Phantasy Star: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The victorious party.

         

Phantasy Star

Japan

SEGA Enterprises (developer and publisher)

Released 1987 for SEGA Master System in Japan; 1988 for the SEGA Master System in the United Kingdom and North America; 1994 for the SEGA Genesis in Japan

Date Started: 4 March 2025   

Date Ended: 30 March 2025

Total Hours: 27

Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)    

      

When the final session began, I believed I had no place left to explore except what I didn't previously experience on Dezoris. I followed a rightmost pattern last time, so when I exit the city of Skure, I follow a leftmost pattern. After a lot of random combats, and without finding anything new, I find myself at the cave system that I abandoned the last time I was here.

           

These guys did a lot of damage.

     

A Dezorian greets me as I enter and tells me to go left at the first fork, but that just dumps me a bunch of levels into a dungeon from which I can find no escape (except to cast the EXIT spell). The other way isn't much better. I go up and down about 20 times, fighting endless battles against tough foes, before I finally find a chest at the end of a hallway. In it is the Laconian Shield.

    

As I exit the dungeon, I find myself suspicious that I never found any place to use my Ice Digger, nor did I find this Altiplano Plateau. After much experimentation, I discover that the Ice Digger works on some mountains, but these mountains are not distinguished graphically at all from the rest. I have to search the entire planet to verify which ones I can chop up. It takes a good couple hours to do this. It's stuff like this that makes me suspicious of quick playing times.

    

Chopping through the ice, or at least some of it.

      

The first passage that I find takes me to a large open area with lots of trees, plus one tree conspicuously alone in a clearing. Last session, I was told to use a crystal in front of it. I thought I had a crystal, but I guess I was thinking of the Amber Eye. So I can't do anything here yet.

   

The Ice Digger also lets you chunk up a huge area to the southwest of the map, in the center of which is a single cave. It is fortunately a short, single level, leading to a battle with a titan. The titan leaves a chest with a prism inside.

        

Didn't even get a shot of the titan.

      

Back on the surface, I return to the tree, use the prism, and . . . nothing. Confused, I look at my notes again. There was that whole business about the Twintown east siders being liars, and that's where I learned about using the prism. Lacking any other clues, I try using everything else in my inventory. Something finally happens when I used the Magic Torch. The tree turns green. I am able to pluck a nut from it and drop it into my Laconian Pot. So I guess that's progress. I can't remember why I wanted the nut.

   

At last, I have avenged myself on Laerma.

      

At this point, I have no more clues. I still haven't gotten through that walled dungeon in Palma, though, so I head back there to remind myself what the issue is. A guard kicked me out last time, but maybe he wants a nut. 

  

The guard in question asks me for my roadpass. When I show it, he declares it a counterfeit and throws me in jail. So I try not giving it to him, and this results in a fairly easy combat.

   

We emerge on the inside of the compound, move north, and enter a cave. It disgorges us next to a field of lava, which we cross with the Hovercraft. In the middle of a clearing on the other side is yet another dungeon. This is the Baya Malay tower, although I don't know its name at the time. This becomes important later.

     

I can't decide whether "Baya Malay" sounds more like a casino, a Disney hotel, or a South Pacific number.

    

It's a long dungeon, maybe 10 levels. I lose track with all the ups and downs. I should map it—if I should map any dungeon in the game, it's this one—but my "follow the right wall" approach has worked so far, so I decide to keep using it until it doesn't. The dungeon is full of new and difficult foes, so much that after about 20 minutes, I end up fleeing every battle. I cheat a bit by allowing myself to reload if we fall down a pit trap.

    

I did not get this the first time.

     

We finally emerge into the open air, and there's nothing to do. We can't move. We don't appear on the screen. At first, I think the game has frozen, but it does allow me to use inventory. I try everything. The prism that we found on Dezoris shows us a floating castle in the sky.

   

Now how to get there? Fortunately, I've been reviewing my notes, so I know this one. I feed Myau the Nuts of Laerma. They transform him into a winged beast, who flies us to the castle.

      

Myau's big moment.

      

Halfway there, we're attacked by a gold dragon. He has a powerful fireball attack, and he keeps healing himself, but we're eventually able to kill him.

 

Stand down, everyone. He's a good dragon!

      

The party lands in a new town with houses. The NPCs:

   

• A series of ellipses
• "Don't believe your own eyes in the depth of the dungeons." I don't know what this means, but please can I be done with dungeons? 
• "Don't go against Lassic!" Too late for that.
• The final house has a serpent in it.

   

At last, we enter what I guess is Lassic's palace, which is another goddamned dungeon. Again, it's huge. Note that there was no place to heal in Lassic's little village. The developers really expected the player to gird up for this expedition. It would have been nice if the developers had offered some high-level potions or something, as for the last 10 hours, I've been gaining money with nothing to spend it on.

   

Again, I continue to flee most battles—my spell points are distressingly low—though I can't avoid one with "Shadow." He's not too hard. "But I'm only Lassic's Shadow," he says as he dies.

     

If he's Lassic's shadow, why does he look like Dr. Mad?

      

My "follow the right wall" approach gets me in trouble a few times, as some of the levels loop around on themselves, but they're otherwise not very complicated, and I'm able to identify when it happens and put up imaginary walls so I can continue the pattern. 

    

We finally find Lassic behind a magically locked door; opening it is damn near the last spell Noah could possibly cast. He's wearing his special armor. "Ah, my children. You have done very well to come this far. You are very lucky indeed. Do you really wish to kill an old man?" YES, we agree, and the battle begins. Lassic has 238 hit points. The first round, he casts a lightning bolt spell that kills all of us instantly. What. The. Hell.

     

The party is wiped out by a pickle.

      

Searching my notes, the only thing I can find is that "Lassic lives in fear of a crystal possessed by the soothsayer named Damor." I never found such a crystal. 

     

I let myself look at a spoiler site long enough to see that I was supposed to find it in the Baya Malay tower, which I can't get into from this side. Shaking my fist at the screen, I EXIT the dungeon, FLY back down to Palma, and prepare to start all over again. (I verify that I still have some nuts first.) I still resist mapping. I'm not really sure why, except that it just doesn't feel like a game for which you should have to map.

     

This time, I follow the left walls. For some reason, I find myself fighting Dr. Mad again at a random place. But the system otherwise works. I eventually reach "The Great Damor." He has a number of questions that don't make any sense ("You are searching for Alex Ossale?"), and he kicks us out if we answer "wrong," but after a few tries, I get through them, and he gives us a magic crystal.

     

I think the correct answer to this, counterintuitively, was "yes."

    

I return to town for healing and then go through the whole sequence again: the prison tunnels to Baya Malay, the overland walk, the cave, the lava field, Baya Malay tower and its dozen or so levels, the prism, feeding Myau the nuts, flying to castle, the gold dragon, the useless town, and the half dozen or so levels of Lassic's castle. Finally, we're in front of Lassic again.

   

The crystal protects us some, but he's still a bastard, capable of massive damage (up to 100 or so hit points) to every party member with a single blast of his staff. Alis takes the least damage, probably because of the Laconian Armor. Odin misses so often with his Laconian Axe, which is supposed to be the best weapon in the game, that I switch him back to his laser rifle (which does less damage but never misses). 

   

Lassic's blast spell hits everyone.

       

My protection spells don't seem to be of any use; they always disappear just before Lassic attacks. HELP (which increases strength) is a little useful. In three attempts, I can't do any better than Alis alive, Lassic and everyone else dead.

    

Instead of a victory screen, I get: "Lassic has died. Alis accomplished her wish. Nero is satisfied now in heaven. Hurry to the governor!" 

    

I should have just taken this as the winning screen.

        

Fortunately, our magic flute gets us out of the dungeon, and Alis's FLY spell takes us back to a town for healing and resurrection.

       

Something about a goat sword?

       

We take the ship to Motavia and the Landrover to Paseo and the tunnel to the governor's mansion. When we get there, it's empty. "It has something strange. Where is the governor, I wonder?" Then we fall down a hole to another goddamned dungeon. Let me assure you that every single one of you, even those who never encouraged me to play Phantasy Star at all, not to mention various members of your family, are mentioned in the tirade that follows. 

       

Specifically, its use of English.

     

Fortunately, it's a short dungeon—a few encounters, a few locked doors, not much else. It ends in a room where at last we confront the evil Darkfalz.

    

I don't mind that this is my last time doing this.

    

"Who?" you may be wondering. Come on. You know—Darkfalz. That demonic character who has never once been mentioned at all, and who appears here with no dialogue or introduction. That guy.

 

The game won't even tell me how many hit points he has.

          

He's a bit easier than Lassic. He can attack twice per round for very heavy damage, but only one character on each attack. He dodges almost all my attacks, so I have Alis and Noah cast spells while Odin uses his laser rifle and Myau tries to keep up with CURE. I run out of spell points before the end, but he dies a few rounds after that.

    

Darkfalz blasts Odin.

     

After he dies, we find ourselves back in the palace with the governor before us. "I'm sorry; I must have been possessed body and soul by evil," he says. I guess he was Darkfalz? And maybe Darkfalz did the same to Lassic? The game could have been clearer. He continues: "You rescued our world just in the nick of time! If you had come any later, it might have been too late. We all thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

   

Then he surprises us with: "Alis, your father was once king of Algol. The dark castle has been destroyed, Lassic killed. Do you, Alis, wish to ascend your father's throne and become queen of Algol?" How was this not in the backstory?! Anyway, I can say yes or no, and nothing much happens either way. If I say yes: "Then you are the very queen of the entire system. I will assist you in all ways possible." If I say no: "No? That's fine, if you so desire. You will always be welcome here."

        

"I guess I'll just have to rule the galaxy instead. Darn it."

    

Either way, we get the same endgame text, which I offer literally: "The sky gradually clears and the peace is returned to the Algol system. A gentle breeze caresses Baya Malay. But does the breeze knows of the hardships that they endured?"

        

I'm guessing "no," because it's a breeze.

     

Each character gets a captioned portrait.

       

At least there was no forced romance between Alis and Odin.

       

"Even though the memories of evil fade away, their names will be kept in the hearts of the people of the Algol forever!!!" Then there's the group shot at the top of this entry.

   

The game has some fun with the credits. The camera zooms through a dungeon and pauses on walls long enough to offer one or two names, although most of them are pseudonyms. The story is by "April Fool," for instance, and the monster design is by "Chaotic Kaz."

       

This whole time, I thought "Myau" was a lame play on "meow." But he was really named after one of the developers.

    

So there we are: I finished the damned game that people have been pushing me to play since 2012. I suppose I needed to experience it for its impact on the genre, but I did not really like it. Here's a quick GIMLET:

    

• 4 points for the game world. It suffers the way that a lot of late 1980s games suffer in that it deserves some credit for offering more than just "kill the evil wizard" but yet doesn't offer enough to make for a truly interesting game world or plot. Its universe feels too small and artificial to in any way immerse me, and too many of the plot developments are silly or unexplained.

• 3 points for character creation and development. You get no choices in creation or development, and "development" mostly consists of increased health and magic points, plus (for a while) the types of spells you can cast. During the first third of the game, there is some satisfaction to leveling up, but it feels less rewarding in the second third, and you basically stop entirely in the last third.

    

I don't think the game ever specifically mentioned that he returned to his normal size.

     

• 5 points for NPC Interaction. They exist, mostly offering single lines of dialogue with an occasional yes/no option. They are important to understanding the world, and many of their dialogues serve as necessary quest flags. None of them feel like they have anything like personalities, but this is the 1980s.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. Enemies are well-designed graphically but boring otherwise, and the sheer number of battles discourages you from experimenting with different tactics, to the extent that you even have them. There are a number of non-combat encounters that essentially amount to light inventory-based puzzle solving.

     

Why am I fighting this guy again?

     

• 3 points for magic and combat. Again, the sheer number of battles discourages much exploration of the limited tactics that you have. I liked the occasional "boss" battle that forced me to slow down and try different spell combinations, but there aren't that many of those.

     

These guys were all over the place for the last few dungeons.

     

• 4 points for equipment. Each character gets three or four weapons, shields, and armor pieces over the game plus a number of usable items. The manual offers descriptions of everything and helps the player assess their relative value. It all felt a bit too scripted to me, with planned upgrades coming along at just the right moment in fixed locations.

• 4 points for the economy. It's useful during the first half of the game, as you're always saving for the next upgrade, and utterly useless during the second half. It would have been nice to be able to buy some potions. (The few hit points healed by burgers and cola aren't worth it the inventory space.)

• 3 points for quests. Any game with a main quest gets two. I'm not sure if the game has anything that's really a "side quest," though I suppose some of the inventory items are technically optional. There are no choices or role-playing decisions except for the final one.

       

The only choice the character gets, too late to matter.

       

• 4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I'll never like the "cartoon" aesthetic of most console games, but there were some authentically nice graphics here, including the monster animations and the background graphics in towns. The bloopish sound, which cannot be separated from the incessant music, isn't worth any credit in my opinion. The controls work about as well as you can expect from an era console game, which is about 50% more annoying than a keyboard. There are some truly maddening moments with the interface, such as the endless loop you get into when your inventory is full and you're trying to abandon the latest useless item that you found. Having to scroll through message boxes a few words at a time doesn't feel like a necessary restriction.

• 3 points for gameplay. It has a little nonlinearity in a few places, but basically the plot proceeds from one step to another. It's almost what I'm looking for with difficulty, but it's ultimately too long and grindy.

   

That gives us a final score of 37, which is above the average for its year. It's almost impressive how uniformly it scores across the GIMLET, all 3s and 4s, indicating that it didn't completely bungle anything. Then again, neither did Final Fantasy from the same year, and it got mostly 5s and 6s. 

   

I think I liked the game less than the GIMLET score suggests, and that dislike crosses two dimensions. First, it has that quality of many JRPGs in which I get to the end feeling like the game has played me rather than the opposite. With fixed characters, a linear plot, and such limited character development in the final act, it doesn't feel like there's anything unique about my playing experience. I may as well have watched a video.

      

Second, it just feels a bit too . . . "tidy" is the best word I can think of. Everything in the game world exists solely to serve the player and move things to the next plot point, no matter how illogical or silly (the cake in the cave is going to live with me for a while). To me, nothing feels remotely real, interesting, or evocative about the places I visited or the people that I met, and yet the genre has come far enough in graphic detail that it's hard to expand the experience with my own imagination. This is an experience that I have all the way into the modern era, with games like Elden Ring.

    

The graphics are pretty, no doubt, but that's not why I play RPGs.

   

I get why it's supposed to be a landmark game. It was a flagship product for its system, a weapon against the growing popularity of the NES. It took advantage of some superior graphics capabilities of the Master System, which I guess would have made a difference in 1987 but aren't really exciting to me 40 years later, with all the development in between. I mean, it's nice that the zombies drool and the PCs don't look like children, but on the other hand entire paragraphs could appear on the screen at once in Final Fantasy and I could name my characters.

     

I get that Phantasy Star is the ur-example of the JRPG with the fixed character and plot, which (mysteriously, to me) some players prefer, but . . . why does it even make any difference here? After the introductory screens, so little is done with Alis as a character that it would hardly have changed the game if she was replaced with a character that the player could name. The same is true for the other characters, who lose any individuality once they join the party and never even talk to each other (Myau's metamorphosis being the one exception). The game offers all of the drawbacks to having fixed characters with none of the necessity, let alone benefits.

     

            

Nonetheless, numerous JRPGs have apparently cited Phantasy Star as their inspiration. If we define games of its lineage as having . . .

 

• A fixed protagonist
• NPCs who join over the course of the game
• A linear story
• Turn-based combat

    

. . . I've mostly seen its influence (amusingly) in eroge games like Rance (1989), Knights of Xentar (1991), Mad Paradox (1992), and Cobra Mission (1992). But I have seen plenty of sites mention its influence on console games that I have not experienced, including Final Fantasy II (1988), Mother (1989), Lunar: The Silver Star (1992), Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (1993), Chrono Trigger (1995), Suikoden (1995), and Wild Arms (1996). I offer that list entirely in ignorance based on secondary sources, so feel free to correct me or suggest others.

   

Of course, there were sequels. The next six years saw three direct sequels, all set in the Algol system, and a couple of spinoffs. There were several remakes in the 2000s. In 2000, the franchise released its first online game, Phantasy Star Online, and its sequels are still live today. 

    

Game 546: Warriors of Legend (1993)

Fortunately, the Hyborian Age is too early for them to have been knights.

       

Warriors of Legend

United States

Synergistic Software (developer); Virgin Games (publisher)

Released 1993 for DOS

Date Started: 27 March 2025 

     

We reach the end of an era with Warriors of Legend. It isn't the last Synergistic game, nor the last game designed by Robert Clardy, but it is the last RPG using the "World Builder" engine, which debuted in 1988 with War in Middle Earth and featured in Spirit of Excalibur (1990), Vengeance of Excalibur (1991), and Conan: The Cimmerian (1991). I haven't always liked it, but it's offered something different than the typical Wizardry, Ultima, or Dungeon Master clone. 

    

It takes place in a kingdom called Lemuria, which enjoyed peace for centuries, until it was visited by sorcerers from across the desert in Lortai, "a fabled realm of sorcery and mystery." The visitors were at first welcomed for their exotic nature, strange tales, and "feats of magic," but it soon became clear that they were up to something insidious. Leaders of Lemuria disappeared mysteriously or changed their personalities overnight, "killing and pillaging in their own kingdoms." Before long, the Black Circle, Lortai's "coven of sorcerers," had completely seized power. King Osric the Great learned that the Circle planned to break an ancient artifact called the Chaos Key, opening a gateway between Lemuria and the Realm of Chaos.

    

The kingdom was later known as Madagascar.

    

Osric put out a call for heroes, but only four showed up. They were immediately ambushed by agents of Moc Madure, the Dragon Lord, and taken to Madure's fortress. They were about to be executed when one of them, Brand, broke his bonds, and freed the others. They escaped and returned to Osric's capital at Illandria. Here, the game begins.

       

They can head to New Verdigris once they're done here.

    

It's not a bad backstory, though somewhat derivative, and I'm not sure why the capture and escape part were necessary since, functionally, the heroes end up where they started. The proper names (if not their full bios) are mostly drawn from Robert Howard's Conan stories, suggesting that Warriors is meant to exist in the same sort of Hyborian-age setting as Conan. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Warriors had started as a sequel to Conan before Synergistic or Virgin lost the license.

 

The game begins with a character creation, or at least character editing, process. The default characters are named Brand, Ataris, Keena, and Astrovir, but the player can re-name them. Each has values from 0-20 in strength, wisdom, intelligence, agility, and stealth. Immediately, there are some issues. The manual says that the game offers five character classes: fighter, wizard, thief, archer, and cleric. Each of these classes has a prime attribute that determines the maximum level the character can achieve. Fighters are governed by strength, thieves by stealth, archers by agility, wizards by intelligence, and clerics by wisdom.

     

The four characters.

    

So far, so good. But the character sheet doesn't otherwise identify a specific class for each character. Instead, the words "Combat," "Clerical," "Sorcery," "Archery," and "Thieving" appear on the right-hand side of the sheet. These are similar but not identical to the supposed five classes. How am I supposed to tell what class each character is? None of the words are highlighted or marked. Clicking on them does nothing. I guess the character is whatever class has the highest attribute? The manual notes that none of the characters is a cleric, but clerical abilities "can be utilized by any of them with high wisdom." But Astrovir has equally high values in intelligence and wisdom. Is he a wizard or cleric? And none of the characters is highest in agility; does that mean I have no archer? What if I adjust the default values, which the game lets you do? Am I changing the character's class? The manual is obtuse about these things, so I just shrugged and went with the default party, figuring I'll at least explore a bit. 

  

The character creation screen.

     

Gameplay begins on an overworld map seen from a side view. The party can choose to go to the city of Illandria, some ruins, the palace, Mt. Gunderbad, and a pyramid. Clicking any of these icons transitions the interface to the classic "studio" perspective used by the World Builder engine, in which the characters seem to be on a stage with no fourth wall. The first time the player visits the map screen, the game automatically selects the city of Illandria and takes the party there, so I guess that's a bit of a hint.

    

The outdoor map.

    

In "studio" view, the exploration window occupies the top two-thirds of the screen. The bottom third has the party members' names, inventories, and character sheets. The selected party member automatically acts as the lead when you move, and the rest follow. You can move with arrow keys or the numberpad, but most interaction is done with the mouse, with only a few keyboard backups.

  

Before I turn it off, I should note that there's some semi-tonal "Arabian"-sounding music, more thematic than melodic, over both the main title and the exploration window. It's credited to Christopher Barker, who also did Conan and the two Excalibur games. It's appropriate to the setting. Sound effects are otherwise relatively sparse, mostly limited to clangs and screams during combat.

      

Entering the city through the southern gate.

    

As we begin to explore the city, we bump into NPCs, and they begin talking to us. Some of them offer some light dialogue options. A few examples:

   

• An NPC groans about how he has to carry a sack around all the time and can't stop or put it down. "It's like there's some strange force governing my every action." Funny, but it's a little too early in the genre to pretend that NPCs are self-aware. He suggests I talk to Ulg, the crippled sage, and gives me directions to his home.

• An old man says, "Greetings, kindred spirit." This annoys the party for some reason.

     

Why are all the responses so rude?

      

• A woman carrying buckets compliments our appearance and suggests we visit her in the Orc's Nest some night.

• A woman asks for "alms for the poor." We give her a gold piece, and she recommends we visit Sahhar the Seer near King Osric's Palace. 

• An old man named Crazy Eddy plays a variety of word games with us. First, he asks us a question with all the words in reverse order. We have to respond the same way. Then he puts all his words in alphabetical order, then anagrams them. At the end, he says that if we ever defeat a dragon, we should be careful to search the area before leaving.

    

He spoke to us backwards, so our answer has to be backwards.

   

• A crotchety old woman says that the passage to Moc Madure's lair is through the great mountain to the north.

      

I don't know if any of the dialogue options are different with different characters selected as the leader. They don't seem to vary.

We also start wandering into buildings, eager for a place that might sell supplies. We started the game with 1000 gold pieces but no weapons or armor. Key buildings aren't marked, so we have to try all of them. We find:

    

• A temple with a priestess who performs "mana restoration." We don't need it yet.

• A residence with a woman who's plainly terrified of us.

     

I guess that's a sensible reaction to four warriors bursting through your door.

    

• An inn where we can sleep for 10 gold.

• A residence where a man praises us for going after Moc Madure. He tells us that Moc is "more lizard than man" and recommends that we don't try to reason with him.

• A merchant! He sells steel helms for 20 gold, steel mail for 50 gold, steel shields for 30 gold, and leather versions of those things for 10, 30, and 20. I do some experimenting, and it doesn't seem that the non-warrior characters have any trouble equipping an all-steel kit, so I just buy that for all of them. The interface for buying and selling is a little cumbersome.

    

Keena's kit when we're done. There are spaces for a helm, shield, weapon, armor, boots, necklace, four rings, and whatever the thing in the lower right is.

    

In the next house that I wander into, some guy starts attacking me with a sword. The game switches to its combat interface, which I don't have time to figure out before he kills Keena, and wow do the party members howl when they die.

    

The party members apparently don't know how to fight with their fists.

     

The manual doesn't have a lot to offer on combat, just that you should be able to left-click for a single attack and right-click for continuous attacks. Since no clicking works, I decide that the game won't let us attack without weapons, which turns out to be true. I abandon my previous exploration pattern and start hunting for some place that will sell us weapons.

   

Around this time, I start experiencing another problem: the game won't save. The way it's supposed to work is that you click the "Save" icon, then click one of three save slots, then type a name, then hit ENTER. This works maybe once or twice with every new game, but inevitably I click in the box and it won't let me type anything but spaces, ENTER doesn't work, and there's no way to escape or get out of the box. I'm forced to quit the emulator and reload, losing whatever progress I made in the meantime. It happens so often that I can barely make any progress in the game. I try several DOSBox configurations and several versions of the game with no effect. (No one online seems to have mentioned the problem, but there is very little about the game online at all.) Finally, I re-install a DOSBox version that allows save states, and the rest of this session is dependent on those. I know from experience that they will eventually fail, so I don't know how far I'll be able to get. Suggestions are welcome.

     

There is no way off this screen.

     

I find a general goods store (Timur's Fine Junk), where I buy a lockpick set, some boots, and a couple of empty potion bottles. The merchant also sells knives, but that's not a solution to my weapon problem, as the game regards them as throwing weapons. 

     

The store interface.

     

I'm unable to find a weapons shop, but after a while, I realize that from the southern gate where you enter the city, you can run around the perimeter of the city's walls to three other entrances. 

    

An alternate way into the city.

    

It still takes me a while. The city is chaotic and hard to navigate, and I find myself wishing the game had come with a city map, like Conan did. I pop into places long enough to confirm they're not stores and then leave, ignoring NPCs and fleeing combats. I do find a pawn shop selling Thor's Hammer, but it costs more gold than I have for even one of them. The merchant in Tughril's Armory is maddeningly labeled "weaponer" but only has armor to sell. I ignore numerous shops of other types: potions, scrolls, amulets, inns, pubs. This city is big. I like that, but it shouldn't be this hard to find starting weapons.

      

It's not always easy to tell where you can walk.

    

Finally, I wander into a place called Momo's Weapons. His inventory is a bit unbalanced: he has maces for 30 gold, +3 swords for 725 gold, +4 swords for 850 gold, and +4 bows for 250 gold. No matter—at least he has the maces. I buy four of them, taking us down to 200 gold pieces, and finally settle in for exploring the rest of the city, starting with a return to the south entrance and that first battle.

     

Three very expensive items and a common one.

      

Combat works as advertised: you left-click for one attack and right-click for continuous attacks. Spells will come later, when I find scrolls and ingredients. It takes me a couple of "reloads" (restoring save states) to defeat this guy. On his body, I find a healing potion, a magic potion, and a four-leaf clover.

   

Indoor areas often reward you for clicking on pieces of furniture, tapestries, or other objects. Here, I get 9 carrots (I guess these are also spell reagents) by clicking on a tapestry and 5 bones for clicking on a bookcase. 

   

There are things hidden in the plants to the left.

      

So I guess it goes without saying that this is the sort of game where if you get attacked while burglarizing a private home, you retaliate with deadly force, and you loot anything that you can loot. Conan was like that, anyway. I don't know enough yet to determine whether it's possible to play this game virtuously.

     

A lot of doors have to be picked.

     

I finish this session by exploring the rest of the district accessible from the southern gate. In addition to what I've already described:

   

• An old man on the street says that he once had a sword made by Momo, and he gives us directions to Momo's Weapons. Goddamn it.

     

Where were you an hour ago?

     

• Keena picks the lock of a residence where we find a healing potion and a suit of leather armor.

• A guardroom where a guard, while relating a story about a thief they recently caught with a bunch of keys, instills in us the importance of finding keys to unlock some doors.

• A residence where a guy named Zamander claims to know our father. "We fought together in the Baythan Wars." He says this to all of us, so I guess we're siblings. He tells us that the sections of town have names, though he only tells us three: the Thieves' Quarter on the west, the Residential Section in the middle, and the Merchants' Quarter to the east. "Unless you're a good fighter, the easiest way to get from one to the other is to leave the city [and] go around." I'm not sure what being a good fighter has to do with it. He also tells us what to expect out in the world: The Black Witch is in the ruins by the lake; Khalimad is in the White Palace; and Moc Madure lives in the volcano.

      

Zamander reminds us about the main quest.

    

• In a residence, a man named Yuga tells us that there's a band of barbarians in town fighting the Black Circle. "They'd make pudding out of the likes of you."

• In a residence, a woman named Abaton offers harp lessons and offers to sell us a harp for 100 gold, although I can't find any mechanism to take her up on it. (The dialogue only says, "Maybe I'll pay.") We find 8 serpent eye potions (reagents) on her bookshelf, plus one of those Thor Hammers. It does 30 damage against the 6 done by the mace, so I guess that's better.

     

She also appears to be dancing.

   

• In a vacant house, we have another fight with a swordsman. He leaves a serpent's eye potion and a rat tail.

• And another battle in the next residence. He leaves a +1 mace, a knife, and some berries, and his house has some more reagents. 

      

Post-combat looting.

    

• Haroun's Lotions and Potions offers healing, mana, cure poison, and resurrection potions.

• In a residence, what appears to be a nude woman lying on a bed complains that she asked "Meethed" to procure 10 men for her and they're supposed to be clean, "and NOT dressed like clowns." 

• A man named Yarra complains about his lack of fortune lately. He has a potted plant that yields a Mana Ring.

    

To be fair, I did rob him.

     

The dialogue options in these encounters are a little unsatisfying, allowing neither any role-playing nor the ability to have the character speak in a consistent voice. For instance, there's a guard who warns us not to speak to the guy in shackles (actually, a pillory) nearby. "He's a thief." The responses are:

   

• "Really, that guy's a thief?" This elicits an amusing story about how the guards caught him poking around the king's harem "with a big, stupid grin on his face." The concubines were "all passed out, mumbling 'no more . . . no more . . .'"

• "He looks like my old alchemy teacher." The guard warns us: "This guy could charm you into thinkin' he was your long lost brother."

    

Not the most interesting dialogue options.

    

Nothing terribly important happens in either case, and nothing stops us from re-engaging the dialogue and selecting the other option. So few games are offering full-sentence dialogues during this era that it's disappointing when one does and then trivializes it.

   

Other than saving, my biggest problem is identifying equipment. Sometimes, when you first pick up an item, it tells you what it is and gives you a little description. I can't figure out for the life of me how to get that same screen to come up once you already have an item in your inventory. Maybe you can't. Maybe if you miss it the first time, you're screwed.

 

Combat is unsatisfying, and if the creators were going to make it this unsatisfying, the least they could have done is give an "everybody attack" button so you don't have to click on the characters individually and then try to get them to click on a moving target who is often hidden behind another character. It also would have been nice to pause.

     

Brand started with only 20 strength.

     

Finally, I don't have a great sense of how character development works. The manual talks about experience and levels, but neither is made explicit on the character sheet. It does seem like strength has increased for a few characters, so perhaps attributes go up directly from exercising the appropriate skills.

     

In short, it's the typical Synergistic combination of interesting ideas with somewhat janky execution. The setting is intriguing, and I enjoy exploring the city, but we'll see if I can even restore the session next time.

   

Time so far: 2 hours