Game Review: Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire
2018-Jan-13, Saturday 20:52![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
For a long time, Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire was my gaming white whale. After I played Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero at my friend's house, I played a copy of it for a long time, and later went out and bought the VGA remake. By that time Quest for Glory III: Wages of War was out, so I got that too, and later Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness. But Quest for Glory II never got a remake and still had EGA graphics in the days of 640x480 and 256 colors, and that's probably why I could never find it for sale. For years, I would import my character from QFG straight into QFGIII and rely on the recap at the beginning of QFGIII explaining the battle against the wizard Ad Avis and the salvation of Raseir. I assume Sierra put it in there because there were a lot of people in my situation.
While I was at university, I finally found a copy of Quest for Glory II on the high seas and played through the whole series back to back. I didn't fall immediately in love with it or discover a magical hidden gem. It's a good game with a few oddities. But it's better constructed and more true to the spirit of Quest for Glory than its immediate sequel, and as a QFG game it's a better adventure game than most of Sierra's output while also being a fun RPG to boot.
Viaduct.
When initially conceived, the Quest for Glory games were to be a tetralogy with each game having a direction, a classical element, and a season. Quest for Glory I is the season of spring, the element of earth, and the north direction. Quest for Glory II is the season of summer, the element of fire, and the south direction. And if you guessed that QFGII takes place in a desert, you'd be partially right.
The main location for most of the game is the city of Shapeir, jewel of the desert sands, with culture and stylings obviously based on Arabia. This is the homelands of the merchant Abdulla Doo and of the katta Shameen and Shema, and their hospitality is the original reason that the hero decides to travel so far from Spielberg. When the game opens, the hero is sitting in the Katta's Tail Inn, talking to Adbulla Doo about the glories of the land of Shapeir, and then the hero is set free to do...something.
That's the strange part of QFGII; it simultaneously has a very regimented schedule while also having long periods of downtime. In QFGI, the ultimate quest the hero needs to solve can be learned from the sheriff and the Adventurers Guild Hall right away. In QFGII, it's not immediately clear that there are any problems that need solving at all, and while the work of evil wizardry quickly shows itself, the reward for solving the first puzzle in the game--a pretty complicated one involving navigating the maze of Shapeir's streets to find the moneychanger--is to buy a map of the city with few sites of interest and no reason to look around other than curiosity.
This is not the proper puzzle solution.
Quest for Glory had a slow start too, but it was obvious what the main goal of the game was: save the Baron's children. In QFGII, it's possible to learn from dialogue that Raseir is a more oppressive city than Shapeir, that the Emir has disappeared, and that the katta were exiled from Raseir due to the troubles, but not the specifics. There's a caravan leaving to Raseir in sixteen days and the desert cannot be crossed by a single hero on a saurus, so you wait. And the days pass, and there are a few sidequests to accomplish, like recovering monster ingredients for the alchemist Harik Attar, stealing from a couple houses in town, or joining the Wizard's Institute of Technocery and graduating from mere Magic User to Wizard. And once those are accomplished, there's nothing else to do but grind.
Once the first elemental shows up and Abu al-Njun the astrologer and Omar the poet talk about further calamities, the main objective becomes obvious, but that doesn't help the rigidity of the schedule. I mentioned in my review of QFGI that the main flaw of the hybrid adventure game/RPG structure adds an additional point of frustration, since it's possible to not know the solution to a puzzle but also to know the solution to a puzzle but not have the skill to accomplish it. QFGII adds a third element, where it's possible to both know the solution to a puzzle and have the skill to accomplish it but to have to wait multiple days until the puzzle presents itself to be solved. A lot of days are just downtime, and you can either sleep through them or use them to grind skills. I chose the latter and that's why all my skills were at 200 when I beat the game. In QFGI, all that grinding would have delayed me beating the game. In QFGII, it's not like I had anything else to do with my time.
That said, some of this is my fault. There's no actual penalty for just sleeping through until the next day, and when the hero leaves his room, Shameen warns him if there is some time-limited event like an elemental rampaging through the streets of Shapeir or a performance by Shema or Omar the Poet, and it's not possible to miss a time-critical event because the elementals destroy Shapeir if they aren't stopped. And in Raseir, where there's really nothing to do most of the time, days are deliberately shortened and often begin in mid-afternoon. So the time structure is only an annoyance, not a crippling flaw.
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
It does allow more time in the best part of QFGII, which is the setting. QFGII is an urban game, almost entirely taking place in the sprawling, rich city of Shapeir and ending in its twin sister city Raseir. While there is a vast desert outside the city gates and a few places of interest in that desert, nothing there is required to complete the game. It's possible to finish the critical path without ever leaving the city gates and, for thieves or wizards, without ever fighting a battle at all.
And Shapeir really is the jewel of the desert. Where Spielburg was cramped and poor, depopulated by years of the curse laid on the valley, Shapeir is a prosperous, sprawling metropolis, inhabited by thousands of people. It has color NPCs, visible shopping in the various plazas or occasionally walking down the covered streets when the hero passes by. It has a dozen merchants in their stalls in the plazas rather than a single general store. Sure, most of Shapeir is just color, with locked doors that have nothing behind them in the twisting streets that mostly exist to provide the illusion of a bustling city. But for me, it works. There's a map in the manual which is designed for solving the find the moneychanger puzzle, and all those street names are visible in the game. It's possible to navigate without the magic map by looking at street signs and asking for directions, and as someone who loves Morrowind, I appreciate that even if I did often resort to the magic map. Sometimes I would just walk through the streets of Shapeir, checking my position on the magic map to make sure I didn't get lost, and enjoy the journey.
I mean, sure, I was training sneaking by sneaking through the streets, but I was also enjoying the journey.
This also makes Raseir's oppressive air even more of a contrast. There are no merchants in the streets, nor are there any wandering pedestrians. If the hero explores the city, it's without the benefit of a map, alone and in silence. Many streets are blocked off, which serves both to make it harder to get lost and to emphasize the freedom of Shapeir and the insularity of Raseir. Without days spent in Shapeir and meeting its people, Raseir wouldn't have nearly as much of an impact.
This was my first kill.
There is one element that I think Quest for Glory II is unambiguously superior at, and that's the combat system. QFGI (and III) both have simplistic combat, with options to attack, dodge left, dodge right, and block. QFGII expands the range of options, allowing for high, medium, and low attacks and blocks and multiple dodge directions, requiring that the player watch what their opponent is doing and then react to it in order to avoid damage. It's my favorite combat system in the series, and I wish it was better utilized. As I mentioned before, only the Fighter has to get into combat at all, so it's entirely possible that people who play through as a Wizard or Thief will never even see it.
It's also possible to train to the point where all combats can be won by spamming attack and stunlocking enemies, but that's just RPGs. It's no different than overleveling in Dragon Quest.
Similarly, I think QFGII has the best parser interface. The addition of a "tell about" option expands the range of possible interactions, and the parser recognizes a lot of other commands like "greet" or yes/no answers. It's true that parsers can lead to frustration, like when I was trying to give Harik Attar the Alchemist the ghoul claws he was looking for. For scorpion tails, GIVE TAIL worked just fine, but I got a parser error when I tried GIVE CLAWS. It turns out I needed to SELL CLAWS. I do appreciate the design space that parsers afford, making it possible to hide information for the player and allowing the player to try asking about anything on their mind, but there are undoubtedly times when it is frustrating. If only there was a midpoint between the QFGII parser and later games' "click mouth on NPC," that'd be the real sweet spot.
Our hero.
I know someone for whom Quest for Glory II is his favorite game in the series, and while that's definitely not true for me, I can see why someone would like it. It's different enough from the other Quest for Glory games that it provides a unique experience, and Shapeir really is a good setting. I wish that the designers had been able to implement all of their initial ideas without meddling--there's a reason that the oppressive city of Raseir is named with an anagram of "Sierra"--but what we got is a good game and worth playing even in its EGA, 16 color glory.
And if that's too antiquated, there's a VGA remake available from AGD with an icon-based interface, so there's really no excuse.
While I was at university, I finally found a copy of Quest for Glory II on the high seas and played through the whole series back to back. I didn't fall immediately in love with it or discover a magical hidden gem. It's a good game with a few oddities. But it's better constructed and more true to the spirit of Quest for Glory than its immediate sequel, and as a QFG game it's a better adventure game than most of Sierra's output while also being a fun RPG to boot.
Viaduct.
When initially conceived, the Quest for Glory games were to be a tetralogy with each game having a direction, a classical element, and a season. Quest for Glory I is the season of spring, the element of earth, and the north direction. Quest for Glory II is the season of summer, the element of fire, and the south direction. And if you guessed that QFGII takes place in a desert, you'd be partially right.
The main location for most of the game is the city of Shapeir, jewel of the desert sands, with culture and stylings obviously based on Arabia. This is the homelands of the merchant Abdulla Doo and of the katta Shameen and Shema, and their hospitality is the original reason that the hero decides to travel so far from Spielberg. When the game opens, the hero is sitting in the Katta's Tail Inn, talking to Adbulla Doo about the glories of the land of Shapeir, and then the hero is set free to do...something.
That's the strange part of QFGII; it simultaneously has a very regimented schedule while also having long periods of downtime. In QFGI, the ultimate quest the hero needs to solve can be learned from the sheriff and the Adventurers Guild Hall right away. In QFGII, it's not immediately clear that there are any problems that need solving at all, and while the work of evil wizardry quickly shows itself, the reward for solving the first puzzle in the game--a pretty complicated one involving navigating the maze of Shapeir's streets to find the moneychanger--is to buy a map of the city with few sites of interest and no reason to look around other than curiosity.
This is not the proper puzzle solution.
Quest for Glory had a slow start too, but it was obvious what the main goal of the game was: save the Baron's children. In QFGII, it's possible to learn from dialogue that Raseir is a more oppressive city than Shapeir, that the Emir has disappeared, and that the katta were exiled from Raseir due to the troubles, but not the specifics. There's a caravan leaving to Raseir in sixteen days and the desert cannot be crossed by a single hero on a saurus, so you wait. And the days pass, and there are a few sidequests to accomplish, like recovering monster ingredients for the alchemist Harik Attar, stealing from a couple houses in town, or joining the Wizard's Institute of Technocery and graduating from mere Magic User to Wizard. And once those are accomplished, there's nothing else to do but grind.
Once the first elemental shows up and Abu al-Njun the astrologer and Omar the poet talk about further calamities, the main objective becomes obvious, but that doesn't help the rigidity of the schedule. I mentioned in my review of QFGI that the main flaw of the hybrid adventure game/RPG structure adds an additional point of frustration, since it's possible to not know the solution to a puzzle but also to know the solution to a puzzle but not have the skill to accomplish it. QFGII adds a third element, where it's possible to both know the solution to a puzzle and have the skill to accomplish it but to have to wait multiple days until the puzzle presents itself to be solved. A lot of days are just downtime, and you can either sleep through them or use them to grind skills. I chose the latter and that's why all my skills were at 200 when I beat the game. In QFGI, all that grinding would have delayed me beating the game. In QFGII, it's not like I had anything else to do with my time.
That said, some of this is my fault. There's no actual penalty for just sleeping through until the next day, and when the hero leaves his room, Shameen warns him if there is some time-limited event like an elemental rampaging through the streets of Shapeir or a performance by Shema or Omar the Poet, and it's not possible to miss a time-critical event because the elementals destroy Shapeir if they aren't stopped. And in Raseir, where there's really nothing to do most of the time, days are deliberately shortened and often begin in mid-afternoon. So the time structure is only an annoyance, not a crippling flaw.
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
It does allow more time in the best part of QFGII, which is the setting. QFGII is an urban game, almost entirely taking place in the sprawling, rich city of Shapeir and ending in its twin sister city Raseir. While there is a vast desert outside the city gates and a few places of interest in that desert, nothing there is required to complete the game. It's possible to finish the critical path without ever leaving the city gates and, for thieves or wizards, without ever fighting a battle at all.
And Shapeir really is the jewel of the desert. Where Spielburg was cramped and poor, depopulated by years of the curse laid on the valley, Shapeir is a prosperous, sprawling metropolis, inhabited by thousands of people. It has color NPCs, visible shopping in the various plazas or occasionally walking down the covered streets when the hero passes by. It has a dozen merchants in their stalls in the plazas rather than a single general store. Sure, most of Shapeir is just color, with locked doors that have nothing behind them in the twisting streets that mostly exist to provide the illusion of a bustling city. But for me, it works. There's a map in the manual which is designed for solving the find the moneychanger puzzle, and all those street names are visible in the game. It's possible to navigate without the magic map by looking at street signs and asking for directions, and as someone who loves Morrowind, I appreciate that even if I did often resort to the magic map. Sometimes I would just walk through the streets of Shapeir, checking my position on the magic map to make sure I didn't get lost, and enjoy the journey.
I mean, sure, I was training sneaking by sneaking through the streets, but I was also enjoying the journey.
This also makes Raseir's oppressive air even more of a contrast. There are no merchants in the streets, nor are there any wandering pedestrians. If the hero explores the city, it's without the benefit of a map, alone and in silence. Many streets are blocked off, which serves both to make it harder to get lost and to emphasize the freedom of Shapeir and the insularity of Raseir. Without days spent in Shapeir and meeting its people, Raseir wouldn't have nearly as much of an impact.
This was my first kill.
There is one element that I think Quest for Glory II is unambiguously superior at, and that's the combat system. QFGI (and III) both have simplistic combat, with options to attack, dodge left, dodge right, and block. QFGII expands the range of options, allowing for high, medium, and low attacks and blocks and multiple dodge directions, requiring that the player watch what their opponent is doing and then react to it in order to avoid damage. It's my favorite combat system in the series, and I wish it was better utilized. As I mentioned before, only the Fighter has to get into combat at all, so it's entirely possible that people who play through as a Wizard or Thief will never even see it.
It's also possible to train to the point where all combats can be won by spamming attack and stunlocking enemies, but that's just RPGs. It's no different than overleveling in Dragon Quest.
Similarly, I think QFGII has the best parser interface. The addition of a "tell about" option expands the range of possible interactions, and the parser recognizes a lot of other commands like "greet" or yes/no answers. It's true that parsers can lead to frustration, like when I was trying to give Harik Attar the Alchemist the ghoul claws he was looking for. For scorpion tails, GIVE TAIL worked just fine, but I got a parser error when I tried GIVE CLAWS. It turns out I needed to SELL CLAWS. I do appreciate the design space that parsers afford, making it possible to hide information for the player and allowing the player to try asking about anything on their mind, but there are undoubtedly times when it is frustrating. If only there was a midpoint between the QFGII parser and later games' "click mouth on NPC," that'd be the real sweet spot.
Our hero.
I know someone for whom Quest for Glory II is his favorite game in the series, and while that's definitely not true for me, I can see why someone would like it. It's different enough from the other Quest for Glory games that it provides a unique experience, and Shapeir really is a good setting. I wish that the designers had been able to implement all of their initial ideas without meddling--there's a reason that the oppressive city of Raseir is named with an anagram of "Sierra"--but what we got is a good game and worth playing even in its EGA, 16 color glory.
And if that's too antiquated, there's a VGA remake available from AGD with an icon-based interface, so there's really no excuse.
