldur's Gate and Morrowind, and perhaps that's a good thing.

But it's worth remembering that I had issues with Bradley even before I knew who he was, with the absurd NPCs in Wizardry V (e.g., the Duck of Sparks, Lord Hienmiety, the god La-La and his priest G'Bli Gedook). Bradley is fond of broad humor--the type that that favors ridiculous names with long o sounds ("Phoonzang," "Bambiphoots") or puns ("Ratsputin," "Blienmeis") that most of us grow out of by age 10. I'm sure he had a clear idea in his own mind about the Dark Savant and his Mary Sue Domina, but I don't think he conveyed their story competently.
            

And it begins.

         
Having said all of that, it's important to keep in mind that in my complaints, I'm evaluating Crusaders against a modern game, or an "ideal" game, rather than other 1992 games. Compared to its own contemporaries, there's no question that Crusaders deserves a high score in the "game world" category. More important, it deserves high scores in the equipment, combat, and character development categories. The mechanics of the game are excellent. The worst thing Bradley could have done when taking over the series was to jettison the approach to combat introduced in the first Wizardry, but he did a good job keeping its fundamental tactics alive. He, or someone, deserves credit for perfectly balancing the "rest" system. If it had restored everything, as it does in Might and Magic, the game would have been far too easy and all the challenge would have come down to individual battles. If they'd made you return to a central location to restore spells and health, as in the first five games, extended expeditions would have been a nightmare. As they programmed it, resting restores just enough hit points and spell points to keep you going, but it takes just long enough, and offers just enough chance for random encounters, that you're discouraged from abusing it.

Character classes are well-differentiated, and the system of switching between them is well-balanced enough to offer rewards for switching but equal rewards for staying. (Perhaps putting a maximum on the number of times you can switch, or the lowest level at which you can switch, would have been a good idea.) Character development is constant and rewarding throughout the long game. The equipment system is equally solid.

I'm on the fence about certain aspects of the game world and quest. In general, I favor open game worlds with nonlinear narratives, and even games where the main quest itself is something of a mystery. Crusaders checks all those boxes. It also deserves credit for making its game world somewhat dynamic, with roaming NPCs who engage in (off-screen) conflicts with each other and sometimes (often, in my case) find key treasures before the party does.
           

The "Locate Person" spell helps keep tabs on constantly-shifting NPCs.

        
On the other hand, I wouldn't have minded if the game had offered a little more guidance on the main quest, particularly in respect to the 11 "maps" that become the focus of the exploration and quests. (I put that in quotes because they're not really maps at all, but texts.) I was deep into the game before it became clear that assembling the set of maps was the primary goal of exploration. Just a few lines in the manual or in-game backstory would have cleared up a lot of confusion.

Hardcore Gaming 101 has an excellent paragraph that describes some of the negative aspects of the open game world:
          

The game is entirely non-linear, and upon landing the player doesn’t even get a clue what to do first. Even though most areas are effectively locked off due to being inhabited by far too strong monsters, the game is always dominated by a crushing feeling of being lost. The world is full of items that absolutely have to be kept, remembered, and recognized for puzzles somewhere at the other end of the world, dozens of gameplay hours later. Many puzzles aren’t necessarily all that hard on their own, it’s just that the ingredients are spread out too far, and the hints are often obscure, if there are any hints at all.

           
But it's again important to remember that Crusaders was pioneering new territory here. Only a few games prior to it were as physically large, long, and complicated, and the developers didn't have a lot of good examples to draw upon for balancing such a large world and complex plot. In the end, I'm grateful that Crusaders advanced the importance of detailed stories, NPC interaction, side-quests, sub-quests, and player choices. As such, I would be surprised if the GIMLET didn't put the game in the top 5. Let's see:

1. Game world and story. Crusaders offers a detailed backstory that plays a significant role in the game itself. There are multiple factions with their own characteristics and motivations, history, and lore. The characters' actions visibly affect the world, and the game is one of a rare few in which some events happen dynamically, without the player's input. There are aspects of each of these elements to criticize, but I've mostly done that enough. Score: 7.

2. Character creation and development. Mechanically, the game's approach is about as good as any game on the market. It has a full set of race choices, class choices, attributes, and skills, several magic systems, and meaningful inventory restrictions by race and class. (I think some of the races are stupid, but that's a minor concern.) Different selections create different experiences for different players. The ability to switch classes, while perhaps unbalancing the game a bit, adds additional dimensions to character development. Development is regular and rewarding throughout the game.

On the negative side, the classes and races really don't play any meaningful role in the game, at least not in a way that was clear to me. Certain skills are useless or mostly useless, and I don't think the game gained anything by dividing skills into multiple categories. Score: 7.
           

Defeating the Dark Savant kicked everyone up a level.

          
3. NPC interaction. I actually think the series took a step backward here. In the system introduced in Wizardry V and included in VI, characters can have full-sentence dialogues with NPCs, but the previous games seemed to offer a more sophisticated interpreter in which full sentences were actually necessary. Phrasing things as statements or questions, even with the same keywords, might produce different results. Here, the game just seems to scan for keywords regardless of their positions in the sentence or the surrounding text, and I offered a few joking screenshots along those lines.

Having said that, I don't really mind this "dumbing down" of dialogue, since it was always frustrating to figure out exactly how to phrase a question to get an intended result. What I do mind is that the NPCs respond to a lot fewer keywords than their Cosmic Forge counterparts while simultaneously tripling their dialogue quantity. They are also a lot goofier and thus less realistic.

Back on the positive side, I like the way NPCs roam around and engage in conflict with each other, and I wish the game had done more with this, offering more reasons to seek out, track down, and ally with (or oppose) various NPCs. Instead, since encountering NPCs is non-optional and results in pages of unskippable and unvarying dialogue, the game effectively encourages the player to simply kill everyone.

The end result of the goofy names and characterizations and long-winded introductory dialogue, there wasn't a single NPC in the game that I actually liked. That's particularly too bad given that, mechanically, the game supports fairly deep interactions with its NPCs. Score: 6.
          

One of the game's goofy NPCs responds solely to the word "archives."

           
4. Encounters and foes. The foes are mostly originally-named, which in this case is a negative because most of the names are silly. I didn't like that so many enemies used the same graphics and were thus difficult to distinguish, even though their strengths and weaknesses might vary considerably. On the other hand, the bestiary is satisfyingly large, with enough strengths and weaknesses among them to create different tactical challenges.

Non-combat encounters were plentiful and engaging, and while they didn't offer a lot of opportunities for role-playing, many of them provided challenges of satisfying difficulty. Score: 6.

5. Magic and combat. The magic and combat system continue to be the primary strengths of the series, and as I said above, Bradley deserves a lot of credit for adapting rather than replacing the system introduced over a decade prior. The various spells and enemy characteristics come together to create a near-infinite number of tactical choices, but everything is exquisitely balanced.

I see that in my GIMLET for Bane of the Cosmic Forge, more than five years ago, while giving the combat system a high score, I said I was "past the whole 'line up your attacks and execute them all at once' system." I understand what I meant, favoring more tactical combat screens like those used in the Gold Box games, and anticipating more real-time (but no less tactical) combat as in Might and Magic III. Still, it was a short-sighted statement. Crusaders proves there was still life in the old system. Score: 7.
           

I'm not sure I used "parry" once in the entire game.

         
6. Equipment. My primary quibble here is that the game only gives you one "accessory" slot, and you find so many rings, necklaces, capes, belts, and similar items that it's constantly torturous to choose among them. I also continue to dislike the identification system of the series. I don't mind so much the process of casting "Identify" to view an items characteristics, but I rather wish that having done so, I could simply view the item in the future to remind myself of those characteristics, not have to cast the spell again. It makes evaluating multiple items a time-consuming, spell-point consuming chore.

But overall, the game does a good job here. There is a such a variety of weapons of different types and ranges, armor (helms, upper body, lower body, gloves, boots), and usable items that almost every treasure chest offers something useful. What I particularly like is that the selection of items in chests (and, to a lesser extent, on dead enemies) is mostly randomized. I hate when the same artifacts appear in the same locations for every player. Score: 6.

7. Economy. I didn't talk about it much during my entries, but it's not very good. The primary problem is that "stores" are mixed up with NPCs, and there simply aren't enough of them selling enough useful stuff. You mostly end up selling rather than buying, amassing a huge amount of gold before the end, and spending most of it on plot-specific purchases (like ascending in the Dane Tower or buying your way into the Umpani legions) rather than equipment. I would have appreciated more places to spend gold and a less-cumbersome purchasing system. Score: 3.
           

I ended the game with far too much money and not nearly enough things to spend it on.

           
8. Quests. With a main quest with not only multiple endings but multiple beginnings, faction options, and numerous side-quests and sub-quests (although it's not always clear which is which), it's hard to ask for more in this category except for better writing and greater complexity, both of which later games would offer thanks to titles like Crusaders setting the standard. Score: 8.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. Perhaps the weakest category in my opinion. The graphics are certainly improved from previous titles in the series, but they're still just textures. While many of the monster animations are fine, I wasn't in love with anything else. Sound effects were at best adequate, at worst annoying (e.g., the continual background droning), and since they slowed down the game so much, I turned them off halfway through.

It's tough to write a good interface in a game of this complexity, and while I eventually got used to it, there were aspects that bothered me until the end, including poor use of the keyboard, inability to switch between characters while in sub-menus, limited scope of the automap, lack of any way to determine coordinates, inability to skip text you'd already seen a million times, and a lot of unintuitive commands. Score: 3.

10. Gameplay. We get to end the GIMLET on a positive. Crusaders is the first truly non-linear Wizardry, and it's about as nonlinear as you can get (even the starting and ending locations can vary) except that the so-called "outdoor" world is still pretty confining and there's a bit of frustration involved in simply getting from one place to another. The faction options, ending options, and different experiences afforded to different character classes make it highly replayable. Its difficulty is pitched perfectly, and even adjustable.

Although it avoided the worst flaws of long games, such as artificial level caps and a general feeling that characters stopped developing, 100+ hours is still far too long. I don't mind games with optional content that push past the 100-hour mark, but otherwise I feel that a game is becoming indecent if it exceeds a couple of work weeks. Score: 7.

That gives us a final score of 60, tying it for the sixth-highest rating on my blog so far, seven points higher than Wizardry VI. As much fun as I've made of David Bradley, the inescapable result of his involvement with the series is that it kept improving--in sharp contrast to a lot of series of the era that, while advancing in superficial elements like graphics and sound, struggled to out-perform their first installments in core RPG mechanics.

            

"True point & click mouse interface." Ugh. Eventually games will come full circle and say things like, "Makes effective use of the full keyboard."

              

Contemporary reviews were universally positive, although some reviewers complained about over-length, interface issues, and too much backtracking. In the February 1993 Computer Gaming World, Scorpia called it "the first Wizardry that has a real-world feel to it," praising its various factions and roaming NPCs, but sharply criticizing the backtracking that the game requires, including my complaints about having to leave the Isle of Crypts multiple times. The magazine was a bit more positive when it gave the game "RPG of the Year" (for 1993). It is of course extremely well-respected today, with numerous fan sites, analyses, and retrospectives.
              

"One day" being nine years from now.

            

Wizardry 8 didn't come out for nine years, and I can't possibly close this entry without talking a little bit about what happened in between. (Whatever I think of David W. Bradley as a storyteller, he comes across as the least reprehensible party in the mess that followed.) As with many things involving multiple perspectives, it's hard to glean the raw truth about some of the issues, but I've done my best to summarize as best I understand it. Primary sources include a 2014 Matt Barton interview with Robert Sirotek, a 1997 New York Supreme Court decision, and a 1998 Usenet thread now archived by Google Groups.

While Crusaders of the Dark Savant was still under development, Wizardry series co-creator Andrew Greenberg--who had become an intellectual property attorney in the meantime--sued Sir-Tech Software for breach of contract. His cause seems to me to be legitimate. In 1991, Sir-Tech closed its development shop in New York and transferred its assets to Sir-Tech Canada. Its position was apparently that because Sir-Tech Canada was a different company than the New York Sir-Tech, its contract with Greenberg was now void, and they stopped sending checks, despite the fact that they continued to market and sell Wizardry titles in the United States and the same principals owned both companies.

However, in filing suit, Greenberg for some reason named Bradley, who had no ownership stake in Sir-Tech, as one of the co-defendants. Both Bradley and Sir-Tech balked at the inclusion of Bradley, and Sir-Tech later argued, in a counter-suit, that Greenberg's suit had ruined Bradley's productivity and caused a one-year delay in Crusaders of the Dark Savant (it had original been planned for a holiday 1991 release). A 1997 New York court decision on the issue would later find that:

          

[C]ontemporaneous memoranda do not indicate that Bradley was ever unable to work and, in fact, make absolutely no reference to the Federal court action. In sharp contrast to the position taken in Sir-Tech's complaint, these writings provide persuasive evidence that the sheer magnitude of the Crusaders project, programming and operating system problems and, quite possibly, Sir-Tech's own impatience and interference, were the major causes for the delay, which extended for a full year beyond the September 1, 1991 deadline and, in fact, approximately six months beyond the dismissal of the Federal court action.

            

The documents I reviewed suggest that Sir-Tech did their best to keep Bradley out of the legal mess and to cover any of his legal expenses, but you can see how it would be hard to maintain good working relationships in such an environment, and after the publication of Crusaders, Bradley left the company in a "falling out" that I haven't seen otherwise specified.

       

The lawsuits, counter-suits, and appeals wouldn't be settled until 2005, two years after even Sir-Tech Canada closed its doors for good. But these legal straits may explain why Sir-Tech decided to keep further development of the Wizardry franchise as far away from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts as possible. They asked their Australian distributor, Directsoft, to put together a team. Directsoft responded by assembling a group so comically inept that it's almost as if they wanted the project to fail. The project head was a sound editor-cum-film director who had never (as far as I can tell) managed the development of a computer game before. No one on the initial staff knew much of anything about programming. After months of producing nothing but maps and lewd monster graphics, the team finally hired a couple of programmers. These included Cleveland Mark Blakemore, who by his own account tried his best to turn the documents into an actual program but ultimately got frustrated by the ineptitude of his colleagues and repeatedly tried to quit.
   
In 1994, sensing the project had become a money pit, Sir-Tech canceled further work on what would have been Wizardry: Stones of Arnhem. This might have been a wise move for thematic reasons, too: nothing about the game, as far as I can tell from the documentation, suggests it would have been a sequel to Crusaders. In the Barton interview, Sirotek even suggests it may not have gotten the Wizardry label.

              

A map from the development of Stones of Arnhem. Oddly, most of the major locations named on the map are real place names in Australia.

            

Blakemore is himself a controversial figure whose accounts of working on Stones of Arnhem were doubted for years until a stash of Sir-Tech documents emerged in an abandoned storage locker in the town where Sir-Tech had its headquarters, not only confirming his employment but also largely his account of why the project failed. (The documents went up for sale on eBay briefly, but Sirotek somehow got the auction shut down. Somehow the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History ended up with a bunch of scans, and you can find more on various online threads.) Unfortunately, Blakemore chose to pepper his accounts with homophobic and white supremacist rantings and self-aggrandizing nonsense. In 2017, after almost 20 years of development, Blakemore released Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar, characteristically calling it "the greatest roleplaying game of them all." It got mixed reviews.

The Wizardry series was adrift again. In 1996, Sir-Tech re-released Crusaders of the Dark Savant under the odd title Wizardry Gold, an update for Windows 95 and the Mac on CD-ROM. The game is an artifact of the mid-1990s obsession with CD-ROMs, animated graphics, and voiced dialogue before the technology was really there to make any of it good. The result is that the game feels more outdated today than the 1992 version. Here is a link to a video of the game. I would have tolerated that voiced narration for about 30 seconds.
   

In 1998, Sir-Tech repackaged the first seven games, plus Wizardry Gold, as The Ultimate Wizardry Archives. I bought the compilation nine years ago to play Wizardry II and have been dipping into it ever since. It's odd to finally retire the package.

Wizardry 8 would eventually be completed, by most accounts under the direction of long-time Sir-Tech employee Brenda Braithwaite (née Brenda Garno, now Brenda Romero), although in the Barton interview linked above Sirotek stresses that it was a collaborative and that Braithwaite doesn't deserve total credit. Whatever the case, it was released to excellent reviews--but that's a story for a (much) later entry. In between, we have Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure (1996), an almost universally-panned single-character game with simplified RPG mechanics. 

We will also meet David Bradley again, as soon as 1995, with CyberMage: Darklight Awakening. After a brief stint with Origin (where he developed CyberMage), he founded his own company, Heuristic Park, which remains in business 23 years later. The company developed Wizards & Warriors (2000), Dungeon Lords (2005), and Dungeon Lords MMXII (2012). I'd say I'm looking forward to playing them, but of course it took me five years just to get from Wizardry VI to VII. I hear that Wizards & Warriors in particular shows a Wizardry influence.

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is the third-longest game on my blog, in raw hours. I've had it going on and off since August. In some ways, I'm sorry it's over because it means I have to focus on a series of RPGs that are a lot less approachable. Let's see if I can get anywhere with any of them.

Crusaders of the Dark Savant: Won!

Yes, that's what I want to hear after 108 hours. Our adventures are only just beginning.

          

The final level of the dungeon on the Isle of Crypts holds the Tomb of the Astral Dominae. It's behind a gate that doesn't open until you've walked around the level and stepped on various tiles with the same names as the game's maps.

The greater difficulty on the level was the numerous encounters with robots. I believe in order of difficulty they are battle droids, cosmo-bots, and mega-bots. Each is capable of a mass damage laser or phaser attack, and if any spells were capable of protecting against them, I never found it. They were highly resistant to spells themselves, and so battle mostly came down to keeping everyone alive while I destroyed them with melee attacks. When I first arrived on the level, I thought my party was pretty tough, so the level shook me a bit.

           

This was harder than the endgame battle.

       

Combats in this game are extraordinarily variable in composition and thus difficulty. The enemies themselves might always be the same in a particular area, but the number varies a lot. When you step on a "battle square," you might find a single dragon or six dragons in three groups of two. In the case of this level, one or two battle droids were no problem. A party with six mega-bots was game over. I got through the level mostly by dying and reloading when I encountered a tough party and saving when I got through a battle with an easier one.

The difficulty of the droids paled in comparison to the final battle, but I need to relate a bit more before I describe that. The final battle takes place in the Tomb of the Astral Dominae, and to get through the Tomb, you need two "keys" from the outside world: the Locket of the Tomb and the Ring of the Globe. Both require some item or knowledge from within the Isle of Crypts dungeon, which is what I meant last time about the backtracking.

            

What happens when the party reaches the Tomb of the Astral Dominae without these objects.

          

Getting the Ring of the Globe requires the party to complete the "Great Test" in the City of Sky. The test involves three statues of Phoonzang, the first of which just requires his name. The third statue doesn't really have a test at all. But the second one has a level of puzzle difficulty that's a little absurd. I wouldn't have figured it out without a hint. It involves pressing nine buttons in a particular order. The buttons are labeled serpent, gate, wand, pyramid, star, dragon, cross, skull, and map.

The hint, which I saw accidentally while trying to look up a different hint, was that the solution makes use of the STAR map, which you find on one of the teleporter levels on the Isle of Crypts. The map is full of long and pseudo-poetric ramblings. The relevant part reads:

            

Look upon life as thee may look upon the stone, and create thee then thine own order. Look first at a man, and if thee looks rightly, then soon ye shall come full circle. Then look beneath him, and if thee looks rightly, then soon shall thee once again come full circle. Thus may thee divine the puzzle from the pieces.

            

Well, none of this has anything explicit to say about the buttons on the statue, so I would have overlooked that it had anything to do with the puzzle without the hint. But the only hint I got was that the STAR map was the key to the puzzle. I still didn't know how it solved the puzzle, and I was determined to figure that out for myself.

It didn't take me long to realize that the different buttons on the puzzle correspond to some of the items listed on the Stone of Gaelin, and the map of course tells the reader to "look upon the stone." I had previously thought the words on the stone were clues about where to find the maps or where to use them, but I was barking up the wrong tree.

The words on the pillar, if you ignore the titles and read in a counter-clockwise direction (i.e., "look rightly"), go in this order:

           

• First Row: man, pyramid, crescent moon, devil, boat upon waves, cross, tower, coiled serpent, lantern, dragon, chest, key
• Second Row:  egg, winged chimera, magic wand, skull, radiant jewel, statue, cube, crystal ball, gate, stone tablet, three statues, five-pointed star

            

So basically you start with "man" on the first row and then read to the right, ignoring the words that don't have a corresponding button. When you get back to "man," you "look beneath him" and do the same on the second row. The final order of buttons is pyramid, cross, serpent, dragon, wand, skull, gate, and star. The "Map" button in the puzzle is never used at all, which is a bit confusing. Having described the puzzle, I'll save a discussion of how I feel about it (and the maps in general) for my summary.

             

All that to get here.

          

Beyond the statues of Phoonzang, we found a spaceship, and in searching the spaceship, we found the Ring of Globes. The spaceship becomes important later.

The Locket of the Tomb comes from the Mandolian Isles, a small area west of the Isle of Crypts that I would have missed if I wasn't trying to grind a bit before attempting the final dungeon level again. Since enemies don't always appear randomly when you want them, the easiest way to "grind" is to first make sure you've tripped all the fixed battles, and that means visiting every square. I was systematically lawnmowing the Sea of Sorrows when I ran into the Mandolian Isles, stepped into a building, and found an obvious place to use the "Jewel of the Sun" I'd found in the Hall of Gorrors.

            

This is like the 90th statue of Phoonzang in the game. The guy sure did think a lot of himself.

          

We were teleported to an area with a statue of Phoonzang. Searching it revealed the locket, and then the statue awoke and had a long speech:

     

The day is come! I do not know how many centuries have passed since last I breathed these airs and walked these lands But in death does time lose all meaning. And so it is but a moment ago that I lay down to final rest. There is much I wish to tell you, the story of all stories. Of life and death, and of the time between. But soon enough shall my voice fade again, its energy depleted, its task at end. In your hands you hold the locket, a part of the final key. Carry it well, for it is a guardian of my secret. Within its crystal cells have I imprinted the code of my palm, so that by my hand alone shall the key unlock the Astral Tomb. But though I be dead a thousand millennia, this cast does yet live on. For upon all my descendants and theirs, for the remainder of all time, shall my code exist upon their hands, the secret bequeathed through the blood of my children. I do not know your name, whether you be man or woman or child. But if your blood be mine, then the secret shall be thine. When you stand alone within the Astral Tomb, grasp the locket within your palms and behold the miracle! O, would that I could see the wonders of my works! My blessings be upon you, distant child of my loins Upon your brow do I heave the weight of a Universe!

    

The text is important because it indicates that the person who uncovers the Astral Dominae will have to be a descendant of Phoonzang, which on the surface seems like an absurdly short-sighted requirement (what if his kids decided not to have children of their own?). This sentiment is also echoed in the GLOBE map, which says "thou are the key!" In other words, Vi Domina is supposed to be the one doing all this work, not my party.

           

The woman can't even pronounce the damned thing right.

        

This brings us back to the Tomb of the Astral Dominae. We entered the tomb to find it vacant. Some words on the floor read "*ASTRAL DOMINAE*," and the game tantalized us with the possibility that, just like the maps, someone might have beaten us to it. That would have been funny. After all this work, I've got to chase down Brother T'Shober to win the game.

              

One wonders why it's called a "tomb" since the Astral Dominae wasn't really "alive."

          

But no, it was just hidden. Searching the area revealed a kind of trap door in the floor. Using the two "keys" produced no result. Time to call Vi Domina. When I used her communicator, she appeared and seemed surprised as I was that the globe wasn't in the room. She mentioned some "keys" that the Dark Savant had talked about, and asked if we knew what he was talking about. We said YES. She asked if maybe she should use them. We said YES.

The globe arose from the floor but was curiously dark. Then the Dark Savant appeared, claiming he'd injected Vi Domina with a homing device after her last disappearance, as well as something that allowed him to paralyze her with the push of a button. He tried to take the globe but found he couldn't budge it. Then, he attacked the party in a rage.

            

I think . . . maybe you mean "mercilessly"?

        

He attacked with a group of "Savant Kui'S-Ka" in multiple groups. Both the Savant and his allies have powerful mental attacks that drove the characters insane each round. I couldn't keep up with "Sane Mind," and the insane characters were useless, so he mopped the floor with us in several rounds.

             

The Dark Savant's party.

          

I tried several reloads. The Savant also has something called a "Chroma Glove" capable of paralyzing multiple characters--sometimes every character--when he pulls it out. I tried a bunch of different spells and tactics but couldn't defeat him. I was discouraged from reloading too many times because every time I did, I had to go through all of Vi Domina's dialogue and acknowledge the various Dark Savant messages first. This might be the earliest example of a difficult boss encounter with a long, unskippable cut scene in front of it.

I returned to the outside for more grinding. Among other things, I returned to the Dane Temple and re-visited the meditation chamber where, ages ago, three of my six characters had gained the "Mind Control" ability. At the time, I didn't understand what was happening. Later, after commenters clued me in, I didn't realize the importance of the skill. I'd already squandered any opportunity to develop the skill to a high level, but I figured it might help if each character at least had it.

I finished lawnmowing the Sea of Serpents and gained a few more levels. Later, I realized that there's one square within the teleporter levels that always generates a combat when you step on it, and the experience rewards here were higher than anything outside, so I spent some time there. By the time I got bored, my characters had risen from around Level 25 (in the first Dark Savant encounter) to Level 32. Three of my characters now had "Sane Mind" instead of one, and everyone had at least 10-15 points in "Mind Control."

             

My ninja and some of her endgame stats.

          

It took me a couple reloads--the "Chroma Glove" was still a dealbreaker when he pulled it out--but I defeated him. I focused my lead characters' melee attacks on the Savant while two spellcasters ravaged his minions with "Nuclear Blast" and then cast buffing spells (including "Create Life"). He only had about 500 hit points and lasted only about 4 rounds. I just had to keep the characters alive that long. If I'd known that, I probably could have won with a few more reloads the first time, without the extra grinding.

           

The Dark Savant is after the ultimate power in the universe and wields a magical glove. It feels like this is familiar.

           

When he was dead, Vi Domina roused herself, put on the Ring of the Globe, and started fiddling with the Astral Dominae. [Edit: In saying "fiddled with," I should have mentioned that she has a special eye underneath her patch that allows her to gaze into the Astral Dominae.] When it came on, she had a long bit of rambling exposition:

           

This is incredible. It's a blueprint. No, it's . . . it's a formula, a code. For the creation of life! Wait. It's also a map Of Energy. And Matter. Of the nexus between Energy and Matter. But, but . . . then, that is what Life is. The nexus, the flux, the bridge between Matter and Energy. That is the secret of Life! By the gods!!! With the power of this Globe, you could create a living being of unlimited energy! A being with the power of the stars! A Superman! A God!!! No wonder the Dark Savant wanted to get his hands on this. Ut! What is this. It's a chart of a star-system. Hey! I recognize this system. But there isn't a . . . Oh! Very clever! This must be where it all started!

           

There were a lot of screens of blah blah after this (sample: "Who among you could have guessed on this day that the awesome power of the heavens [would] fall into your hands?"). None of that made very much sense and left a lot of open questions--if you could do those things, why didn't Phoonzang do them instead of leaving it to a descendant that might never have been born, and so forth--but we'll talk more about the story next time. For now, Vi Domina wanted to know if we'd discovered any sort of spaceship that might get us off this rock. Obviously, we had, because that's where the Ring of Globes was. She said she was going to get her personal things from the Dark Savant's ship and to summon her when we were at the spaceship's location. She gave us the Astral Dominae to hold in the meantime.

         

Are you going to call the thing by its actual name even once?

        

It would have been nice if the game had just taken us there, but instead we took the long way back down through the Isle of Crypts dungeon and its teleporters, rowed the boat back through the fog, walked through the cavern network, and emerged again in the City of Sky. We felt our way through the invisible walls and back to the starship that had given us the ring. We used Vi's communicator to call her back. I'm eliding a lot of superfluous text here ("What is this new place that Vi Domina seems intent upon reaching in such a hurry? And more, will the charms that seem to bless her life be strong enough to protect you as well?" etc.)

Instead of Vi, the Dark Savant appeared, clutching Vi Domina's bloody and unconscious body. [Edit: In keeping with my edit above, I also should have noted that he apparently gouged out her special eye in the meantime. The game alludes several times to the bleeding socket and her resolve in pushing through the pain.] He didn't really explain how he survived, just mocked the idea that we could have hoped to defeat him. And in one of the most annoying tropes in fiction, he then claimed that we had been doing his bidding all along (which really isn't much of a twist if you started the game with the opening that has you arriving on the planet with the Dark Savant). I suppose I ought to give you a bit of his subsequent rant. This is in ALL CAPS in the original, but I can't bring myself to type it this way:

         

I am the Savant, the dark herald of change! For too long has the fate of man been ruled by the ghosts of those enshrouded in mystery. Deciding how and when men might be slowly fed the secrets of the heavens. It is time for a new order in the universe! It is time of a new perception of purpose in the cosmos. It is the time of the coming of change! I am the harbinger of new destiny! I will create galaxies filled with supramen . . . men who are unafraid to embrace the truth of the heavens.

           

He then demanded that we turn over the Astral Dominae in exchange for Vi Domina, suggesting that it was the only way to save her life (and ours). It's a classic choice. Does the good of the one outweigh the good of the many? You could make a strong argument that giving an item of ultimate power to an insane megalomaniac is far more evil than letting one woman die. You could make the opposite argument, too. It annoyed me that the game decided to come down hard on one side and make an explicit suggestion to the player:

               

Considering the unknown nature of his awesome powers, perhaps your role at this time is that of compliance. After all, certain death is not the way of the wise, and to die here shall certainly serve no meaningful purpose, and who knows what tomorrow shall bring. Better to be alive to see it than not.

             

Thus annoyed, the first time I got these messages, I chose to keep the globe. This brought up an immediate and short ending. The Dark Savant raised his hand and: "There is darkness all around. You feel nothing, nothing at all. You do not know how long you have been here. You do not know how long you will remain. There is only the darkness all around." But the game did prompt me to make a final save, so I guess it's a legitimate ending and may have a unique beginning in Wizardry 8.

       

The player makes a final save.

        

I reloaded and gave the Dark Savant the globe. This resulted in a lot more text, but it boiled down to Vi waking up, saying don't worry, she knows where the Dark Savant is headed. Using the ring and locket, she fires up the spaceship and we head off.

           

Out there, somewhere, looms the shadow of the Savant, in his hands the power of the Astral Dominae, and deep within, you know that your paths are destined to cross again. During the voyage, you spend many a night listening with fascination to the incredible stories that pass from the lips of the remarkable girl, Vi Dominae, who seems to possess an unquenchable curiosity about the nature of the universe and everything else as well, and it is through these tales that your own new perception of life and the stars and all that they contain begins to emerge.

             

Again, cue a final saved game.

           

I'm not sure we made the right decision here.

         

There turns out to be two more potential endings that I didn't experience. But to get either, you have to blatantly lie to Vi when she asks if you've discovered a spaceship. I'm not sure if the developers got confused and thought they had left a way open to reach this point in the game without visiting the spaceship, or if they just thought some players might want to lie. If the latter, they don't really given any compelling reason to lie. But if you do, Vi tells you to meet her back in New City. There, you get caught up in a final epic battle between the T'Rang and Umpani and have to choose one side or the other. Somehow, the Dark Savant still ends up with the Astral Dominae, and the party and Vi end up chasing after him in either a T'Rang or Umpani ship.

              

In 3 out of 4 endings, you're in a spaceship chasing the Dark Savant.

           

I've had negative things to say about the quantity of text and the story it tells, but we can't ignore that by 1992, there are few games that even attempt to tell a story with this level of complexity, and even fewer that allow for player choices and multiple endings. I have to give the game credit for those features even if I make fun of some of the specifics.

             

It's nice to have choices at all.

           

I would note that some of the text at the end of the game is oddly racially specific. The Dark Savant rails about the "fate of man." The STAR map talks about "the unique gift of Man, that by which he alone is separated from all others." This is interesting rhetoric, but my party, which includes only one human, isn't sure how to take it. It's possible that in this universe, we are to understand "man" as meaning any sentient race, but perhaps not. Phoonzang himself is clearly human, and the "hero" of the story, despite the party doing all the work, is clearly the human Vi Domina. This isn't necessarily a plot hole or a criticism. It just adds an interesting twist if your party of Mooks, Felpurrs, and fairies finds themselves within an epic quest to determine the fate of "mankind."

I was surprised that nothing about the ending came back around to the beginning. We never see Aletheides again, nor ever hear anything again about the Cosmic Forge or the Lords of the Cosmic Circle. I never got any satisfaction about the relationship between the Cosmic Forge and the Astral Dominae, even though it sounds like they do many of the same things. I'm guessing that even if you arrived in the game with Bela the dragon, he never reappears either. Most disappointingly, if your beginning had you arriving on Guardia with the Dark Savant, who demands that you find the Astral Dominae for him, there's no way to role-play your party--quite ironically--as crusaders of the Dark Savant. The endgame still assumes that you're opposing him instead of willingly obtaining the globe for him.

I'll have more thoughts on the story in the summary, where we have to talk a bit about what happened next for Sir-Tech. For now, it's nice to wrap this one up after more than 100 hours. It would be nice to think that this will be the longest game of 1992.

Crusaders of the Dark Savant: Gorror Show

So begins a mostly-optional but fun dungeon level.

             
I spent 14 hours late this week trying to win Crusaders, and I made it to the threshold, but I can't quite cross it. Unfortunately, I waited a bit too long to blog about this experience, and looking at my notes and screenshots, I find it impossible to discuss what I accomplished in any kind of linear order. The endgame requires so much backtracking that I came to memorize entire dungeon levels. It also required three separate violations of my "no cheats" rule, although they're not technically "violations" if I'm completely stuck and can't progress otherwise. They still feel like violations.

Getting into the dungeon on the Isle of Crypts required the "Majestik Wand" that I found last session.

         

In broad terms, there's only one dungeon left after the experiences I related last time. It was on the Isle of Crypts, and it consisted of four major sections:

1. The introductory level full of undead, 22 x 22.

2. The "Hall of Gorrors," 16 x 16.

3. Eight small 8 x 8 levels with a bunch of teleporters connecting them

4. The level with the Tomb of the Astral Dominae, 16 x 22.

I had to leave the entire dungeon--and once I got to the third section, that involved a lot of backtracking--at least half a dozen times to pick up some new item or clue or experience. I think even if you played more optimally than I did, you'd still have to backtrack out of the dungeon a minimum of twice, because there are things you can't do on the surface until you find the right clues or items in the dungeon.

The first level was large and full of undead, fairly easy to map. It has some annoying squares where every time you enter, you set off a trap that damages, blinds, or "vegetates" your characters, and there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid or disarm them. I don't know; there's a golden urn at one point, and it might be possible to disarm the traps by putting some powder in the urn the way it supposedly is in the Dane Tower, but I never found any of that powder.
              

This message accompanied a lot of the unavoidable-damage squares. I never figured out what it was about.

         
As I began to explore, some ghost kept appearing and shrieked things like, "IIII WWWWANT MMMY BMOCYENOBBB!!!" Having been programmed now--largely by the Wizardry series--to automatically check everything backwards, I immediately interpreted this as something like "bony comb." I'd been carrying around a "bone comb and brushes" since Orkogre Castle, so when I finally found the corpse of an old Gorn queen and used the object on it, the specter went away. That might be the longest amount of gameplay between finding a quest object and using it that I've experienced.
           

Most of the ruins in this game used to belong to the Gorn, it seems.

       
There were some locked doors on the level that opened only with "Keys of the Tomb" or "Keys of the Crypt," both of which appeared in random loot on the level. The rooms behind these doors had some treasure chests with decent objects. There were actually quite a few treasure chests throughout this session, and while I didn't record in detail what I found and kept at each location, by the end of the session most of my characters were wielding different items. My Valkyrie got a Valkyrie-only weapon called "Maenad's Lance." I found a decent mace called "Diamond Eyes," but the only character who could use it effectively was my lord, so I ended up transferring the "Sword of 4 Winds" to my ninja, who oddly never found a high-level ninja-specific weapon. I found an entire suit of Samurai-specific armor on one corpse, and I hated to discard it all, but at this point I didn't want to do any more class changes.
          

It would have made more sense if his name were * M I L D  I N C O N V E N I E N C E *.

              
There were combats with demons and dragons among all the undead, and the level culminated with a battle with a black dragon called * D O O M *. Despite this being a spaces-and-asterisks boss, he wasn't that difficult, or at least I didn't take any detailed notes that suggested the combat was difficult. I think I might have gotten lucky with a critical hit (against which most boss-level enemies seem immune) in an early round.

The next level is the one worth talking about. It was small and easy to interpret, consisting of six 2 x 6 rooms, each behind a locked gate, each featuring a different unique enemy, each with a treasure chest behind him. Each gate opened with a "Key of Gorrors," of which I only had two when I first entered the dungeon, but later discovered more after random combats. Some of the gates required swimming for up to 7 squares, so you arrive at those exhausted and have to spend some time sleeping before the battle.
           

"And a thousand eyes, can't help but see . . ."

         
The enemies, all of which were optional, ranged from the trivially easy to the impossible. In rough order:

• Ra-Sep-Re-Tep. This was the undead skeleton in the starter dungeon. I don't know how he's in two different places, but he doesn't seem to have advanced very much in between. I killed him almost immediately. It was frankly embarrassing.

• D'Arboleth. A ghost enemy. He died in maybe 8 rounds of physical attacks (meaning he had maybe 1,000-1,200 hit points), with none of his attempts at "Death" working.

        

D'Arboleth's demon ally was more difficult than he was.

       

• Horragoth. A demon who attacks with some lesser demons or sphinx-type enemies in tow. Both he and his comrades are fond of mass-damage spells, and Horragoth himself often casts "Death Wish" and "Word of Death." When these spells work, they're obviously devastating to the party, but I find--especially with "Magic Screen" active--that they hardly ever work. To beat him, I just had to keep up on healing while whittling down his hit points.

          

"Do you know what you just interrupted?!," Horragoth screamed.

        

• Thing from Hell. This is a bug beast with more than 5,000 hit points. It frequently casts "Mind Flay," which can drive a character insane, and a physical attack that causes high-level poison. (Insane characters behave erratically, usually ignoring your assigned action and sometimes attacking other party members.) This was the first Gorror that I encountered as I mapped, and I gave up after a few tries. Much later, when more of my characters were capable of casting "Sane Mind" and had higher levels in "Mind Control" (see below), I tried again and was able to beat it.

          

Bix goes insane.

       

• Beast of a Thousand Eyes. I haven't been able to defeat either of the last two enemies, but at least I can survive a couple rounds with the Beast. By icon, the Beast is in the "flying jellyfish" family. He has these tentacles that don't do much damage (although they can poison), and every time I tried to fight him, he'd use those tentacles for a few rounds while my melee characters pounded him for hundreds of hit points. But then, inevitably, he'd cast "Dazzling Lights" and it would be all over. "Dazzling Lights," according to the manual, is a spell that does random effects to enemies, including insanity, nausea, blinding, stoning, and death. His, for whatever reason, seem to favor the "death" option. I tried to keep up with resurrections and other healing spells, but in about 15 tries, he always wiped out my party by the 12th round.

         

Ironically, he doesn't appear to have any eyes.

       

• Fiend of 9 Worlds. In contrast to the Beast, I couldn't even last three rounds against this Rattkin enemy before all hope died. He has a Vorpal Blade that causes 99 hit points every time it strikes, almost never misses, and leaves a character poisoned even if he survives. He also shoots mystic arrows that seem to have a lot of luck with critical hits.

              

It annoys me that an enemy this powerful is a Rattkin.

         
Once I understood the "shtick" of the level, and perceived that the combats were optional, I didn't mind the difficulty so much. It actually improved my approach to the game's combats in general, which is a funny thing to say this late in the game. There are so many spells that even with the number of combats you face in the game, I've tended to rely on the same handful for most of them. (It should go without saying that with any difficult combat in this game, I started, or at least re-started, with "Enchanted Blade," "Magic Screen," and "Armorplate" blazing.) Trying to defeat the Gorrors, I experimented a bit more with different spells and combat options and found a few combinations that could have served me better.
           

Having just woken up from a nap, the party regrets not having its protection spells turned on right now.

          
Among my discoveries are the utility of "Create Life," which creates an (invisible) ally to fight along side you. Not only is this ally capable of doing some significant damage, but he must stand off to the side somewhere because the enemy is capable of either attacking the party or the ally. If he casts a spell at the ally, even a mass-damage spell, it never affects the party. Those rounds where the summoned ally absorbs the enemy's attention are very rewarding.

The spell "Armormelt" seems to do a good job of softening enemies for melee combat, and I've found that "Anti-Magic" causes their spells to "fizzle" a satisfying number of times. "Superman" does a good job bolstering allies. However, the problem that I have with these spells--and perhaps the reason that I avoided using them for so long--is that the manual is coy about how long they last. There's no indicator on screen to show that you have any of the buffing spells activated, so you just have to trust that when you cast the spell, it's doing something. I'm not big on that kind of trust.

A lot of commenters have extolled the virtues of building up the "Ninjutsu" skill and hiding in the first combat round. My characters do all have this skill--a side effect of my cycling them through ninja or samurai classes, if only for one level, to give them "Kirijutsu," which governs critical hits. When it works, all the characters drop into shadows and then come out screaming the next round with backstabs and such, doubling or tripling the melee damage they can cause. You can also elect to stay hidden for multiple rounds and let your summoned allies do the work. There are even some mass damage spells that don't break your cover, although I haven't experimented long enough to get these.

Anyway, my problem with the strategy is that it really only works if all of the characters manage to hide. I didn't spend enough points on "Ninjutsu" for some of the characters and they usually don't make it. When that happens, the un-hidden characters draw all of the enemy's attention and don't prevent the enemy from casting mass-damage spells that hit everyone. Also, even characters with 50+ points in "Ninjutsu" don't seem capable of hiding from high-level enemies like the Beast with the Thousand Eyes.

What strikes me is how, this late in the game, it's generally physical attacks that save the day. This separates Crusaders from a lot of games in its genre where fighters become useless around mid-game, and spellcasters end up doing all the heavy lifting (Phantasie and The Bard's Tale series are two where this is is particularly true). Here, it's the spellcasters who become somewhat weak, with high-level enemies (infuriatingly) shrugging off even the highest-level spells cast with the highest number of dice. I find that at this stage, the best my spellcasters can do is keep the melee characters alive and healthy long enough to do their jobs. In a lot of rounds, I have my mage, bishop, and alchemist join the front three characters in physical attacks.

The only thing I had to accomplish on the Hall of Gorrors level, it turns out, was to find something called the Jewel of the Sun behind a hidden door and corridor. After that, it was on to the next section. But to get there, I had to get the first of my three hints.
             

This pillar is going to be important later, too.

           
To get out of the Hall of Gorrors, you have to open a gate with something called the Key of Skulls. The Key of Skulls, in turn, is hidden within a pillar called the "Gaelin Stone." The pillar has four faces, and at each face, the party can read a message that talks about two of the game's maps. It turns out that to get the key, you have to physically "use" the LEGEND map and hold it up against the western-facing edge of the pillar, which discusses the DRAGON and STAR maps. This is what it says:
          

*DRAGON*
A Dragon, a Chest, and a Key...

*STAR*
A Stone Tablet, Three Statues, and a Five-Pointed Star...

             
This is what the LEGEND map says:

Whatever was written upon the map has long ago faded. Now it is but a blank piece of parchment, dotted with several scattered holes. Around the edge of one hole near the center, you can just barely discern the faint remnants of a ring of reddish dye.

               

When you use the LEGEND map at the pillar, it says this:
      

You hold the Gaelin Legend over the face of the Runed Tablet, and see that the holes in the parchment conform perfectly with the knobs of stone protruding from the pillar. The hole near the center of the Legend is positioned directly over the eye of the Dragon, and by inserting your finger, you discover that it is actually a well-concealed button. Pushing the button, a secret compartment opens up in the tablet, revealing a black key in the shape of a skull.

     
Even knowing the solution, I don't understand how I was supposed to figure it out from the available evidence. The word "Gaelin" is only attached to the LEGEND map, as far as I can tell, in this one paragraph. Nowhere else in the game do you "use" the maps like this. What am I missing?

In any event, the gate led to the next section of the dungeon, where I spent most of this session's time but have the least to say. It was eight levels of 8 x 8 squares with no stairs between them, only teleporters. There are 54 teleportation destinations within the area, but some of the destinations have more than one teleporter, with the result being that about 25% of the squares are either teleportation or destination squares. Some of the levels have dark areas that you have to "feel" your way through, and one has a water area. There were a few locked gates where I had to find treasure chests with keys before I could open them.
         

Dark squares, a staple of other tile-based blobbers, really haven't been a part of Crusaders so far. This was briefly disorienting.

       
Naturally, it took a long time to map the entire thing, but this is the kind of challenge that I enjoy. I don't know why I enjoy it. There isn't much creativity involved in mapping an area like this, just a lot of trial and error. I enjoy it anyway. I stayed up all night one night finishing the map.
          

The eight dungeon levels with all of the teleporter origins and destinations.

        
There were multiple battles with undead, demons, dragons, and other high-level enemies, and while I had a fair number of reloads during the process, the battles weren't overly hard. Each one delivered an average of maybe 20,000 experience points. My characters require 600,000 experience points between levels these days, so about 30 battles per level, but I have six characters, so roughly every five battles or so, someone leveled up.

Aside from a few weapon and armor upgrades, the key item to find among the eight levels was the STAR map. The STAR map turns out to be the solution to one of the "statue" puzzles back in the City of Sky, and you need something from that area to get through the Tomb of the Astral Dominae, so this represents one of the mandatory backtrackings from this dungeon. At the time that I found it, however, I didn't even begin to guess that was it's purpose. It wasn't until I was looking up a later hint that I saw an unwanted (although it turns out, equally necessary) hint about the STAR map.
            

If someone else had gotten to this first, I might have rage-quit.

         
The hint I needed came from one of the dungeon levels, where to progress I needed to press eight buttons--Egg, Moon, Cross, Tower, Dragon, Skull, Sun, and Star--in a particular order. Looking through my existing maps gave me no ideas. Looking for a hint, I discovered that the answer was to be found on the CRYSTAL map, the only map that I hadn't retrieved so far. The last clue I'd received about it said that the Rattkin had it.
           

This area had four rooms of two buttons each.

         
It was clear that both to find the CRYSTAL map and make use of the STAR map, I'd need to leave the dungeon, so I backtracked my way out the doors and back to my boat. I returned to New City to use its fountain and sell some excess equipment and ponder my next move. I briefly considered looking at a more explicit hint about the CRYSTAL map, but ultimately sighed, sucked it up, and took the long forest path back to Rattkin territory.
           

No one ended up having the damned map--I killed every NPC to check and reloaded when they didn't have it--but it was an interesting side trip regardless. You may recall that the last time I visited the Rattkin, I had given some information to Barlone' of the Rakuza that would allow him to intercept a T'Rang starship and perhaps use it to expand his influence off-world. Well, it must have worked, because on my return he told me that the Rattkin would be clearing out of the area. He offered to let me ransack his treasure room for 40,000 gold pieces, which I gratefully paid because I have plenty of excess gold. The treasure room turned out not to contain much of anything I needed.

          

I'm glad you're moving up in the universe.

        

I suspect the map is in the hands of Ratsputin, who I haven't seen for a couple dozen hours. (Ed: A comment reminded me about the "Locate Person" spell. It said that Ratsputin is dead. So who knows where the map went.) Meanwhile, any "lore" about the map has completely disappeared. Every time I talk to a wandering NPC, the tell me about every other map, including all the ones I have, but CRYSTAL has never come up again. Of course, the NPCs themselves have been few and far between now that I actually need them.

After several hours of aimless wandering, I did what I'd been trying to avoid and looked up the text of the Crystal Map, which told me how to get through the area and up to the final section of the dungeon, holding the Tomb of the Astral Dominae. I was utterly unprepared for the difficulty of the enemies on that level, least of all (what I assume is) the final battle, and I ended up leaving the dungeon again for some grinding and other character development time. But this post is already pretty long, so I'll save my further adventures for next time. As I write this, I'm preparing to take on the final battle again.

Some random notes:

• The City of Skies, which I talked about last time, has this museum where there are several powerful-sounding artifacts including a "Mercurian Light Sword" and a "Cobaltine Power Glove." Each item is behind a force field and can only be unlocked with a "Key of Light," of which it appears only one exists. When I first visited the city, I found the key after visiting the museum, and owing to the difficulty navigating the area and its invisible walls, figured I'd decide on the artifact later. Then I forgot to go back. I also forgot to go back when I visited the city the second time to use the STAR map. Those items probably would have made a difference. Maybe I'll go back if I still can't beat the final battle.

• Many of the chests in the Isle of Crypts dungeon were impossible to disarm even with a character with a "Skullduggery" skill at 100. That seems a bit unfair.

• In my opinion, the graphics and animations for the various demon creatures are the best in the game.

           

These guys are reasonably intimidating.

             

• It seems like almost every weapon and piece of armor I found was useable only by a fighter, Valkyrie, lord, or samurai. I never found any really good stuff for my bishop, alchemist, or mage.

• At one point, I thought I had discovered some good stuff. One chest gave me a number of items "of Doom," including a staff, and both upper and lower pieces to a robe. The items were cursed, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this game; it just means you can't unequip them without casting "Remove Curse." The armor class on the robes was insanely low, and they also had a high magic protection rating. I was so enamored of them that I didn't realize until much later that they sap hit points from whoever is holding them. It's slow, but fast enough that the character will die during 8 hours of resting. I reluctantly gave them up.

• My characters all have at least 18 in everything now. Some of them are up to 19 or 20 because of ankhs that you can "invoke" for a one-point attribute gain. The nice thing is that even with the toughest enemies, my characters almost always act first. 

• It's been a long time since I cast something at anything but the highest level. I wish the game would just default to the highest level.

• And I wish there was a higher-level healing spell. Most of my characters have enough spell points for 8 to 10 castings of "Heal Wounds," and it takes that many to fully restore a character's health. That's like trying to heal a Dungeons and Dragons character with nothing but "Cure Light Wounds" when he's Level 20. It would be nice if the game had offered a "Heal Wounds a Lot" spell to cut down on some of the time.

• Here's a process I'm getting sick of: Entering the temple in New City. Acknowledging a message about the statue of Phoonzang. Acknowledging the screen with the name of the temple. Acknowledging a descriptive message about the temple. Acknowledging the introductory screen of Father Rulae. Telling Father Rulae that we want GUIDANCE. Talking to Father Rulae. Reminding Father Rulae that we know the SACRAMENT. Acknowledging his reaction. Saying BYE to Father Rulae. Acknowledging his farewell message. Telling father Rulae to LEAVE. Acknowledging his farewell message again. Then finally being able to walk down the corridor behind him to the healing fountain. It would be nice if the corridor had just stayed open permanently after the first time I told Rulae about the SACRAMENT.

           

The characters have gotten creative during this process.

        

Sorry for all the posts in a row on Crusaders, but this isn't a game that rewards taking time off, and my two other active games are too difficult to offer any kind of reprieve from this one. Let's keep pushing on through.

Time so far: 104 hours