Darklands: Getting Medieval

The party has gotten strong enough to challenge a demon.

       

Darklands introduces a combat system that I find hard to call "good," and yet it's perhaps a necessary stopover point to a truly good system. It probably took an RPG outsider like MicroProse to think of it. Every other U.S. title, if it had any complexity to combat at all, showed slavish adherence to a very few precursors: the abstract turn-based system of Wizardry, the action-oriented attack-and-cool-down system of Dungeon Master, and the tactical grid of Ultima IV-V and the Gold Box series.

Still, the Darklands system has a few antecedents. It is perhaps closest to Drakkhen (1989), which had a "studio" perspective. The moment combat began, characters carried out actions as previously set by the player. The player could change actions in the middle of combat, but he had no way to pause and think while doing so. Ultima VI also offers some hints of the Darklands system, with the player able to set computer or manual control, as well as general combat strategies, for each character. We should also note that the British Legend (1992) had characters mostly act on their own. The player could pause to consider new tactics but could not issue commands while paused.

Darklands is the first game to combine all of these elements: a) independent character action in the absence of specific orders; b) combat in which the player sets general strategies and targets but otherwise mostly watches the action; and c) the ability to pause combat to issue new orders. I believe the style would reach its zenith in the Infinity Engine games, although there are so many titles from the post-1990 period that I haven't played that I'm open to the possibility there are even better ones.
         

Assessing my enemy, which in this case is a bear.

        

Combat begins paused, with the party grouped in a standard formation and the enemy often off-screen. The player can choose "Enemy Info" to see what types of enemies he faces, but I don't think there's really any way to gauge how many there are. It also doesn't tell you anything about their hit points. At the outset of combat, characters don't do anything on their own unless an enemy attacks them in melee range.

Once you see the enemy, you can select each character and then issue an order: walk somewhere, flee somewhere, throw a potion, fire a missile weapon, or perform one of four types of melee attacks: a defensive parry, a standard attack, an attack that tries to seek vulnerable areas on the enemy, and an all-out "berserk." You can cycle through the characters, assigning a different action to each. Hitting the SPACE bar then un-pauses combat and the actions execute.
          

Bianca is in the middle of reloading her gun as I switch her to a melee attack. Note the symbols in the lower left of each character. Maximian is executing a regular attack; Lambert a vulnerable attack, and Viridia is walking to her target.

          
Characters have minds of their own, both fortunately and unfortunately. On the positive side, they're smart enough to switch to a melee attack if an enemy comes into melee range, and they usually choose the best one based on their current endurance and strength, their weapon, and the enemy's armor. For instance, if the character has a short sword, a "berserk" attack would be wasted on an enemy in plate armor. Instead, it makes more sense to restrain yourself and wait for a vulnerable spot. Characters are also smart enough to target a new enemy once the current enemy is dead.

There are times I don't even need to participate in combat. If I get attacked by thieves in an alleyway at night, I just let them come to me, activate my characters, and my characters' AI does the rest. Enemies, for their part, never seem to concentrate attacks on a single character the way it would make sense to do. They always try to engage everyone.
          

Two groups of witches. Viridia is about to throw a potion on the group to the west (off-screen).

        
At any point during combat, you can enter the characters' sheets, switch equipment, pray for saintly aid, and drink potions. Those don't even seem to count as actions.

So far, this doesn't sound too bad, but there are numerous problems with Darklands' nascent approach.
           

• Characters don't obey. If I want a character to leave his current opponent and run across the battlefield to engage a different opponent (for instance, to save a weak character), I'm out of luck. Characters might accept my choice of two targets within melee range but they almost never leave melee range to go fight someone else. Sometimes I have luck getting them to "flee" in a particular direction, then re-engaging, but that's a lot of micro-managing.

• There's no way to select all or multiple characters at once. This was a major benefit of the Infinity Engine games. If you wanted all six of your characters to fill a particular target full of arrows, you just had to select all of them and then execute a joint command. Here, everyone has to be tasked separately.

• Actions unselect characters. Let's say I want a character to walk to a particular point, then turn around and throw a potion. I can specify the first action, but then hitting SPACE de-selects the character and I have to select him again to perform the second action once he gets where he's going. Another way to say this is that the very act of selecting a character pauses the action. In the Infinity Engine, pause was separated from selecting and issuing orders.

• The game is very literal about vision paths. You can't toss a potion above the heads of other characters or fire a missile weapon just over a companion's shoulder. Any use of a ranged weapon has to have an absolutely clear shot to the enemy. This makes missile weapons a lot less useful than they could be. For instance, you can't have your lead character block a doorway, fighting oncoming enemies one-by-one while your rear characters fill them full of holes. They'll refuse to shoot with the lead character in the way.

          

Viridia can't target this potion because Winchester is standing in front of her.

        

• The game is equally literal about movement paths. In the Infinity Engine, characters had no problem nudging each other out of the way. Here, you get tangled up into clumps all the time and you have to carefully pick them apart so everyone can move.

• Everything is really slow, especially when there are a lot of enemies on the screen. You can crank up the DOSBox cycles to speed things up but then you run the risk of the game over-reading key inputs and accidentally drinking two potions and such. 

• There's no way to keep a character completely out of combat. Enemies will lock onto him and chase him to the ends of the world. In such cases, you hope that your endurance runs out before your strength. If your endurance runs out, you just collapse and are revived at the end of combat. If your strength runs out, you die.

• Potions are not exactly spells. I'll cover this in more detail in a minute.

             
I also don't particularly like the system by which current strength and endurance serve as your pool of hit points and stamina, respectively. It hardly seems worth micromanaging the characters' armor to avoid encumbrance when losing a few hit points in combat knocks down their strength and leaves them encumbered anyway. In fact, although encumbrance supposedly hurts weapon speed and skill, I'm beginning to think that it's worth having encumbered characters (even at maximum strength) just to gain the benefits of the better armor.
            

Targeting a demon with a pistol.

        
Let's talk more about magic. It's a pain in the neck. If I want to mix up a batch of five "Thunderbolt" potions, which act a bit like fireballs, it's a long process. First, I have to know the formula. If I don't know it at the start of the game, I have to purchase or trade for it with an alchemist. Alchemists are irritable bastards who frequently tell you to buzz off every time you ask for anything, and if that happens, you can't visit them again (in the same town) for a couple of days.

Assuming you get the formula, you then have to get the ingredients. Although a lot of places sell them, I always seem to be low on one reagent or another. In particular, "Aqua Regia," which almost every potion uses, seems to be in short supply.
          

I was lucky to find it here.

              
Then you have to take the time to mix them. You can mix a couple of potions per day depending on skill, and there's a chance that the mixture may fail. There's also a chance that it might blow up and damage you.

But assuming you get past all this, congratulations, you have three "Thunderbolt" potions, which will last only about five minutes in a tough combat (assuming you can even get a clear shot) and will collectively do as much damage as a first-level casting of "Fireball" in a Dungeons and Dragons game. Yes, I know that the potions get more effective as your skill goes up, but training skills is a pain in the neck, too. You have to get a trainer to agree to train you, then take the time each day and pay the fee, and you maybe get a 1 point increase every 4-5 days that you pay, and the trainer disappears after a couple of weeks, forcing you to enlist him again.
         

Getting ready to toss a potion at a group of Templars.

         
Having used a lot of potions in combat in this last session, my considered opinion is:

1. You're better off just buying potions instead of buying ingredients and then trying to make potions. Yes, they cost a lot of money. That's what all the quests are for. Plus, it gives you a reason to keep looting equipment from the battlefield.

2. You're better off focusing on defensive potions. I've found a lot of the buffing potions helpful, such as "Deadly Blade" (improves weapon damage), "Strongedge" (improves penetration), "Great Power" (increases weapon quality), "Hardarmor" (increase armor quality), "Ironarm" (increases strength), "Quickmove" (increases agility), and "New Wind" (increases endurance). Most useful of all is "Essence of Grace," which restores endurance and strength, and is thus equivalent to the standard "healing potion" of other RPGs.
           

"Truesight" is particularly valuable for dungeon exploration.

        
I should mention that potions are also often used from menus, as a solution to various puzzles and to get you out of various situations, so it's good to have a few bottles of just about every potion for that reason. "Thunderbolt," for instance, works as a kind of demolition spell if you need to destroy a pagan altar or break the wall of a crypt.

I began this long session continuing my movements around the landscape, solving quests and engaging in random combats. Everyone's "Impact Weapons" skill neared 99. I made fortunes in florins, spent them, and made them again. I've learned dozens of saints, but I still can't find any place to teach me of St. Wenceslaus, which means I still have to deal with the Wild Hunt practically every time I'm outdoors.

I think I got a bead on the main quest when I visited a random hut and found a woman performing satanic rituals. After defeating her pet wolves, the party captured her and had various options, one of which was to "reveal the time and place of the witch cult's next High Sabbat." She told me it was on 26 December, south of Salzburg. It was 31 October at the time. I checked the map and saw that Salzburg was pretty far to my southeast, but I figured I could just make it.
          

I think I see the loophole in the first one.

          
When I got to the area, snow was on the ground. South of Salzburg, the only structure I could see was a castle. When I tried to approach, I got a message that "The First seal is intact. The Castle of the Apocalypse is secure," and I was unable to approach closer than that. Nothing changed on 26 December itself.
            

We're just here to listen to the music of the night.

          
I wasn't sure if the witches were meeting somewhere else nearby or if I just didn't have some precursor item to get into the castle. I reloaded to before 26 December and dithered around looking for it for a while, but I have a lot of trouble picking out structures on the overland map even when the ground is clear. Finally, I had my party mess around for three months until the snow cleared, at which point I could see some kind of building or monument to the west of the castle. Reloading, I headed for that area on 26 December.

Pretty soon, I had infiltrated the large gathering of the witch cult. I got there early, and there were a couple of days where I had the option to investigate various witch activities like cannibalism, flying broomsticks, and participating in a mock baptism ceremony. I could participate in these things (for a loss of virtue) or try to sabotage them; for instance, by freeing the captives intended for the evening meal. There were a lot of skill checks during this process, and I confess that I reloaded a few times just because I wanted to see how different options played out.
           

Different options for messing around with the witches.

         
On Christmas night, the party had a vision in which someone said, "You must find the location of the fortress monastery. This is the next step of your quest."

The next day, the gathering culminated in the summoning of a demon. We tried to sabotage the altar but it didn't seem to work. We decided to let the demon appear and then attack it. I fully expected to have to reload, but the demon was actually pretty easy. A lot harder were the waves of witches that followed. We must have killed 50 of them. When the battle was over, we purified the site, found an evil book, and destroyed it to break the first seal.
            

Solving the quest came with significant virtue rewards.

          
As for the "fortress monastery," its location was given during the ritual when the high priest made reference to it, and someone else shouted out, "The Great Monastery--isn't that northwest of Flensburg?" The funny thing is, I had already found it, way back in my first session with the game, when I got attacked and slaughtered by some Templars.
         

There it is just to the northwest of the city. It couldn't be more obvious.

       
Flensburg was at this point at the opposite end of the map, so I headed that direction on a round-about route, turning in quests as I went. On the way, I finally solved one of the mine quests, near Breslau. Unlike the one I failed, which involved a demonic gate deep in the mine, this one was much simpler: the kobolds were rebelling against their dwarven slavemasters, and the conflict had boiled up to the upper levels.
     
Both parties wanted my assistance. I chose to help the kobolds for some reason. Probably because I found the entrance to the dwarven region first. After I killed a bunch of dwarves and subdued the leader, the kobolds gave me a bunch of reagents and my fame went up by about 30.
            

The dwarven king had a poetic surrender.

           
As I noted in a previous entry, indoor exploration is like being in combat mode permanently, except that when no enemies are on the screen, you are able to move the party as a unit. There are also other exploration-related commands such as open door, pick lock, and disarm trap. The latter only works on chest and door traps; it appears that the floor traps cannot be disarmed and simply have to be avoided.

Such indoor exploration is used in a lot of places in the game, including some of the minor crypt/altar quests where you have to retrieve an item, and the robber knight quests when you decide to just attack the castle rather than sneak in or call the robber knight out.

As I made my way to Flensburg, I started to notice that combats were a lot harder. Battles against enemies that hardly damaged me before were now leaving me laid up for two weeks in the next town. I'm not sure if the game kicks up the difficulty after the witch quest or something.
            

Approaching the Templar fortress.

       
Whatever the case, I thought I was prepared to take on the Templars, and boy was I wrong. The fortress is very large, with numerous staircases up and down, and I'd barely explored a fraction of it before I exhausted my potions. Even with plate armor and 99 skill with his weapon, my lead character got torn apart by the Templars, and my other three fared even worse. It's clear that I'm going to have to do a lot more grinding before taking on this fortress. In particular, I need to improve my missile weapon skills; I bought everyone pistols and shot, but they suck with them. I bet if I get those to 99 and fire off a few volleys before the Templars enter melee range, it will make a difference.

I also need to build my finances and buy a lot more potions. I'm thinking that every character is going to need 50 "Essence of Grace" potions or more before I try the temple again, plus lots of other buffing potions. Until now, the game had lured me into thinking that combat was easy, but now it's clear that I'm going to need to take another review of the tactics.
            

Each one of these guys is at least as hard as a robber knight. They all have plate and two-handed swords. And there are multiple rooms full of them.

           

Before I go, I have some information for Jakub Majewski, who asked me to visit Thorn and Bromberg on the far east side of the empire. Thorn is ruled by a vogt under the Teutonic Knights. Its political area is called the markt, and there's a fortress overlooking the city called the Altes Schloss. The Rathaus is the central market, and the inn is the Gasthaus. There is a dom plus a church of St. Jakobi and a monastery called the Deutschherrenhaus ("German men house?"). I didn't see any other special locations.
          

Approaching Thorn.

        
Bromberg is "a small city with a population mixture of Poles and Germans." It is ruled by a burggraf for the Teutonic Knights. The political center is called the stadtplatz and the fortress is just "the burg." The central market is the markt and the inn is again the Gasthaus. Churches are just a generic kirche and a kloster.
          

Main street options in Bromberg.

          
That's all probably disappointing in its non-specificity, but at least it's fun to see your hometown in a game. I never get sick of the "Far Harbor" expansion to Fallout 4.

Time so far: 48 hours

Waxworks: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

A nice shot of the museum as the game comes to a close.

         

Waxworks

United Kingdom

HorrorSoft (developer); Accolade (publisher)

Released in 1992 for Amiga and DOS

Date Started: 11 June 2019

Date Finished: 23 June 2019

Total Hours: 17
Difficulty: Moderate-hard (3.5/5)
Final Rating: 26
Ranking at time of posting: 153/343 (45%)

     
Summary:
Waxworks is a first-person adventure game with some RPG elements. The protagonist enters his late uncle's wax museum and must travel through time via four exhibits: an ancient Egyptian pyramid, a zombie-infested graveyard in 15th-century Wallachia, 19th-century London on the night of Jack the Ripper's latest murder, and a 20th-century mine taken over by a malevolent plant. In each scenario, he inhabits the body of a "good" twin who must stop his evil brother; the culmination of his efforts will end a witch's ancient curse on the protagonist's family. The game uses the same engine that HorrorSoft built for three previous titles, including the two Elvira games (1990 and 1991). While the graphics have been improved from Elvira and Elvira II, the RPG elements have been lessened. The character gains experience and max hit points as he explores and fights, but he loses it all between scenarios. Combat difficulty is extremely erratic and really only applies to two scenarios anyway. The driving game element here is inventory-based puzzle solving. The game is notable for its gruesome death scenes, of which there are several dozen.
       
*****
       

I began Waxworks hoping that, unfettered from Elvira, HorrorSoft would be able to make a better game. Alas. Elvira and Elvira II not only had more interesting settings but better RPG elements, including attributes, a spell system, and RPG equipment other than just a primary weapon. None of these elements were great in the Elvira games, but Waxworks mostly abandoned them entirely. Sure, it has leveling, but I'm not even convinced that leveling is that important. 

         

The area of the London scenario as given in the game.

The modern equivalent in London.

        

The last two levels were a bit harder, I thought, than the first two. But I largely solved them the same way: Upon arriving in each scenario, I just assumed I wouldn't last long. I concentrated on mapping and annotating as much of each area as possible, identifying items and puzzles, reloading upon death. Once I couldn't map anymore and had a few puzzles I knew I could solve, I'd reload from the beginning and try a bit harder with the next character, until I finally found the right sequence to get through the level.

One thing I learned from the graveyard and its broken railing was to turn and face every wall and then run the mouse cursor around it, ensuring that the name of some barely-visible object didn't pop up in the view window. Without this method, I wouldn't have found numerous items in the mine level, where the walls have (to me) such a uniform color that I can barely pick out any detail.

         

Winning this scenario required me to notice that this small section of this support is burned.

        

The "Jack the Ripper" scenario had the character running around the streets of London, trying to intercept his brother, Jack, before he could murder another prostitute. The primary difficulty involves dodging MPS patrolmen and random mobs, both of which execute you the moment they step into your squares. Since these enemies start approaching from the moment you enter the scenario, you're encouraged to flee the scene of the murder immediately. This has implications.

          

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work there, gov'na.

         

Unlike the other three scenarios, there are no battles to fight in this one until the end. Instead, you run around invading houses and offices and assembling an inventory kit, none of which seems to lead anywhere. I got stuck entirely and had to look up a hint. It turns out that in the very first screen--the one you're encouraged to leave on the double--there's a barely-visible "bag" on the ground that belonged to the victim.

          

And I think I'm being generous with "barely-visible."

         

When you open the bag, you find a diary, which leads to a story that suggests the last few victims have been deliberately baiting Jack in order to catch him.

            

That seems like a bad idea.

         

The first victim's diary gives the name of another prostitute, whom you have to find by paying a pickpocket to relieve a pimp of his address book. After that, you track down the prostitute--Molly Parkin--in a wharfhouse, just before Jack is about to kill her. You duel Jack with a dueling cane--the scenario's one weapon--and (after a couple of reloads, in my case), stab him through the heart and toss his body into the Thames. Bright light, back to the Waxworks.

         

Sword-fighting with the Ripper.

         

My last scenario, into which I was again rudely shoved by Boris's butler, suggests that the "evil twin" has somehow turned into a hideous mutated plant and taken over a mine. His tendrils and spores cover the walls of the mine, sometimes resolving into deadly vines and pods. He excretes some kind of toxin that converts the miners into walking plant zombies. The character deaths are more horrific here than in any of the previous scenarios, including one animation in which vines rip the character's head off.

          

Trust me, you want to thank me for not putting an animated GIF here.

        

Melee combat is nearly impossible on this level, and I suspect the player isn't supposed to do it at all. Early on, you find a canister of weed-killer which reliably works on anything deadly in the mine. When it runs out, you can replace it with gasoline. As long as you have a lighter in your possession, too (found in the first square), the canister works as a flame-thrower. Once you know where these things are, you don't have to fight melee combat except once or twice after the game forces you to give the canister to an NPC for a while.

       

Fire-balling a plant monster.

        

The scenario consists of a single small level that takes a while because of backtracking. One key puzzle involves a mining cart that rolls along the tracks after you've gone a particular distance east. You have to stop the cart with a length of wood, but you have to do it in precisely the right square, or the cart ends up blocking at least one vital passage. The worst part is that you might trigger the cart without even knowing it because you move down a side passage before the cart comes into view. I went through the scenario twice only to find the cart blocking the exit both times and not understanding how it got there or what I was supposed to do about it.

The mine scenario involves true NPC conversations, with dialogue options, for the first time. A wounded professor is in the first square, in a broken elevator carriage, begging for a doctor. The player has to find a blowtorch and a welder's mask to free some captives from a cage. A doctor agrees to look at the professor; a soldier agrees to help demolish the mine if the player can find the right items; and an electrician agrees to fix the elevator so everyone can escape safely.

        

Getting ready to escape with all my NPC friends.

         

You have to find two gas masks and protective suits--one for you, one for the soldier--to safely enter the evil twin's chambers. In a gruesome sequence, the player pokes out all the monster's eyes before he and the soldier plant 8 sticks of dynamite in the monster's chambers. The healer revives the professor, who provides an antidote to heal the electrician, who fixes the elevator, which you ride to the top of the shaft just after detonating the dynamite. It took me about 15 reloads to get the sequence completely right.

          

Sorry, brother.

          

Once you finish the fourth scenario, you find yourself back at the Waxworks. One more exhibit--the witch--is unveiled. The butler gives you four magic artifacts from the previous exhibits: an amulet, a ring, a knife, and a bottle of poison. (The butler is polite as he greets you, but I must note that he keeps shoving you to the final exhibit.) Uncle Boris explains exactly what to do with them once you return to the witch's time: wear the amulet to avoid the witch's spells, toss the poison at her to distract her, find a weapon and attack her, when she's down, stab her in the throat with the knife, and escape back with the magic ring. 

           

Lurch welcomes us back for the finale.

        

The final scenario has just one screen, and that's pretty much exactly what you do. The weapon you find is a crossbow. If you're not quick enough with any of the steps, she's able to cast the curse and you lose.

         

This is a lot of drama over a chicken.

       

Even winning feels pretty dirty, as the game graphically depicts you shooting the old woman--who's just had her hand chopped off!--in the eye with a crossbow bolt, then stabbing her in the throat several times with Jack the Ripper's knife. Brutal.

      

And right then, we shoot her in the face.

      

Assuming you do it right, you return to the Waxworks to find Alex huddled in the corner. He wakes up and relates a "dream" in which after you killed the witch, she "muttered something" and you "turned into a demon with horns and hoofs." This is perhaps setting up a sequel in which a different curse turned the protagonist evil, but I guess we'll never know.

         

1. Does Alex somehow not realize that he's still a teenager while I've grown up? 2. Does he look a little like Zach Gilligan?

           

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

             

• 5 points for the game world. You have to admit, we haven't seen anything quite like it.

• 1 point for character creation and development. There's no creation, and "development" is just an accumulation of levels and an increase in maximum hit points. Only two of the scenarios have regular RPG-style combat, so this type of development hardly matters. Plus, you lose it all in between scenarios.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. They're mostly limited to the mine scenario, but it is fun to see some RPG-style dialogue and to make NPCs part of the puzzle-solving process.

         

An NPC professor has a lot to say about the plant monster in the last scenario.

          

• 4 points for encounters and foes. Despite the name of the category, for this type of game I typically use it to rate puzzles, and that's what I'm doing here. They are neither the best nor worst adventure-game puzzles I've experienced.

• 1 point for magic and combat. I found myself missing the magic system of Elvira II as I repeatedly slashed at creatures. There are really no tactics in combat, and too much of the outcomes is based on luck.

          

Slashing at a plant monster with a metal rod.

        

• 1 point for equipment. There's plenty of it, but it's all adventure-style puzzle-solving stuff. On the RPG side, the best the game did is occasionally give you the choice of weapon.

           

Some screens offer way too much stuff to pick up, most of it useless.

         

• 0 points for no economy.

• 2 points for a main quest with no side-quests and no decisions.

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Graphics are very nice--but that's only worth a few points in this category. Sound effects are sparse. People who like music will probably like the music. The dual keyboard/mouse controls work okay, but the buttons should have had keyboard backups. 

            

This is one of a few games where you deliberately die a lot, just to see the death animations.

          

• 4 points for gameplay. It gets a little credit for nonlinearity, although there is something of an "obvious" order and I don't consider the game "replayable" just because you can try again in a different order of scenarios. The difficulty wasn't too bad, and the length was just about exactly right.

           

That gives us a final score of 26, worse than the 29 I gave the Elvira titles.

             

Tip: if you want people to believe you're really providing a "parental warning" instead of an extra selling point, leave off the exclamation point.

          

Almost none of those 26 points are particular to RPGs. Remove the RPG categories entirely, and it would still get a 23. Thus, the moment I was finished, I hustled over to "The Adventure Gamer" to see what they thought of the title. Deimar reviewed it not even a year ago (first entry in November 2018; last in January 2019). He had many of the same problems that I did, particularly with backtracking and having trouble finding items ("for the most part, the puzzles are based on the worst kind of pixel hunting"). In the end, he gave it a 47/100, which was higher than the site gave Elvira II but not the original Elvira.

            

I didn't think it was worth extra points, but the hint system in the game worked pretty well.

        

Waxworks was covered in the February 1993 Computer Gaming World by Chuck Miller. His review annoys me even though he basically feels the same way I feel about the game (lukewarm). It annoys me first because he admits he didn't finish it; I guess CGW dropped that requirement at some point. But there are two other quotes that particularly irk me:

1. "Waxworks does have several weaknesses, the chief being the lack of an automapping feature, an amenity which has become standard fare for CRPGs of recent origin. Most role-playing games have become complex enough that it is simply too distracting and time consuming for the player to map each step as he or she goes The time has arrived to lay pencil and graph paper to rest." If that time does come, I would argue that it will come when games no longer have discrete squares. Waxworks still operates on tiles, and the levels are pretty tiny. An automap would arguably make the game harder because the player really needs to annotate items and puzzles, and it's questionable whether an automap would do that effectively.

2. "How does Waxworks fare as a CRPG? Well, better than most, but lacking in relation to some." What?! I'd accept that statement if you replaced "CRPG" with "adventure game"--and mostly because I don't have a solid gauge on adventure games. Does Miller even know what a CRPG is? Has he ever played a tabletop RPG? This game is at best an adventure game with a dab of RPG frosting. I'm surprised the review keeps referring to it as an "RPG" at all. And he thinks it's better than most?

Deimar felt that the plot followed Elvira II too closely ("if you were to change the twin brother to Elvira, the plot would be basically the same"). I see what he means: Elvira II also had several discrete "scenarios," culminating in a ritual that required you to do several things in a precise order. But I'm more intrigued by the hypothesis, raised in the comments section of my first entry, that the game began as a licensed tie-in to the 1988 film Waxwork and its 1992 sequel, Waxwork II: Lost in Time. The first film involves a wax museum owner, played by David Warner, who has collected artifacts from the "18 most evil people who ever lived." He invites people to the wax museum to get sucked into the exhibits and thus lose their souls to the various evil individuals, thus granting power to the museum owner. The exhibits include one sent in ancient Egypt (where the hero must rescue his girlfriend from a sarcophagus), the Marquis de Sade (not appearing here but mentioned in the manual), and a zombie horde. The second film includes an exhibit with Jack the Ripper. There's a tall, hollow-cheeked butler in the first film that resembles the one in the game. If Waxworks wasn't a licensed title, they sure were inviting legal action.

          

The designer's last name is spelled "Woodruff" almost everywhere else I see it, including in several prominent magazine interviews, but I have to go with what the game's own credits use.

        

The idea is given credence by a February 1992 interview with HorrorSoft co-owner and designer Mike Woodroffe that appeared in the British game magazine Zero (thanks to commenter EonFafnir for digging this up). In his first sentences, Woodroffe suggests a direct relationship with the film before seeming to correct himself: "Waxworks, which we're doing with Accolade, is based on the film of the same name. Well, not "based" so much . . . inspired, really. It's inspired by the film." You can almost see him picturing his lawyer's reaction after the first sentence. The interview also suggests that the game originally had more than four exhibits. "There'll be Jack the Ripper, numerous kings and queens, a pyramid, the Marquis de Sade . . . There'll also be triffids." I can't stop imagining the great discussions we would have had about the Marquis de Sade and the game's decision to make him "evil."

Also worth noting is a failed attempt last year to fund a "special edition" of the game via Kickstarter. It was canceled in January 2019 after falling short of its goal. I'm not going to speculate on the reason it failed, but I will say that if you're going to have a section titled "success of the original game," showing and prominently circling scores of 70%, 78%, and 80% doesn't really help your case.

This is the last we'll see of this team, whose Simon the Sorcerer series does not have any RPG aspirations. Back we go to Darklands while I start to investigate an intriguing SSI game called Prophecy of the Shadow.

Game 334: Bokosuka Wars (1983)

          

Bokosuka Wars

Japan

ASCII (developer and publisher)

Released in 1983 for Sharp X1; 1984 for MSX and PC-88; 1985 for FM-7, PC-6001, PC-98, and NES 

Date Started: 25 June 2019

Date Finished: 28 June 2019

Total Hours: 6
Difficulty: Hard (4/5), but would probably go down to 3/5 with more experience
Final Rating: 15
Ranking at time of posting: 39/343 (11%)

Well, I did it. I downloaded a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator--Nestopia--and I gave it a shot. It was easier than I expected. I was thinking that the NES had a directional pad and an analog stick, but I guess that came with later consoles. The original NES controller is little more than a joystick (albeit one that made it harder to move diagonally) with two buttons. Easy to emulate, easy to remember.

Bokosuka Wars was on no one's list of "must play" console RPGs, but I figured I'd give it a try anyway. It's the earliest Japanese game on my list that had a western release and the earliest Japanese console game, beating several 1986 titles by a month or so. [Edit: I was wrong about the game having a western release. But it is still the earliest Japanese console game playable by someone who doesn't speak Japanese, by virtue of it being in English.] That it's not actually an RPG by my definitions (no inventory) shouldn't bother us too much. It was an easy step into this sub-genre.
            

A common screen, probably responsible for a lot of the hate the game receives.

         

The game is an "afternoon RPG," as any console must be until saving was possible. The setup is simple. You are King Suren, and your country has been overthrown by the evil King Ogreth of the Basam Empire (Ogreth is called "Dragonet" in the original Japanese versions). Ogreth has used his magic to turn all your knights and soldiers into rocks and trees and cacti. You embark on a mission to reclaim your throne. You start 600 meters to the east of King Ogreth's throne room and slowly make your way left down the battlefield, fighting his forces as you go.
          

The king starts alone, with 595 steps to his evil counterpart.

           

You're not alone in this endeavor. Along the way, you can rescue many of your knights and soldiers. (In the Japanese PC versions, Suren starts with many of his warriors already activated, but in the NES version, he starts alone.) Some are inanimate objects, but they're revived if you touch them. Others are kept in stockades and must be rescued. Either way, you slowly build (and, just as fast, lose) an army. Eventually, if you survive, you reach Ogreth's throne room and throw your remaining forces at him, including King Suren if necessary. If any of your units defeat Ogreth, you win the game.
         

King Suren turns a tree into a knight.

          

The problem is that you can revive and rescue only 50 warriors (about 15 knights and 35 soldiers), and opposing you are 180 enemies: guards, mages, warriors, and pages. Some of them can be avoided, but most must be fought. Characters move around the battlefield in real-time, but this is in no way an "action RPG." As frenzied as the game looks, no part of your success depends on your speed with the controller, particularly since enemies cannot attack you and combats are resolved statistically.

The game's strategy lies in who fights what enemies, and in what circumstances. Your one huge advantage is that enemies can never initiate combat. They can block your way, but combat only begins when you decide to move Suren or one of his warriors to the enemy's square. Thus, you can almost always choose who fights.

Combat is a probability test that pits your character's power against the enemy's, but with a heavy random component. If the die rolls go in your favor, you win; if not, you die. If the character fighting on your side was King Suren, and he dies, the game is over. Winning and losing is completely binary; there are no hit points in the game, so one character can't "weaken" an enemy for the next character.
           

My king battles a "summoner" in the middle of his spirits. Since my king has 320 power and the summoner only has 50, I'm relatively confident. During battle , the tile flashes between crossed swords and "B." I'm not sure what the "B" means, but it doesn't have anything to do with the "B" button on the controller. Maybe it means "Bokosuka."

       

If you win, the winning unit gets an increase in power--sometimes substantial. For instance, soldiers start at a power of 30 and rise to 40 and 50 with their first two victories. But if they achieve a third victory, they change color and rise to 140. Knights do the same thing, with the progression going 150, 160, 170 and then jumping to 260 on the third victory.
          

Note that one of my knights and one soldier have "gone gold," making them more powerful than their counterparts. A knight is needed to bust through the shield around the stockade.

         

King Suren himself starts at 220 and maxes at 320; soldiers and knights max at 310. Throughout the game, you have to keep making the decision about whether to throw your more powerful figures into combat, thus risking them, or try to build up weaker units. There's no easy answer. And occasionally even the most disproportionate combats can go wrong. I saw plenty of knights at 310 power killed by enemies at 10 power.
        

Enemy and ally unit powers. This is from the Sharp X1 version. NES players had to read the manual.

                     

There are a few other tactical considerations. Regular soldiers (for some reason) knock enemy guards from 100 power to 10 power when they engage in combat. Knights are the only units that can break the walls of stockades, so you want to keep at least one around. You need soldiers to disarm traps (which don't appear until after your first victory). Only the king can trigger special squares that remove the walls blocking "summoners," who then summon a bunch of spirits (which don't count against the enemy's total) until you kill the summoners.
           

Every once in a while, the king runs out of soldiers and stands alone.

          

I suspect the game would be "easy" for those with a lot of patience. One key problem is the movement of your forces. By default everyone moves together when you press the directional pad; if they're up against an obstacle, they just stay in place. You can toggle so that you're only selecting one type of unit at a time (i.e., the king, all soldiers, or all knights), but it's still tough to move them in unison, and I probably left more allies stuck on obstacles behind me than I lost in combat. This problem is the source of a lot of modern complaints about the game, I later found, but I think it added somewhat to the game's strategy. When you have a lot of units in your army, you have to be careful about every move, noting who is going to end up in what square, and thus what units will find themselves in combat. A player who develops a huge army is handicapped by having to more carefully manage its movement. I can't claim that I exactly "enjoyed" such a gameplay element, but that doesn't make it inherently bad.
          

Moving through terrain like this is easier when you only control one unit "type" at a time.

          
You don't have to fight every battle. In fact, there's a good argument to be made in fighting as few as possible, thus reaching the end of the game with as many forces as possible. On the other hand, it helps if those forces have gained a lot of experience along the way, so you don't want to eschew every combat. It's a tough call.

           

Having broken a bunch of soldiers out of a stockade, now approaching a phalanx of guards. To get the soldiers out of their building, I'm going to have to move everybody back and up a few spaces.

         

You eventually reach a point where you have to thread a narrow hallway to get to the throne room, which features a number of unavoidable battles with "killers" with 250 power. Even though you might have more than 300 power at this point, the killers seem to win more than half the time. The same is true for King Ogreth himself, who only has 250 power but seems to beat 300+-power allies at least three-quarters of the time. So whether you win or lose upon reaching the end is largely a matter of whether you have enough allies to overwhelm the probabilities of losing individual combats. You definitely don't want it to come down to King Ogreth vs. King Suren.

Reaching the final throne room. Looks like I'll have to take out a summoner before engaging the king. I only have three (promoted) units with me, but there are 10 more somewhere behind me if I didn't want to risk Suren in the final battle.

A good opening strategy is to have Suren fight all the combats until he gets to his maximum power of 320. If he's going to die, better it happens in the opening few minutes than hundreds of meters down the battlefield. After that, I tended to prioritize building weaker units than risking more experienced ones. That had the effect of keeping my numbers small but my individual units powerful. However, I'm sure there are several strategies that would work. I'm sure it's possible to have King Suren charge down the battlefield alone, fighting only the necessary combats (i.e., when an enemy is blocking you and there's nowhere to go), and make it all the way to the end. I tried it and made it to about the 300-yard line--halfway through the game--before I was overwhelmed by a group of knights and ultimately killed. Some other player makes that strategy work in this video, winning the game in just under 5 minutes, but there's a note that the session somehow "manipulates luck," so I'm not sure if it's an honest win.

A winning game takes about an hour, taking modest care, and perhaps two hours being extra careful. If you win you get a nice screen and then an invitation to try again. Small squares in the upper-right corner keep track of your victories. The only thing different about subsequent loops is that they feature traps that kill you instantly unless a soldier walks over them. Apparently, you face more traps the more previous victories you have under your belt.
          

An angry King Suren chases his enemies off screen.

            

The game scores poorly as an RPG, getting only 15 points on the GIMLET, nothing rating higher than a 2, with 0s in economy and equipment. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable for a few hours as I tried to figure out the right strategies, watched the odometer count down my distance to Ogreth, and held my breath every time Suren entered combat. I lost 8 times--twice in the last 100 meters--and I suppose I would feel differently about the game if that had continued much longer.
           

The box captures the somewhat linear nature of the game.

           

Given my generally positive feelings, I was surprised when I started doing my post-game research and saw Bokosuka Wars repeatedly referred to as the worst game ever made for the NES, with multiple sites calling it completely impossible. Granted, PC games were significantly ahead of the experience that Bokosuka Wars could provide, but even console-only players seem to love to trash this title. I suspect what's happening here is that RPG-oriented players want their success determined by statistics that they can manage, and arcade-oriented players want their fate decided by their own dexterity. A game that's so heavily based on random probability serves neither group. Nonetheless, I had fun with it. It showed me an approach to gameplay I haven't experienced before. I wouldn't want every game to take its mechanics from Bokosuka Wars, but as a one time experience, it was fine.

(Believe me, I appreciate the irony of me, who never heard of this game two weeks ago, who resisted the console sub-genre for a decade, suddenly mounting an impassioned defense of the first console RPG that I played.)
                

The Sharp XI version starts the king with a large army.

           

As poorly as the game was apparently received, it is credited in many sources in laying the foundations for the tactical RPG genre in Japan. I'll reserve judgement on that until I actual play more tactical RPGs. In a funny footnote, Bokosuka Wars II was released for the PlayStation 4 in 2017. (There's a so-called sequel called New Bokosuka Wars for the Sharp X1 alone in 1984, but I really think it's just another version of the original game.) That gap of 33 years must be one of the longest between an original game and its sequel in gaming history, although Bethesda seems determined to beat it.

I'm disappointed that the game didn't explain what bokosuka meant. Does anyone know? Googling provides mostly this game and a VR game called Bokosuka Girls. I'm trying to think what adjective could apply to both wars and buxom women and I'm coming up short.