I admit it.
I have a huge backlog of video games. A backlog that I seemingly refuse to take care of. It's not that they're bad games (okay, maybe some of them are) or that I don't have time to do so - I have plenty of time. It's the sheer lack of motivation. So, I came up with something that is partially my idea, partially based on what is being done over at CRPG Addict and partially inspired by The Backloggery - I decided that I was going to blog about each step of the way. Sure, considering how much time I put into games this will be an absolute nightmare, but I don't plan on blogging about every little step I take in every game, as I tend to spread my time over multiple games at once, which is probably not the smartest thing to do, considering that it doesn't allow me to focus fully and solely on one title. But the big steps - those will be mentioned.
However, if I feel a title is worthwhile enough, based on no criteria whatsoever enough, I'll blog solely about my time with that game as I see it from the beginning to the end. The current problem that has prevented me from starting this is the fact that I don't really keep up with my records of where I am and how much progress I've made since the last sitting. If I start talking about a game on here and start devoting a larger share of my time to it, I want to start from the beginning, not 2 or 5 or 10 hours into it.
Tonight, I did start a new game - Ishar: Legend of the Fortress. I recently picked up the Ishar Compilation pack from Good Old Games and decided to skip over Crystals of Arborea temporarily after trying it out. The problem was was the fact that it felt too clunky, too random, too tedious to attempt a serious playthrough for right now. But enough about that, back to Ishar. I will admit to having attempted Ishar in the past, but giving up shortly after meeting my demise at the first band of wandering kobolds one would encounter, which is to say, maybe five minutes into an average playthrough. At first glance, Ishar is a game that really doesn't pull any punches - it dumps you at the western edge of the gameworld with no real indicator of where you're supposed to go other than the fact that you're supposed to defeat Krogh, who killed Jarel, the main character of Crystals of Arborea. The combat is swift, enemies hit hard and relief is not easy to find. Everything (including saving!) costs way more than the meager amount you find on enemies. The map is nigh useless and every skill seems useless. But peel back the layers and you'll find many solutions to said problems.
You start as Aramir, a pre-defined warrior character. There is no character creation whatsoever, you have no choice but to start as Aramir. The game drops you a few tiles away from a rotund, balding human that informs you that there's a tavern to the south (actually southwest) that you should check out. Taking his advice (and forgoing the chance to recruit him) I stumbled around the southern half of the island trying to find said tavern. I did encounter a few kobolds along the way, but I discovered that there are no turns in Ishar - you attack as quickly as you can click the attack button or press the corresponding function key that is tied to that character's attack command. This causes combat to devolve into me mashing the F2, F4, and F6 keys as fast as I can as to hope that I'll come out of combat unscarred. This is where my first problem came up, after those first few combats, I had lost some HP and noticed that there was a "first aid" command amongst the many other skill-related actions that your party members can do. I tried getting Aramir to use first aid on himself, but to no avail, I healed all of 1 HP and repeated attempts did absolutely nothing. I don't know if I was missing something important or if my first aid skill wasn't high enough.
Soon enough, I found the tavern the guy at the start told me about. I thought resting might restore my HP until I found out that a mere 1 night stay at the inn was going to cost me half of my starting 2,000 gold budget. Deciding not to spend so much, I grabbed the one NPC that was recruitable - a human ranger that's comparable in both stats and skills to Aramir. The second major problem came up shortly thereafter - each NPC you recruit comes with nothing, except maybe some gold. The NPC I had just recruited came with a paltry 200 gold, which wasn't even enough to buy one stack of food at the nearby general store and nothing else. No weapons, no armor, no consumables. After exploring some more and finding a gate that did nothing but teleport me to the northern side of the starting island and generate even more kobolds for me to fight, I discovered three things - a house that had one of Jarel's companions in it, who gave me a direction to go in - finding the spirit of Azalghorm in a nearby area. I also discovered a house set a short distance away from the village that contained only one thing in it - a box containing a small fortune of 15,000 gold, enough to equip my entire party, eat, sleep and most importantly, save the game (which costs 1,000 gold per save.) From there, I discovered another thing that rubbed me the wrong way - resting at an inn recovers an almost random number of HP. Aramir barely recovered any of his HP while the ranger (who had taken some damage in the few battles I had fought) recovered a good 50% of his HP. I tried resting again and getting similar results for Aramir. Lastly, I discovered a scantily clad priestess north of the tavern that was wanting to travel with me, so I recruited her.
That was the smartest move I had made so far. She came packing three simple spells - healing, sleep and magic missile. I had finally found a reliable source of healing. Granted, said reliable source still needed to be taken to an inn to recover hey mental strength (which is tracked alongside physical strength, which both are separate from your actual HP), but it was a good source. From there, I managed to find my way to where Azalghorm was waiting for me. He gave me three quests to undertake before hunting down Krogh - Finding a Magician's talisman, finding an exhausted witch and helping and finding a set of rune tablets. Shortly after recording everything, I stumbled upon one of the rune tablets not too far from Azalghorm's location. I then traveled westward into the area of Fimnuirh, where my party members started taking damage at very random times. I looked around and around and around, but to no avail - there wasn't any enemies around. Something told me that there was either something I hadn't found yet that was going to prevent me from taking damage (such as swamp boots for crossing swamps in the Ultima games) or there were invisible enemies. I couldn't ponder the thought long, as whatever was in that forest had killed my priestess, leaving me without a reliable source of healing.
But my hypothesis was proven correct as I made my way back to the area northwest of Fimnuirh and found a hut with a person that told me that there was an invisible lizardman that prowled the forest and that I was going to need a "mental vision helmet" to unmask him. He didn't bother giving me a hint as to WHERE it might be, just that I needed it. He also passed on the information that a man named Brozl had magic rings that would protect my party from dragon fire. I suspect that I'll need to find those rings eventually, lest I die whenever I do encounter a dragon. Northeast of that hut was a hedgemaze that contained a few bags of gold containing 3,000-4,000 gold a piece, which took care of any sort of money problems after that original 15,000 discovery. On the western side of the maze, an armored knight showed up and nearly wiped out my party after my pitiful attempts to damage it. I had a sneaking suspicion that I'll need to kill him later to get the mental vision helmet or some other plot related item. The only direction I could really travel to from there was eastward into the maze-like forest of Rhudgast. I found a dungeon lying in the middle of the forest - a very simple, interconnected one. Unfortunately for me, an ogre decided to make my party acquaintances with his club and killed of Aramir and a barbarian NPC that I picked up along the way. Curiously enough, the game doesn't end if Aramir is killed - it treats him as if he was just another recruitable NPC and continues on with whatever party members you currently have. But after Aramir and the barbarian were slain, I discovered a nasty little thing - inventories are not dropped upon death. Whatever that character was carrying goes bye-bye whenever he/she slips off the mortal coil, and if that person was carrying a key or a plot item, you can kiss it goodbye forever. After that, I found out that I couldn't progress any further into the dungeon and put the game aside for now.
Whew that was long-winded, hopefully I can start condensing these things down to a more manageable size unless people actually like rambling accounts of French-developed early 90s first person CRPGs. Until next time.
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