Ambermoon: The Plot Thickens

 

Fighting the big boss--of the previous game.

        

During the last session, I had obtained the last of the ingredients necessary for the "Demon Sleep" potion that would allow me to get past the guardian of the Brotherhood of the Temple of Tarbos. As this session began, I took them to the Witch Master's house, where I knew there was a cauldron in the basement. In front of the cauldron, I used the recipe again, and within seconds, I had the potion. I got a tingle watching so many quest items disappear from my inventory at once.

   

I whistled for the eagle, mounted its back, and flew it to the fortress on the island in the lake east of Newlake. I think this is where Twinlake was in the original game. A cratered ground suggested that the fortress was at Ground Zero for the moon impact 70 years ago.

       

I'm not sure that type of crater makes sense on this type of landscape.

       

We walked through the front door and found a crystal wall in front of us. The game had Gryban try to smash it with his axe, but he was unable to cause even a scratch. Moving around the wall, we found a short passageway with a demon at the end of it.

          

You'd like us to not pass. Is that what I'm reading?

        

We tried a regular battle against the demon, but no magic spell would touch him and no physical weapon would "penetrate the magic aura." He, meanwhile, was capable of casting "Iceshower," the most powerful destructive spell in the game. We didn't last long against him.

                  

We had to try.

         

Reloading, we found an alcove off the demon corridor with a food bowl. "That looks like the food bowl of a very, very large guard dog," Gryban remarked. We poured the potion into the bowl and waited. The demon soon visited his bowl, lapped it up, fell asleep, and disappeared.

        

Taking care of the demon.

       

We moved past the demon into the fortress. The fortress's primary enemies were "magical guards." Each had a few hundred hit points. They were resistant (though not immune) to magic, and their physical attacks frequently caused critical hits, which in this game kills the target. I had to resurrect characters a few times and reload a few other times as I fought them. They were reasonably good for experience.

    

A locked door had runes reading "HANGAR," which I found intriguing, but we couldn't get in there for now. We took a staircase down and found ourselves facing another locked door with a "12-pointed recess." This one opened to the Amberstar--I'm glad I grabbed it when I went to wake up Gryban.

                

Using the Amberstar to open a door--just like grandpa.

           

The room beyond the Amberstar door had a huge coffin. As we approached, we "triggered an inaudible mechanism" which caused the ground to shake. The lid opened and a "gigantic demon" emerged:

    

He reaches his full height, looks around with flashing eyes and thunders at you in a voice which almost blasts you away: "Ah, mortals! Be afraid, for Tarbos, the God of Chaos, is free again!" Then he looks down and, with a cry of rage, he howls: "Aaarrghh! Why have I been separated from Tar? It's your fault, you miserable piles of dust! You will die for this, and right now, as true as I am the King of Hell!" He breaks down into an incomprehensible roaring and, in the deafening noise, Sabine shouts to the group: "That is Thornahuun! Our only chance is to attack immediately!"

    

I promise that we'll parse that little speech in a few minutes. For now, combat commenced with a demon that looked exactly like the invincible guard demon that we faced earlier. Thornahuun wasn't invincible, though. He had 792 hit points, a strong attack, and powerful fire-based spells, but he took damage readily enough. He was resistant to magic but not immune, and Nelvin got some lucky "Ice Balls" through his defenses. We had our own buffing spells going (principally, "Magical Attack," "Magical Wall," and "Anti-Magic Sphere") when we encountered him, so we shrugged off a lot of his attacks. Sabine kept up with healing as I whittled him down. He was easier than the magic guardians I had to fight to get to him. On his corpse, he left something called the "TAR Amulet."

             

He didn't do this every time, but he did it enough.

        

While we chewed over what just happened, we took another staircase from the main floor to the "head priest's chambers."  We fought several more parties of magical guardians. In a chest, we found a "hangar key" and a document titled "S'Orel News." The document was long but answered a lot of questions, while raising still others. It was written from S'Orel, the head priest of the temple, to his master, someone named S'Lorwin. The document indicates that the dwarves of Lyramion had been tricked into helping the Brotherhood of Tarbos build some kind of machine. In exchange, the Brotherhood promised to fly the dwarves to a moon that was "one enormous jewel" (recall the dwarf in the last session who had wanted to "go on the big boat to the green jewel"). But the Brotherhood lied; the moon in question was not a jewel but a "contaminated forest moon." The Brotherhood "dumped them there" and left them with no way to return. "Now that there are no more dwarfs here on Lyramion, no one will hear of our plans."

   

The letter goes on to say that no one in the Brotherhood had entered the chamber containing Thornahuun because they didn't have the Amberstar. The Brotherhood believed that the chamber contained "a godlike being by the name of Tarbos," but they didn't actually care. They just adopted the name "Brotherhood of Tarbos" to scare away everyone else on Lyramion. The members of the Brotherhood are, in fact, from another planet, and their "machine," which has already been activated, is doing something to "make [their] world fertile again," at the expense of Lyramion's eventual destruction.

   

The letter finally alerts "Master S'Lorwin" of our party. He knows my name but calls me "he." "Just let him come here!" he finishes. "Even if he should get past the guard demon, which he simply cannot, he still has to deal with me." 

    

Always like to see the character's name reflected in the game.

      

We "dealt" with him in the next chamber--a lizard-like humanoid with several magical guardians. "You are too late to stop the machine below the temple starting its work very soon," he boasted. Sensing our confusion, he added: "Ah, I see wonderment in your faces--perhaps you don't know what is going on? That is not important, anyway, because now you are to die!" He blasted us with a fireball, but most of us managed to avoid it. 

  

The ensuing combat pitted us against S'Orel and two magical guardians. We went all out with damage spells and scrolls and killed them in two rounds. The high priest dropped a "S'Orel Key." 

         

S'Orel and the Magic Golems.

        

Let's pause to consider what we've learned:

   

• Thornahuun appears in the backstory to Amberstar. He was, indeed, the King of Hell, and the father of the evil wizard called both "Tar" and "Tarbos." He and Thornahuun somehow became a single being. He was on the verge of conquering the world when a confederacy of mages banished him to one of Lyramion's moons.

• Amberstar dealt with a plot to return Tarbos/Thornahuun to Lyramion. I thought we were successful in preventing it at the end of Amberstar, but then the fact that the moon crashed into Lyramion, depositing Tarbos anyway, made me think that we had failed and the plot of Ambermoon would involve dealing with him for good. Now, I don't know what to think. Tar or Tarbos somehow got separated from Thornahuun before or after the moon crashed. Was that a result of the Amberstar party's efforts? Or a side-effect of the crash?

• Either way, this party has just killed Thornahuun, something that the combined might of the pre-Amberstar world couldn't accomplish.

       

Fair point to S'Orel: We do not, in fact, know what is going on.

        

• But Thornahuun only woke up in the first place because we brought the Amberstar to the temple. He was never the main threat. The Brotherhood of Tarbos turns out not to be about Tarbos but rather a front for an alien lizard race sucking the life out of Lyramion to restore their own planet. (I have to wonder if this plot wasn't influenced by the V series.) 

• But why did I need the Amberstar to open the door to his room? The backstory of Amberstar says that the Amberstar was needed to open the way to the temple of Godsbane (where I found Gryban). It said nothing about another chamber on the moon where Tarbos was banished.

• If Tar/Tarbos was somehow separated from Thornahuun, what happened to him? (More on this in a minute.)

• The members of the Brotherhood of Tabos are capable of summoning a demon who is more powerful than the literal King of Hell.

        

The main plot of this game now becomes clear: I have to stop the Brotherhood's machine. To do that, I suspect I'll need to consult with the dwarves who built it, who are currently trapped on a forest moon. 

   

Fortunately, I have a way to do this. The "hangar key" opened the door to a large terrace full of crystals and what appears to be an airship.

      

"They all want to see Buck Rogers. And that's us."

       

We boarded the ship. A small map showed that it has three receptacles labeled "MORAG," "FOREST MOON," and "LYRAMION." I suspect "MORAG" is the name of the lizardmen's home planet. The receptacles looked familiar--more on that in a bit.

          

The receptacle that takes us to the Forest Moon. I'm glad the lizardmen use Lyramionic runes.

        

At the end of one corridor was the skeleton of a dwarf. He had a Chest Key, a piece of amber, and a note. The note indicated that the corpse belonged to Brom, who at the orders of his leader, Kire (of the "Palace of Kire" in Gemstone), had sneaked aboard one of the lizardmen's airships so that he could return to Lyramion and get help. The note mentions that Kire stole one of the Navigation Stones needed to fly the airship and hid it in the Old Dwarf Mine. The note mentions a sequence of gems that must be placed into receptacles in the mine to get to the chest containing the Navigation Stone. It is unclear how Brom died or why the lizardmen just left his body in their ship.

        

It's a good thing I've been holding on to these.

      

A couple of other chests in the ship contain a Morag Robe and a Morag Dart, both powerful items usable by mages.

    

It then clicked where I'd seen those receptacles before--there was one in the Old Dwarf Mine, and I couldn't figure out what to do with it. I returned to the mine and placed a topaz in it, and it opened a secret door to another receptacle. That one required a ruby. The third required an emerald, which I didn't have, but I remembered that merchants sold gems, and I found one in the first shop I checked, in Spannenberg. I had all the others: earth stone, quartz crystal, rainbow stone, diamond, and amber.

       

It would have been nice if I could have put all of them in a single container.

      

Behind the last secret door, I found the Navigation Stone, which I can presumably use to rescue the dwarves or take the fight directly to the lizardmen on their homeworld.

    

Even though this entry was pretty short, it seemed like a good stopping point, so I started to type it up. I had just finished typing, "If Tar/Tarbos was somehow separated from Thornahuun, what happened to him?" when it hit me: He's the "mad mage" that the healers have in a cage beneath Spannenberg! I would have completely forgotten about him except that I've been keeping a good Ambermoon notes file, and figuring out his issue is the only outstanding quest in it. Clementine, the healer, said that he arrived "shortly after the great disaster," was clearly a powerful mage, and had "half of a strange amulet." 

        

If this guy isn't Tarbos, he's someone important.

       

We returned to the basement. The madman just ranted and threatened us, although he showed a "flash of recognition" when we showed him the amulet. We went to the chest containing his amulet in a nearby room. Selene picked the lock. It had a "BOS" amulet, an old robe (broken), and a cell key. Unfortunately, this didn't help us at all. There doesn't seem to be any way to reunite the amulets, and showing the pieces to him individually just prompts that flash of recognition. If we open the cell door with the key, he attacks.

        

Oh, no! Not a "magic flash of light!"

        

So I leave off here, believing that the "madman" is probably Tar, but not sure what to do about it--if, indeed, there is anything to do about it. Whether I'm right or wrong, the game offered a pretty solid plot twist during this act. Frankly, if commenters hadn't spoiled it, I would have assumed that the final battle would be in the Temple of the Brotherhood of Tarbos, and that it would involve Tarbos. The "real" plot had been hinted at with the material about the disappearance of the dwarves, the visions of the dwarves on an alien moon, and an NPC in Newlake who talked about the members of the Brotherhood having scaly skin. I still wasn't prepared for such an interesting pivot.

     

You may ask why I'm so delighted at Ambermoon opening up a new chapter at the 60-hour mark when I've complained about Serpent Isle doing essentially the same thing, particularly when the quality of storytelling is not vastly different between the two games. (There are other vague similarities to the games, including the availability of fast travel via a central hub.) I think it comes down to Ambermoon offering far better RPG mechanics. Combat, equipment, and character development became afterthoughts in Serpent Isle many hours ago--and frankly, they were hardly ever forethoughts. Ambermoon, on the other hand, has maintained a certain consistency in combat challenge, character progression, equipment progression, and spell acquisition. I find myself looking forward to many of the combats, particularly with bosses. I still don't want Ambermoon to last many more than, say, 80 hours, but regardless of how long it lasts, I don't think I'll ever get as exasperated with it as I've been with Serpent Isle.

       

For the next entry, look for my party to take to the stars!

      

Time so far: 63 hours

Amberstar: Summary and Rating

A well-designed cover that actually makes sense in context (a varied party, a giant eagle, the Amberstar itself) decorates a game with the same type of attention to detail.

      

Amberstar

Germany

Thalion Software (developer and publisher)

Released 1992 for Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS

Date Started: 20 June 2020

Date Ended: 29 July 2020

Total Hours: 50

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: 50

Ranking at Time of Posting: 348/379 (92%)
   
Summary:
Amberstar is an engaging German game with roots in Ultima and other U.S. titles. The plot, about an evil demon-wizard threatening to return to the world of Lyramion, is less interesting than the individual quests necessary to reassemble the ancient artifact (the titular Amberstar) that will stop him. The game features interesting towns, dungeons, and other areas with a variety of lengths and difficulties. The player starts with a player-created character and from there slowly assembles a party of six from about ten potential companions. First-person and top-down sections alternate effectively, and the game has relatively strong (if not superlative) mechanics for inventory, commerce, NPC dialogue, and combat. A lack of sound, a sometimes-difficult interface, and an excess of long combats at times threatens the player's experience, but ultimately a strong base and an attention to small details and innovations makes this one a winner.

*****
      
Amberstar is a better game than the summary above suggests (minus the final line) because of small things. It doesn't announce itself as an evolutionary step forward with SVGA graphics, masterful use of sound, or innovations in combat AI. It is not "next generation" anything. If you only read the manual or watched a few minutes of video, you would see little to distinguish it from other, largely-derivative European titles of the period--or indeed from its own antecedents.
          

This is just a random shot of the party flying over various landscape features on an eagle.

         
Instead, it improves upon its predecessors with slight tweaks and adjustments, ultimately making for a more interesting, more satisfying game. Its innovations are less fully-formed than nudges towards what CRPGs would ultimately become, while still largely using the mechanics of what went before. Some examples of what I mean:
   

• It improves NPC interactivity and the depth of lore conveyed by NPCs. Mechanically, it has barely improved upon the keyword system used by Ultimas IV-VI, but it gives its NPCs more text and more character than the usual RPG, and it keeps things interesting by giving the player some keywords but forcing the player to seek out (and figure out) others.

• It's a rare game to offer a truly open world. And just like good modern games with open worlds, it lets the player figure things out for himself. If a dungeon is too hard, he can turn around and try again, or keep throwing himself against it until he overcomes it through sheer force of will. There are gates to some areas, of course, but they feel natural rather than artificial. 

• It has a lot of lore, but it doesn't require that the player find and absorb all of it to succeed in the game. It is possible to figure out most of the puzzles without the associated hints from NPCs, and the player can literally stumble upon some of the Amberstar pieces. I never found anyone on the surface world who had anything to say about the Realm of Manyeye, for instance; I just found it by seeing what happened when I sailed into a whirlpool.

• It anticipates later games in which the player creates one character (with a backstory and personal connection to the quest) and then recruits his party from a variety of NPCs. Those NPCs have no dialogue once they join the party, and a couple are unforgivably hard to find, but it's still an interesting divergence from the player creating his entire party.

• To make up for limited graphics, the game does a particularly good job with textual descriptions as you wander the dungeons.

          

This not only adds some flavor to what would otherwise be a pile of bones, it makes sense in context of the dungeon.

           

• I loved the mix between hand-crafted top-down areas and first-person textured areas. It was a good way to vary the nature of exploration, encounters, and puzzles, using the relative strengths of the two interfaces.

• This is far from the first game to offer an automap, but it is one of the few games up to its time to offer a truly useful automap, including annotating doors, chests, teleporters, and other navigational elements. 

• The translators did a good job. There are some weird spellings, but overall I see less of the awkwardness of phrasing that I see in many translated games.

        
What I admire most, however, is the wonderful sense of variety that goes into finding the Amberstar pieces. I know I've said this before, but when the game started, I was absolutely sure that finding each piece would involve 13 quests of similar length and difficulty, making the game extraordinarily monotonous. Instead, a few of the pieces are obtained with just a few minutes of questing, a few are at the ends of long and difficult dungeons, and a few are in between. And the dungeons themselves all have their own themes and character; they're not just featureless corridors.
 
Few of these features are wholly original to Amberstar, but it's still rare to find so many positive elements assembled in a single game. The result is a title that doesn't look much like Ultima VI, or Wizardry, or Pool of Radiance, but which nonetheless managed to bring together the things that worked best in those previous titles, as if it had cloned their souls rather than just their faces.
          

The developers perhaps could have spent some time varying the graphics for statues.

       
Not everything worked. I struggled with the interface all the way to the game's final hours. Too many of the skills were never called into play. You have to carefully step over a few walking dead scenarios, and only having one save slot doesn't help with that. The inability to speed up the combat animations was a near-fatal flaw, and overall the game lasted just a smidge too long; I don't care how interesting and varied the quests are, 13 pieces is just too many.
 
If my GIMLET does things right, it should put Amberstar right around 50--higher than other German contenders, not quite as high as the most innovative games from North America. Tweaks and nudges get you into the top fifth, sure, but not the top. Let's see.
  
1. Game World. The backstory is a relatively banal account of an evil wizard trying to return from exile and take over the world. (Just once, I want to read a story in which the evil wizard or demon, having been freed from a thousand years in prison, has no interest in re-embarking on the same path that got him imprisoned in the first place, and now wants nothing more than a good meal and a stiff drink.) I groaned at the "Disassembulet of Yendor" main quest. But the game world is otherwise well-realized, with different geographic areas under the control of different factions, and an interesting pantheon of gods. The game also enjoys an Ultima-like relationship between the game and the game manual, avoiding the problem inherent in so many other titles in which the manual just tells a framing story and seems to have been written by a different person. Score: 5.

2. Character Creation and Development. The big problem here is that the player doesn't have immediate or even early access to many of the game's guilds. I got lucky in finding the paladine guild early, but otherwise a first-time player is forced to choose between becoming a thief or a warrior. Those aren't bad choices, I suppose, but it still bothers me that I didn't find some guilds until the last quarter of the game. You do have to give quite a bit of thought to party composition, which I liked. You make a real sacrifice in front-line power with any pure wizard class. Trying to mitigate this with the hybrid classes creates its own problems, and in some ways I like that paladines, rangers, and monks are balanced between warriors and spellcasters instead of having the full power of both.

Leveling was satisfying and rewarding, if a bit annoying to have to visit so many guilds. But the skills were a bit problematic. About half of them (Listen, Find Traps, Disarm Traps, Swimming) are called into play so rarely, and with so little consequence if you don't have the skill, that it doesn't make sense to invest points in them. I'm not even sure that "Search" really did much, although I suppose you wouldn't know if you didn't find things that would have otherwise been found with the skill. Different races, and their associated languages, were a minor part of gameplay that could have been better-developed. Score: 5.

3. NPC Interaction. I'm still waiting for the first game that offers true "dialogue options," but Amberstar otherwise takes keyword-based dialogue about as far as it can go. You have to pay attention to NPCs and seek keywords based on their statements, or type in your own. There are different types of NPCs found in both interfaces, and obviously a fair number of them can join the party. Score: 5.
           

NPCs may not be as memorable as in, say, Ultima VII, but they're close.

         
4. Encounters and Foes. The game's bestiary uses similar creatures as other fantasy RPGs, but they're not entirely the same. One thing I liked (although I can see how other players might dislike this) is that different areas heavily feature just one or two types of creature, usually starting with small numbers and slowly building as you explore. This gives you time to become an expert on the enemy's strengths, weaknesses, and special attacks. Blunt force rarely saves you even if it serves you at the beginning of an area.

Most of the encounters in the game are fixed; finding random encounters and thus grinding is possible but not easy. I thought this was fine. It keeps the system from being completely closed, but it also means you can generally walk between two cities without having to fight six combats. I also liked the variety of special encounters with boss-level enemies in many of the dungeons.
 
Aside from the magic mouths--most notably in the Tower of Riddles--there weren't a lot of non-combat encounters, though, nor any strong opportunities for role-playing. Score: 5. (By now, you're suspecting I'm engineering all the scores to be 5s. I promise I'm not.)
           

Even the finding of treasure is often presented as a contextual encounter, with a little narrative to accompany the loot.

         
5. Magic and Combat. The game does a decent job adapting the tactical combat process of games like Wizardry, where you assign individual actions for each character and then watch them execute all at once, threaded with NPC actions. There are associated considerations of character formation, whether to concentrate or spread out attacks, and of course when to use spells. It isn't as tactical as the Gold Box series, but it is more so than the Ultima and Interplay titles with which the developers must have been familiar.
      
I thought the magic system worked well, too. Even late in the game, you don't have so much spellpower that you can just cast your most devastating spells on every enemy party. Like most good RPGs, you have to balance success in a single combat with success over an accumulation of combats. There was also a manageable number of spells, and some nice variety among the classes. Not having a competent white wizard meant that I had to miss out on a large variety of enemy-effect spells, for instance.

But the number and length of combats is a problem that goes beyond the couple of points in the "gameplay" category where I would normally rate it. The game really needed a "quick combat" option or at least some option to auto-assign every character's attack to the closest enemy. And it needed to get rid of enemy combat animations, which kept the built-in "fast forward" button from doing what it was meant to do. Score: 5.
          

Combat is never bad, exactly--just a little too slow sometimes.

        
6. Equipment. The six characters have slots for weapons, armor, shields, necklaces, helms, rings, and boots, and there is a nice variety of items to buy and find, many restricted to particular classes, races, or genders. I also liked the large variety of usable items--wands, potions, herbs, scrolls, and weapons with special attacks, all of which could provide an edge in combat. I liked that most statistics for the items are clear by looking at them, and that the "Identification" spell (or sage) reveals the rest. I particularly liked the selection of items that slowly improve the interface (e.g., watch, compass, location finder, etc.) Score: 6.
          

Statistics show me exactly what the amulet does, and who can wear it.

         
7. Economy. The economy is relevant throughout the game, but you have an overabundance of wealth in the latter half, and the associated effects on encumbrance means that you end up dropping most of it. I ended the game with thousands of gold pieces and dozens of uncashed gems. If the guilds had replenished their stocks of scrolls, that would have provided a good "money sink" for the game's final hours. But the game deserves some credit for its first half, when money is scarce and the party has to make some tough decisions. Score: 5.

8. Quests. The main quest is fine, and as I've said, I like the variety in its stages and the way that the player can assemble the 13 Amberstar pieces in almost any order. Unfortunately, there are no choices or alternate routes in the main quest. As for side quests, there are fewer than it first appears. Most of them end up being steps towards one of the Amberstar pieces. But there are some, and their presence enhances the game even if they don't allow a lot of role-playing options. Score: 4.
            

One of the game's few side-quests.

        
9. Graphics, Sound, and Input. Alas, a less rosy category. The graphics aren't bad, but to me they were generally too small. (My colorblindness is often an issue with small graphics, which may have made them look worse to me.) The developers put a lot of detail in the top-down areas, which was often then ruined by the inability to tell one object from another. I often couldn't even distinguish humanoids from animals. The textures in the first-person interface were fine, and there were some decent cut-scene graphics.

As for sound, there isn't any except for the music, which I consider a crazy oversight. I know a lot of people like game music, but to focus on it exclusively and offer no sound effects is not a choice most developers would make. Music fans will bump up this category a couple of points for the sheer variety of quality compositions (although a fair number appear to have been at least partly plagiarized) that play in different situations.

Finally, while the use of screen real estate was fine, the controls never worked well for me. It remained awkward throughout the game to explore the iconographic areas, and I was always trying to move when the control panel was locked on the "action" side. Beyond that, I liked that you had to earn some elements of the interface, and as I said earlier, the automap works very well. Score: 3. 
    
10. Gameplay. We end on a high note. Amberstar is impressively non-linear and modestly replayable when you consider different party compositions, a different class for the main character, and a different order to the quests. I found its difficulty just right, and while I thought it lasted a little too long, it was just a little. Score: 7.

All the 5s make this one easy to sum up, and the final score is exactly 50. I promise I didn't engineer that outcome, but I agree with the result. It gets it just into the top 10% of titles I've played, and it beats the next-highest German offerings, Spirit of Adventure and Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny by 6 points. (I would stress, though, that Arkania had some individual categories that out-performed Amberstar.) Perhaps more notably, it beat Thalion's previous Dragonflight by a full 16 points. Although some influence of Dragonflight can be seen in Amberstar, clearly some of the new additions to the team (including designer Karsten Köper and programmer Jurie Horneman) made a crucial difference.

I was hoping that designer Karsten Köper would appear during this series of entries. He showed up briefly to comment on his one known previous game, Mythos, but only to address the Axis/eagle thing. This is what I always fear: that a developer will visit and get turned away by one of the more stupid or offensive parts of our discussion (and I freely admit I started that one by making fun of the publisher's name). Anyway, he's given most of the credit for the Amber series, having apparently brought a strong experience with both computer and tabletop RPGs to Thalion. But he disappears almost as fast as he arrives, with design credits on Amberstar and Ambermoon and quality assurance on Trex Warrior: 22nd Century Gladiator (1991). Much later, he has testing credits on two other German games: Stephen King's F13: Ctrl, Alt, . . . Shiver (1999), which has to be the most awkward game title of all time, and K. Hawk: Survival Instinct (2002).   

          
Despite the game's North American release, most American computer magazines seem to have missed it, including Computer Gaming World. Thus, most reviews are found in German and British magazines, where the result was extremely varied. The best score (92/100) comes from the British ST Action in March 1993, but the magazine just offers a quick blurb: "Tasty German RPG with a huge play area, several varying quests and exceedingly smooth scrolling. An immediate purchase!" The worst was from the German PC Player in January 1993, which found it "a rather frustrating program only for freaks who [like to] struggle with every [role-playing game] regardless of controls, graphics, and sound." To be fair, "controls, graphics, and sound" are exactly where this game falls apart, and thus you're likely to rate it low if that's your primary orientation. This explains a large number of ratings in the 60s and 70s, particularly from Amiga magazines, although a few saw through these flaws. The October 1992 Amiga Action faulted those features but otherwise recommended that you dump your girlfriend so you'll have more time to finish it; they gave a 91/100. The German Power Play wasn't far behind, with ratings of 85 for the Amiga and Atari ST versions and 83 for DOS.
   
The sequel, Ambermoon (1993) looks to have addressed many of these concerns. The third-person sections are zoomed in more, to better distinguish features and creatures, and also angled to be more axonometric. The first-person sections show even more color and detail, as do the NPC and monster graphics. More important, the first person sections seem to offer continuously-scrolling movement, along the lines of Ultima Underworld, which was a major change to have implemented in only a year. Unfortunately, the videos I watched suggest that the game still didn't offer any sound effects, and the toggled control pad is still there.
          

 A shot from Ambermoon, courtesy of MobyGames.

         
The series was reportedly intended as a trilogy, but poor sales forced Thalion to close in 1994 before the third game was produced. I can't speak about Ambermoon, but I can say that Amberstar doesn't really require a sequel, so unless Ambermoon ends on a cliffhanger, a couplet rather than a trilogy will probably be just fine. Many former Thalion personnel ended up at Blue Byte Software, and I've heard that Blue Byte's Albion (1995) is seen by some as a "spiritual sequel" to Amberstar.

It won't be long before we check out Ambermoon, but for now it's time to roll the dice on a new title, for the first time in a long time. The result is Quest for Kings (1990). I tried to play it over a year ago, got stuck with some error messages, and put it back into the rotation for later. In the meantime, I got some assistance from the author, Howard Feldman, who also happens to be the owner of the Museum of Computer Adventure Gaming History. It's long past time I gave it another try. In the short-term, however, we're going to look at an obscure Atari 800 title called Abraxas Adventure #1: Assault on the Astral Rift (1984).

Game 490: Ambermoon (1993)

 

         

Ambermoon

Germany

Thalion Software (developer and publisher) 

Released 1993 for Amiga

Date Started: 28 March 2023

    

Amberstar ended with the victorious party defeating the evil wizards and preventing the return of the demon/wizard Tarbos. But as the heroes celebrated their victory, they wondered: "Why does Lyramion's third moon glow evilly, with a blood red light?"

        

Could they not have made it glow with an amber light?

     

The backstory to this sequel, along with the introductory cinematic, answer the question: Tarbos had done something to mess with the moon, nudging it out of its orbit. It took 40 years, but eventually the satellite came crashing down to the surface, obliterating most of the cities. In the cinematic, the camera follows a chunk of the moon approaching Lyramion as a tune reminiscent of the Jaws theme plays in the background. The player is then treated to the sight of meteors laying waste to each of the major cities from Amberstar. That's a grim way to begin a game.

   

By now, the backstory informs us, the hero of Amberstar had retired, fathered a daughter, and enjoyed the birth of his first grandchild. (The hero of Amberstar could be either sex, but apparently was canonically male.) The family lived in Twinlake (the starting city in Amberstar), and in the rubble following its destruction, the hero found his grandchild but not his daughter. He raised the child on his own as civilization slowly rebuilt itself. As the game begins, the original hero is 80 and has sent his grandchild--the player character--on a mission to "find out what is happening on the Island of Lyramion and what risks there are to you and life on Lyramion." It's hard to imagine there are risks any worse than the entire planet being destroyed by meteors, but I guess we'll see.

      

Glad I spent all that time solving side quests here.

       

The intro is a bit confused, I should note. It starts "20 years after the events of Amberstar," depicts the broken pieces of the moon laying waste to the cities, and then says "70 years later . . ." to introduce the game. But the backstory makes it clear that the hero didn't even settle down until 20 years after Amberstar, then had a daughter who grew to adulthood, got married, and had her own child before the meteors fell. It also makes it clear that the original hero is 80 as this game begins. Thus, the title cards in the cinematic should read more like "40 years after the events of Amberstar" and "20 years later" for the period after the destruction. To make matters worse, the PC's age in the character sheet is given as 17, which doesn't fit any of the timelines provided. She should be 20 or, I suppose, 70.

     

You've got to assign someone on the team to continuity.

             

The only choices you have for character creation are sex and portrait. There are a few notable things here. The first is that the developers were a bit lazy: most of the portraits are very slight modifications of each other. I suppose it makes sense if they're all supposed to be children of the same parents. Second, in an era that often lacked racial inclusion, it's notable here that all of the female portraits could be construed as Black. Third, one of the male portraits depicts a person clearly quite older than the rest.

     

At least one of these people is not 17.

       

The game begins with the PC's grandfather on his deathbed. He summons the PC over and reveals that he was the hero who saved Lyramion however many years ago; apparently, the PC has heard this story but didn't know her grandfather's role. Grandpa says that Shandra (the wizard from Twinlake in Amberstar) appeared in his dreams and told him that a new evil was arising and that the PC would need to fight it. This is particularly odd because Shandra died during the meteor attack on Twinlake, having exhausted himself teleporting townsfolk to safety. Grandpa suggests going to Newlake (apparently the replacement for the destroyed Twinlake) to try to commune with Shandra's spirit. He gives a password (WINE) to a secret cave accessible through the basement of his house, encouraging the PC to "use everything you find there" but asking her to bring him a small piece of amber. Admonishing the PC to hurry, as he will soon "enter the realms of Bala," he collapses back on his bed.

      

A cut scene starts the dialogue . . .

 

. . . which continues in the dialogue window.

      

The main interface hasn't changed notably since the first game. The layout is identical. Party members' portraits line the top row. An exploration screen is on the left. It alters between an axonometric view (angled slightly on one axis, so it looks as if you're looking at an angle from the south) and a first-person view depending on what you're exploring. The right third of the screen has a message window at the top and an icon panel at the bottom; a right-click of the mouse alters between a movement panel and an action panel, with options to look, touch, talk, board transportation, use magic, camp, view the map, change battle positions, and view the game options (including saving and loading). I had hoped that the authors would have mapped these options to sensible keyboard commands (e.g., "T" for "Talk"), but alas the letters on the keyboard don't seem to do anything at all. You can activate the icons with the numberpad, though. Ever since I bought my new Alienware laptop, I've been grousing that it doesn't have a numberpad, so I had to buy an external one. For the first time, I'm grateful for an external pad over a built-in pad, as I can move it to where my left hand can use it, leaving my right hand on the mouse. If that gets annoying, I'll map the icons to the keys I want in the emulator settings.

        

Sent on a vital mission, the dying man's granddaughter instead bonks her head by walking into a fireplace. The old man shakes his head sadly.

        

The graphics are somewhat improved from Amberstar, though mostly because they're larger and thus show more detail. The icon for the PC is maybe four times the size as in the original game; furnishings are maybe twice as big. Somehow, the authors manage to achieve the larger icons without changing the number of visible tiles (9 x 9), partly by removing what in the first game was an excess of floor space in most of the interior areas. Most other changes, at least so far, are minor and cosmetic.

    

I spend some time exploring the house and familiarizing myself with the commands. The interface is partly inspired by Ultima V in the way that the character icon changes when you, for instance, move over a chair or bed. The world isn't quite as interactive, but there are some fun if pointless touches. Clicking on barrels of water next to fireplaces, for instance, causes you to douse the fires, after which you can walk into the fireplace, one of which hides a secret stairway. Generally speaking, though, there are only a few interactive objects out of many that look like they might be interactive. I was hoping the eye icon would reveal more descriptions, like in a Quest for Glory game, but I was disappointed.

        

Heading downstairs.

      

The PC starts naked as a Level 1 human "Adventurer," aged 17, with 10 hit points and 8 spell points. Attributes are out of 50: strength (33), intelligence (27), dexterity (34), speed (21), stamina (48), charisma (41), luck (16), and anti-magic (0). Her skills are attack (42/80), parry (19/75), swimming (1/95), critical hits (0/0), find traps (0/25), disarm traps (0/25), pick locks (0/25), search (0/25), read magic (23/50), and use magic (27/50). I verified that all these statistics are the same for a male character.

   

A chest in my room reveals 37 gold coins, two lockpicks, and a rope. My dresser has a hat, clothes, and sandals. A hutch in the dining room yields some silver cutlery. A cabinet in the kitchen has two knives, a dagger, and 15 rations. There are more rations, plus 5 torches, in barrels in the pantry. I equip the equippable items using the paperdoll inventory screen, noting that the "view item" command gives you a full set of statistics associated with each object. You don't need to view these statistics to see the immediate effects of equipped items on attack and defense power, which are offered under the character portrait.

       

The inventory screen.

       

This weapon statistics screen gives me a preview of the classes that the game will offer: adventurer, warrior, paladin, thief, ranger, healer, alchemist, mystic, and mage. You may recall that the character in Amberstar starts as nothing and has to choose his class when he finds the appropriate guild. Here, where the character explicitly starts as an "adventurer," I'm not sure if I'll have the same options to change. Gone are the classes of monk, white wizard, grey wizard, and black wizard, but I assume the four new classes here are rough analogs.

     

Thus equipped, I head down to the basement. A title card transitions the scene, noting that I hear squeaking as I enter. The basement is present in a first-person interface, and almost immediately I notice an interface change that swiftly becomes unwelcome. Perhaps inspired by Ultima Underworld or Legends of Valour (both from 1992), the developers chose to ditch tiled movement and crisp 90-degree turns for continuous movement and turning. There's nothing inherently wrong with this except that it's excruciatingly slow and, so far, not terribly necessary, since unlike Underworld, the dungeon doesn't offer a level of interactivity that requires such refined movement. The textures are nice, though. 

       

The well room with no floor and ceiling textures.

     

There are options to turn on textures for the floor and ceiling, but this just makes movement that was already maddeningly slow completely unplayable. I played with WinUAE's CPU speed options but couldn't find anything that made it faster except to kick it into "warp" mode, which is too fast, causes torches to blink out in an instant, and causes the character to tire quickly. Suggestions are appreciated because this is going to be a real problem. I'm emulating an A1200 with a 68040 CPU, AGA chipset, 2 MB RAM, JIT enabled. CPU emulation speed set to "fastest possible."

      

The same room with floor and ceiling textures.

      

(Unlike its predecessor, Ambermoon was released only for the Amiga; Thalion went out of business while planned DOS and Atari ST versions were still in development. My understanding is that it was only officially released in German, so I'm not entirely sure what the provenance is of the English translation I'm playing, but I'll try to research that for a later entry.)

      

The last time I went house shopping, I viewed some old houses with wells in basements. They always scared the hell out of me.

      

There are spiders crawling along the ceilings and floors, but they seem to be decorative, as they don't attack. I come to a well. I look into it and a pond lizard comes leaping out, sending me into the first combat of the game. Not much seems to have changed from Amberstar--you still face enemies on a 6 x 5 grid--but let me cover combat in a later entry after I've had some more experience. There's a "fast combat" option that I need to explore, as regular combat is unnecessarily bogged down with animations that take a long time. The lizard and I miss each other for about five rounds before I finally kill it, having taken five points of damage. I get 10 experience points and 2 rations.

       

The top half of the screen is just for aesthetics. I wish the "quick combat" option stripped the interface down to the grid and the messages.

      

There are some round items in the corner of the well room, but I can't figure out any way to pick them up. The "touch" and "look" interface options don't seem to do anything.

      

What are these all about?

    

A couple of rooms later, I'm killed by a giant spider.

      

I hope grandpa dies before he realizes he's sent me to my own death.

     

Unfortunately, that's about all I have time for right now, but when I reload back in grandpa's house, I think I'll try the secret area before going down into the cellar. I'm looking forward to the game and seeing where the plot goes, but I'm at the tail end of a crazy week and it was tough to even get this much done for tonight.

    

Time so far: 1 hour

  

Amberstar: Won!

The final screen sets up the sequel.

        
The solution to the final pieces of the Amberstar seemed to be found in actually asking NPCs about the AMBERSTAR. I don't know why that didn't occur to me earlier. If I'd made it standard practice from the beginning, who knows how it would have changed the order in which I did the quests. Thank you to everyone who helped with hints as to specific NPCs.
 
Of the three pieces I still needed, two were relatively easy. One was, despite my side comment in the last entry, in a chest in the underworld, to which you are directed by giving an herb packet to the old thief Atacar. Getting to and from the area was harder than actually getting the Amberstar piece. I thought it would probably be easier to arrive via the whirlpool (which is closer to Ship's End) and leave via the castle (which is the only way to leave that I know about). But there were no more ships to buy in Crystal, so just one entry since I openly wondered why anyone would ever need to buy a ship at the Shipyard of the Far Isle, I bought a ship at the Shipyard of the Far Isle.
 
Once through the whirlpool, it was a simple matter of walking to Ship's End, finding Atacar, and giving him the herb packet. He directed me to a tree in the city's cemetery where I found a treasure "map." I put that in quotes because the map was described to me in text: the northernmost of three piles of ash surrounding a volcano. It didn't take me long to find it. It was in a chest with some potions and a magic globe that casts "Light 3."
         

The treasure location.

        
It took me longer to get out of the area, mostly because I was so paranoid about having to fight octopuses that I did everything I could think of to get around them. I also had trouble remembering the specific route through the castle. I eventually found it, though, and arrived back on the continent at the windgate hub.
  
For the second piece, I got a clue from the very first NPC I talked to, Annorel, the head of the rangers' guild. She said that the current rangers' guild was a recent incarnation, and that I might find a piece in the ruins of the old rangers' guild, which is on some islands east of Crystal. She gave me a Staff of Opening for when I found it. We flew there on that eagle and spied an island with a ship's dock but no clear use. I landed there, used the staff, and found the opening.
         

Finding the hidden entrance.

           
The old guild was small and quick. I battled through a few parties of bloodsuckers (basically stirges) and soon found the chest with the Amberstar piece. It also had a bunch of gems. I ran out of reasons for money long before the last entry, and that didn't change in this one.
 
I suspected the third piece would be in the dwarf mine, for which I still hadn't found the password. I had a decent idea where to ask, though: Bothor, the otherwise-useless dwarf in Illien. When asked about the AMBERSTAR, he volunteered that his uncle Donner in Gemstone knew where to find a piece, and he gave us a letter of introduction. I scouted around and didn't find Donner, but I did find a dwarf named Andamael who said Donner was living in a mountain to the northwest.

Donner's house was at the end of a short dungeon with rats. When we found him and gave him his nephew's letter, he related that the dwarves of old embedded their Amberstar piece into a crown, which must have been left in Dora's Mine when the dwarves were forced to abandon it. Unfortunately, he didn't remember the password to the mine and thus sent me back to Bothor, with another letter in my backpack, which seemed like unnecessary padding. Bothor said the answer was to say the name of the mine backwards.
        

This episode has a Tolkienesque quality.

          
It still took me a while to get in, first because I had misinterpreted the runes and thought it was called Bora's mine. Second, I didn't imagine the possessive was part of what I had to say backwards. So I tried AROB, then took another look at the sign and realized my mistake, then tried AROD, then got really annoyed for a while before realizing it was SAROD.
          

It takes longer than it should have.

        
The mine was an annoying three levels, populated by hundreds of giant rats (not even swamp rats, just regular ones) and spiders. The battles weren't hard, but it was easily the most combat-heavy dungeon in the game, which wasn't something I enjoyed in the final hours.

We found the crown relatively quickly: a trap near the entrance dumped us down to Level 3, near a hole back up to Level 2, where a chest contained the crown. The difficult part was getting out of the dungeon, which was a maze of stairs, spinners, hidden doors, and teleporters. There was a final battle with probably the weirdest enemy in the game: a giant rock with a demonic face. I guess that's what drove the dwarves out of the mine. Anyway, we finally made it and took the crown back to Donner so he could remove the Amberstar piece.
        

I think the graphics department could have spent a little more time on this one.

       
With the 13 pieces finally in hand, we flew to the altar that I had previously discovered. There, we encountered a relatively difficult lore puzzle. The altar indicated that each piece of the Amberstar was associated with one of the major powers (gods and demons) of Lyramion: Mork, Nut, Geb, Harachte, Sobek, Sansri, Tarbos, Bralkur, Marmion, Gala, Bala, and Talmit. The altar gave us descriptors of each entity and we had to choose the appropriate piece. A wrong choice was instant death for the selected character.
       

That seems an awfully harsh punishment for not paying attention in Western Civ.

         
I had paid attention to the game's lore but I hadn't written down most of it. I shuffled through a lot of past screenshots as I tried to figure out the right associations, but some of them were pretty obscure. I was pretty sure I'd never heard of "Talmit" at all. I had to reload about half a dozen times before I got them all right. Here is the list of descriptors:
          

• Knowledge: In my last entry, I made fun of the monk who described Mork as the "god of wisdom." That seemed close enough, and I got it right.

• The Ally: Ally of who? It seemed to me that Marmion, Bralkur, and Sansri were all allies of each other. After dying when I tried Marmion, I got it with Bralkur.

           

"I don't even know him!"

         

• Master of the Sea: I guessed right that it was Sobek. My reasoning was that the temple at Ship's End was to Sobek.

• Mother of Life: One of the first things I looked at in the game was a statue to Gala, goddess of life.

• Falsehood: I died twice trying Marmion and Tarbos. The answer was Sansri. I had her pegged more as the goddess of snakes, but I suppose there's a longstanding snake-falsehood link in Christian mythology.

• Friend of the Eagles: I had no idea, but I got it right with my first guess, which was Nut. 

• Evil: That had to be Tarbos or Marmion. I guessed Tarbos first and got it right.

• Power of the Earth: Again, I had no idea. I died guessing Harachte, then again guessing Talmit. It was Geb.

• Mother of Death: The second thing I looked at in the game was a statue to Bala, goddess of death.

• Fire: Harachte was the answer, which I guessed right based on the "Globe of Harachte" that I was carrying, which acts as a torch. 

• Traitor: Between the two I had left, that was Marmion, easy.

• What is Coming: I guess Talmit is the god of the future or prophecy or something. I'd like to know where that was mentioned in the game.

    
The altar's voice told us the Amberstar was reunited. At first, I freaked out a bit because it didn't appear in my inventory, but I soon realized it was part of the interface.

Now, suddenly, we're in a big hurry.

I went through a final round of leveling up. My final levels were between 18 and 28, with Drobanir the fighter getting the highest level and my wizards getting the lowest. Most of the characters reached maximums in their primary skills, and I had thus been dumping their most recent allocations of skill points into useless secondary skills. But my two paladins had their focus split between combat and magic and never maxed out in either skill set.

With the Amberstar in hand, I hoped that the final castle would be quick. I was hoping that the door would open to one big main chamber and a final battle. But of course I wasn't so lucky: it was a multi-leveled nightmare with multiple battles with "yellowslimes," capable of causing disease and paralysis. Sometimes they attacked with large Sasquatch-like creatures whose names I didn't catch.

There were about two dozen of these.

        
In some chest, I finally found the Gray Wizard spell "Magic Sphere," which casts all of the game's enhancement and protection spells at once, at their highest levels. I think this is probably the only place you can find it. It would have been helpful a long time ago.
     
After what seemed like forever, I finally encountered the demon Bralkur. He threatened me and attacked. I had received that scroll from Sansri that I was supposed to destroy in Bralkur's presence, banishing him from the realm. The problem was, it didn't work. The scroll cast a spell called "Banish Demon," but Bralkur resisted it every time. I thus had to kill him the old fashioned way, which wasn't as hard as it perhaps should have been.
        

Bralkur manages to resist a scroll that's supposed to kill him exclusively.

       
A Staff of Runes found behind Bralkur opened the way to the final battle. I arrived in the final chamber just as Marmion and a circle of black wizards were completing the ritual to return Tarbos from the moon.
    

Keep in mind, they've been at this the entire game. This was a long ritual.

Marmion needs to work on his smack talk.

    

The resulting combat was perhaps the most enemy-heavy combat in the game: six Level 8 wizards, six Level 12 wizards, and Marmion. They somehow wiped away all my buffing spells (Weapons Power 3, Anti-Magic 3, Armour Protection 3) just as combat began. I soon ascertained that the wizards were completely immune to magic. None of Trasric's damage spells did anything to any of them, whether I targeted individuals, groups, or the entire field. Thus, he was relatively useless. Satine spent a few rounds getting our buffing spells, plus "Mass Haste," back online. Everything else came down to physical combat.
         

Trasric realizes he can sit this one out.

          
The wizards themselves focused on group damage spells, which suck but are recoverable with healing, scrolls, and potions. I'd much rather face damage spells than spells like "Stun," "Stone," "Sleep," and so forth, none of which they seemed to have. We basically just had to whittle away at them round after round.

Marmion himself was invulnerable to most of my weapons. I noticed this with a few other enemies, and I don't understand how the game decides how powerful a weapon has to be to damage a particular opponent. My thief's Assassin's Blade, one paladin's Icebiter, and my fighter's Firebasher all did nothing. The only thing that would damage him was Sansri's Whip. It's a good thing I kept that.

It was a long combat, but I won it on the first try. Afterwards, I walked up to the portal, thrust the Amberstar into it, and prevented Tarbos's return.
        

I'm glad it was instinctive because otherwise we might not have done the only thing we could have possibly done.

        
Shandra's voice (the wizard from Twinlake) spoke to us at this point, bidding us to enter the teleporter he'd just opened for us. We did, and the endgame sequence commenced. It consisted of Lord Karwain (ruler of Twinlake) praising us in an audience and then announcing a feast in our honor. He invited us onto his balcony to look out over Lyramion, where a dragon flew by accompanied by an eagle. But we noticed that Lyramion's third moon had started to glow ominously red, setting up the second game in the intended trilogy, Ambermoon.
       

The lack of capital letters in this paragraph bothers me.

This is the game's equivalent to "the eagle flies with the dove."

        
I was impatient for most of this final session, and I feel like the final dungeon, in particular, could have hustled it along a bit. I wish the final battle had been harder but had made better use of all the characters. But I liked the lore puzzle, as poorly as I did, and I thought the final game sequence was suitably rewarding.

This is a pretty short entry, but Amberstar has given us enough material to deserve a separate "Summary and Rating," so look for that coming up. After that, we finally get to move on to a new game (on the official list) for the first time in a month.
  
Final time: 50 hours