Veil of Darkness (1993): Initial Impressions

Veil of Darkness is one of those games that slipped under my radar, as I don't think it was a particularly popular title and by the time I was in the market again for PC games the selection in my area was really spotty.

(I did however own and play The Summoning, which is from the same developer and seemingly even uses the same engine.)

Veil of Darkness opens with an impressive animated introduction, though I admit that it animates so slowly that it honestly gets a little boring halfway through.  After the intro you wake up in a house in some Transylvania-like town and soon find that you are the one prophesied to take out the evil vampire ruling the region.


This is basically a point-and-click adventure game with some very very light RPG elements on top.  Much of the game so far involves exploring, talking to people, and solving light puzzles, broken up occasionally by realtime combat that is frankly not interesting at all.

The game generally looks good with some attention to detail in the backgrounds.  I was especially impressed with the houses.  However, while it definitely looks better than The Summoning (released from the same developers just a year prior), the characters and items are still tiny and lack detail... and in the meantime the jaw-dropping Ultima VII was released.  In fact, the items are so tiny that they can be difficult to see, though the developers realized this and added an option to magnify all items.

The audio is not great.  Although it supports the Roland MT-32, I suspect that the game was composed for Adlib and just converted to Roland quickly, as some instruments sound awful.  I've tried the game on both an MT-32 and CM-500 (in Mode B), and the game just sounds unnatural on Roland devices.  Of particular note is the otherwise excellent tune that plays in the bar (note how it grows quieter and quieter the further away from the bar room you are in the building), that is ruined by a shrill screeching that is supposed to be a violinist performing for the customers.  I really do not understand it, as the Roland MT-32 is particularly well-suited for strings and other orchestral music.

The game offers you a checklist of sorts in the form of a scroll you obtain early in the game listing all of the things you are prophesied to accomplish.  This is really cool.  It gives you a general idea of what you will need to do next, and since the prophecy is told in the form of a metaphorical poem figuring it out is like a meta puzzle running throughout the game.

As you work through the game more and more locations open up on the map.  This fortune teller reminding me immediately of a similar character in the introduction to Ultima VI.  It's always a lot of fun to explore a new location, and the writing is quite decent.  Strangely, the dialog is quite brief compared with The Summoning, which is more of a traditional RPG while Veil of Darkness is definitely more of a character-based adventure game.

Although I have enjoyed the game so far, the solutions to some of the puzzles are kind of out there.  There is one point where you need to lift a curse from some guy, and the solution is basically to kill him and have him brought back to life.  I dunno how anyone would just stumble upon that (I had to look that one up).  The atmosphere and interesting characters more than make up for that though, and I am definitely planning on seeing this one to its end.

Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986): Initial Impressions

The Might and Magic series has always interested me, though until now I have never sat down and played any of the games (other than the Heroes of Might and Magic spinoff games).  I always assumed the earliest games would be unbearably clunky crawls through endless dungeons, and in most cases I hate to start these kinds of long series of games somewhere in the middle, as going through in order often gives you a lot of insight.

My first memory of M&M was standing in Walden Software and deciding which game I would get for my Commodore 64.  Any kid into computer RPGs would immediately be attracted to the artwork on the cover on M&M1: even now you look at that and think, I want to explore every inch of that map.  I had finally narrowed my choice down to M&M and Ultima VI.  Based on past experience I was pretty terrified of making a poor choice and getting stuck with an awful game for the next six months or so, so I chickened out and got the tried and true Ultima sequel.  Sadly, although Ultima VI is an amazing game, the C64 port is pretty horrible outside of the excellent music that plays during the introduction, requiring you to swap disks constantly and even missing stuff from the PC version.

My next exposure to M&M came in the form of the Genesis port of Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World, which a friend owned.  It was actually an extremely faithful port and one of the best RPGs on that console.

At one point later down the line I bought one of the later games in the series, but barely even played it.

A year or so ago I bought the Might and Magic bundle off of GOG, and after reading some impressions decided to start off with the first game.

Might and Magic begins with a seizure-inducing title screen and a catchy tune.  To be honest, I was tempted to play this on my Apple II (which offers slightly more colorful graphics) or C64 (which has much nicer music)... but went with the PC version just because for the convenience of it (and there isn't much music anyway).

Instead of creating a party I just decided to go with the premade characters, as they start equipped with some items for a slightly easier time getting started.

The game starts you out in town, and one thing you learn very quickly is that not even towns are safe.  In addition to fixed encounters in some rooms, monsters also wander the halls (streets?)... and in the beginning winning even a single combat can be difficult.

After gaining a level or two and improving your equipment the game becomes a lot easier, and once you get used to the keyboard only interface the game plays very quickly.  In fact, the game is really a joy to play after the initial 15 minute period of learning how to navigate.

The game is played entirely from a first person view, and provides no map.  The game is huge, so you will need to draw maps as you go along.  I do not recommend downloading maps; the game was balanced assuming that you would be exploring every square, so if you just rush from objective to objective you will find yourself too weak to accomplish anything.  Besides, the whole point of the game is to explore this massive world and figure it out, and mapping is a central part of this.

Combat is simple but offers more to think about than just attacking or casting spells.  There is a rudimentary positioning system in place, and characters and monsters may only engage in melee if they are adjacent to each other.  Spells and missile weapons can be fired even from long range.

Although you get a crudely drawn image of the enemy when you first encounter it, once you enter battle it's all text.  It's not a bad interface, but I would have at least liked the game to have shown my HPs on this screen (rather than having to access another screen to check).

After a few hours I had mapped (most) of the starting town, a good portion of a dungeon underneath the town, and some of the wilderness area outside the town.
 

At this point I had some decent equipment and had reached level 4 for all six characters.  Battles in the town were all ridiculously easy, while battles in other areas ranged from easy to impossible.  Luckily, if you die you can just reset and reload from the last time you saved an an inn.

Overall, it's a great game and I would have absolutely loved this if I had been wise enough to choose it over Ultima VI!  Due to the open nature of the game you are free to set your own goals, and if you get stuck you seemingly always have a few directions you can started exploring in.  The plot wants me to go visit a wizard in another town, but I could just as well decide to ignore that for now and finishing exploring the town dungeon, or set off to explore the wilderness a bit more.  Anyone who is into computer RPGs and dismisses M&M1 as a clunky-looking dungeon crawl should really give the game a chance, as it plays much better than you might expect for a game released in 1986.

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993): Initial Impressions

I've heard a lot—good and bad—about this series, and although the first game gets rave reviews for its detailed graphics and streamlined dungeon exploration, I've read troubling things about its simplicity and interface.  I've therefore been somewhat hesitant to hunt the game down, even though GOG offers the first two games in a bundle for a very good price.  It's been on my wishlist there for at least a year.

Well, I had some other purchases to make on GOG and decided to throw this in the cart, and now I can say a little something about it.

The first thing I do with a GOG game is take the data and drop it into my dedicated DOS folder.  I run D-Fend Reloaded for all my DOS games, since I like being able to easily tweak the settings depending on whether I am playing on my CRT (320x200 no scaling) or LCD (scaled up to native res).  Once I got it all set up, I relaxed with a beer and got ready to explore some dungeons.

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos  is a real-time first-person RPG in which you control a small party of adventurers as you explore dungeons and wilderness areas.  Although combat is real-time, it basically works on a turn-based system a character must wait a certain amount of time in between each action (although you access your inventory, etc. in real time).

First impression: this is one beautiful game.  The intro is all hand drawn and animated in an era where you would expect some CG that has aged poorly.  The artists at Westwood were truly masters of low res pixel art.  Look at the painstakingly rendered light and shade.  The way faces—not just mouths and eyes—are animated when characters speak.  This continues with the game proper with even UI elements receiving more detail than characters in most games: the compass needle springs into place as you move instead of just snapping into place, and more.

The games start with you selecting one of several characters—basically from a fighter, thief, wizard, or jack-of-all-trades character.  I went with the balanced guy, thinking this would let me enjoy all the stuff in the game to some degree.

Second impression: the soundtrack is pretty awful.  Granted, I don't have access to my Roland SC-55 as I've moved into the living room due to the cold, but I do have BASSMIDI along with a Sound Canvas soundfont loaded... and while I know the soundfont is no substitute, I also know from experience that it is close enough to judge.  Compare this with Anvil of Dawn's atmospheric and—yes, catchy—soundtrack, and Land of Lore's anemic jazzy, EZ listening noise comes off as almost unlistenable.  Coming from the Legend of Kyrandia people, this is simply unforgivable.

After some brief exploration of the starting castle (including a weapon/armor shop you can't afford anything from—big negative in my opinion) you have no choice but to leave and explore the surrounding woods.  Despite the best effort of the music, the woods are quite atmospheric, and I really like the smooth scrolling effect as you walk around.  You soon realize though that the area is very small and linear, and although there are several squares that bring up unique graphics, you have really only one way to go.  Combat at this point is just pressing your attack button, waiting until it becomes active again, then pressing it again.  It seems that you can move around to avoid enemy attacks.

You pick up your first companion shortly into the game, and while I was hoping this would make the battles a little more tactical, it just gives you one more attack button to press and one more health bar to worry about.  At this point I realized how inconvenience the inventory bar is.  You can see it at the bottom of the screenshot above.  You place all items in a seemingly never ending strip of boxes at the bottom of the screen, and unless you tediously manage this thing by hand, you will be madly scrolling item by item as you frantically search for the antidote when someone has been poisoned in battle.  It eclipses even Fallout in terms of the unwieldiness of its interface.

An hour in and you pick switch out your companion for another guy, and find this lady.  At this point, juggling three attack buttons and health bars is more annoying than thrilling, and I started wondering if this game all flash and no substance.  The graphics continue to impress, but the puzzles—if you can even call them puzzles—are of the "press the switch next to the door" variety.

At this early point in the game you have what amounts to a wizard and a thief in your party, but the crazy thing is that I have not found a single use for a thief (you can't sneak, and all locks are opened by switches and keys), and the wizard is able to launch a single "high power" spell (that cannot even kill a single enemy) before his magic points are completely used up.  Most battles are me launching that single spell, then cycling through each character's attack button.  Probably should have gone with the fighter for my main character.  I'd also like to mention how frustrating it is that I seem to miss 75% of the time, but enemies hit nearly every time and also can poison you (which seems to last until you die).

So after a couple hours I feel a bit conflicted over this one.  It is easily one of the best looking dungeon crawlers ever, but there is very little underneath the beautiful graphics.  Having said that, I am still interested in seeing what comes next.