Game Review: Quest for Glory III: Wages of War
2018-Dec-31, Monday 19:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Continuing my annual playthrough of a Quest for Glory game, now with the worst one in the series.
Like I wrote in my review of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire, most of my playthroughs of the series jumped straight from Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero to III. I didn't have all the other games to compare it to, and since a Quest for Glory game is still head and shoulders above most other adventure games, I loved it and played it through multiple times as every class, the same way that I did with every Quest for Glory game. But coming back to it as an adult, with a better understanding of game design and a lot more experience playing video games under my belt, I can see all the shortcomings. Quest for Glory III was never supposed to be part of the original timeline, and it was rushed, and both of these are obvious. It's still a good game, but it suffers greatly from its constraints.
You're not in Spielburg anymore.
Let me start with the good parts. First, the setting. Even to this day, I think QFGIII is the only game I've played that's explicitly set in a sub-Saharan African setting--"East Fricana," as the game calls it. The hero is the odd man, out with his light skin and his straw-colored hair, and everyone else is either from an Arabic background or an East African one. Several of the merchants in the major city of Tarna speak Arabic, and all the characters the hero has to talk to speak English (or whatever language is supposed to be his native tongue), but most of the people in the game only speak Swahili. The game uses (mostly) real Arabic and Swahili for the languages, too. The Simbani, the nomadic herders who plan war with the Leopardmen tribe, are based almost directly on the Maasai, and while other tribes don't appear directly in the game, they are mentioned in dialogue. One of the members of the doomed peace mission was Mjura of the Tamba tribe, who was explicitly brought for his magic, while the hero is warned by Rakeesh not to use magic around the Simbani because they hate it. The setting is really interesting and probably the main reason the game is memorable for me.
The second is the continuity from QFGII. Importing a character from game to game was a revelation for me, but QFGIII has much more continuity between it and QFGII than QFGII had with QFGI. While Abdullah Doo, Shameen, and Shema went with the hero from Spielberg to Shapeir, none of them played much of a role in the main plot. They allowed the hero to stay at the inn and talked about the elementals attacking the city and that was about it. QFGIII features Uhura and Rakeesh from QFGII, the Simbani woman who left the tribe to reconcile the--to them--mutually exlusive roles of woman and warrior, and the only paladin in the history of the liontaur people. When news comes that the Simbani are planning to go to war with the Leopardmen and pull Tarna into the war, it affects both of them personally. Rakeesh goes to the Simbani village to plead with the Laibon for peace, and both of them fight with the hero against the demons who are the real threat. They repeatedly advise the hero during the main quest. It's a taste of one of the best parts of Quest for Glory V, where everyone gets back together for the last hurrah, and I wish that it was enough to carry the rest of the game.
If only the artist spent less time on the tree and more time on other places to go.
Okay, now, the bad parts.
The most obvious problem with QFGIII is that it was rushed and doesn't have the series' usual breadth of content. The branching paths for the three classes are still there, with the most obvious example being dealing with the Leopardman prisoner. The warrior or paladin has to undergo a Simbani manhood ritual in order to be accounted a member of the tribe in order to pay the bride price, while this doesn't even come up for the wizard or thief. The thief can steal the Leopardmen's Drum of Magic and the Simbani Spear of Death and return both of them simultaneously as a token of his sincerity. And the wizard has to engage in a magical duel in the Leopardmen village against the demon-possessed shaman to prove his bona fides.
However, there's almost nothing to do outside the main quest. Tarna doesn't have an Adventurer's Guild and, for obvious reasons, neither does the seasonal village of the nomadic Simbani. The only wizard quest is the one to get a magical staff. Early on there's an event in Tarna where a thief is caught and stripped of his honor, which foreshadows the fact that there's no houses to rob anywhere in the game. There are almost no walls to climb or locks to pick, either. One could justify the lack of mechanical locks with the East African setting, except that one of the few locks that does exist is on a chest in the Simbani Laibon's hut. And as a crossroads city of trade, Tarna really should have an Adventurer's Guild. Certainly more than Spielburg should.
Furthermore, there are almost no locations outside those two villages. There's the Pool of Peace, the Mother of the World, the Venomous Vines, and...that's it. There's a giant anthill on the map which points to cut content, and there are plot locations like the Lost City and the Leopardman Village, but there's nothing like the dervish oasis from QFGII or the goblin base from QFGI. The world feels bare-bones, a skeleton hung around the quest to stop the war, with nothing outside that.
No honor in the combat system either.
I even feel that QFGIII is not great mechanically, especially around combat. The CRPG Addict thought the combat was the best in the series so far, but I don't understand why. It's true that unlike QFGII you can't just spam attacks and win everything forever, but I found the timing almost impossible to predict. Often my attacks would get interrupted by a dodging or flinching animation (I'm not sure which) and the enemy wouldn't take damage. Unlike previous games I never got the hang of the flow of combat, and frequently I'd resort to just spamming spells rather than trying to figure out the attack timing. I didn't figure there was a point to dodging because it seemed to happen automatically, unless that was me taking damage? I really don't know.
Furthermore, in a lot of ways QFGIII abandons the RPG part it it's heritage. The reason I love the Quest for Glory games so much is that they're both adventure games and role playing games, and it's not enough for the player to know what the proper solution for the puzzles are, the character has to have the skill to implement that skill as well, so like an RPG, you need to seek out challenges and increase the hero's skills, otherwise you won't be able to win. In QFGIII, however, there's much more of a binary system. I never once ran into a puzzle where my skill was too low to succeed, and that's a good thing because there are some skills that there's basically no way I found to increase. The Open spell is required during the duel against the Leopardman shaman, but every time I tried to practice Open out on the savannah not only did the skill level not improve, it didn't cost any mana either. I wasn't sure if I was even casting the spell or not, and eventually I gave up trying.
The same is true of Dancing Lights, Reversal, Levitate, and several other spells that have a skill level that doesn't seem to matter. There's no way to fail to Levitate out of the hole the shaman drops you in as long as you realize you have to cast the spell.
In some ways, I suppose this is good. QFGIII is a much more directed and linear game than QFGI and QFGII (except the end), and it'd be easier to get stuck somewhere without the skill necessary to complete the puzzles if there was a Levitate 200 requirement to beat the shaman or whatever. But the main thing that speaks to is the dearth of non-required content. If there were other puzzles that exercised the hero's skills, there'd be more reason to make skill level a gate for passing puzzles and more reason to actually play the game as an RPG. Instead, by the end I was mostly just casting Dazzle and running from battles, and while I still used up all my mana practicing spells every night before I went to bed, it was only out of habit. There was no real reason to do so.
Basically, the major problem is that QFGIII simply doesn't justify its existence as an RPG at all. It could easily have been a standard adventure game in a way that QFGI and II couldn't have. Have skill -> pass puzzle isn't too different from the usual have item -> pass puzzle adventure game formula, and while QFGIII still makes far more logical sense than most adventure games--another reason I think the QFG games are some of the best RPGs around--it's not just an adventure game. Or at least, it shouldn't be.
Oh come on, this game isn't that bad.
Back when I only played Quest for Glories I, III, and Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, QFGIII was my least favorite, and that didn't change when I finally went back and played II. There's too much lost potential, too much missing, too many ways that it doesn't live up to the rest of the games in the series for me to really like it. While the African setting is great, the game ends up short-changing it by wrapping all the action around the main quest and not really allowing the player to meaningfully interact with anything else. If there were other Simbani who had quests they needed done, if the bulletin board in the Welcome Inn in Tarna had actually quests to do, if there were even other places to go, I would have liked it a lot better. As it is, it's just a stop on the way to Quest for Glory IV, my favorite game in the series.
Like I wrote in my review of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire, most of my playthroughs of the series jumped straight from Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero to III. I didn't have all the other games to compare it to, and since a Quest for Glory game is still head and shoulders above most other adventure games, I loved it and played it through multiple times as every class, the same way that I did with every Quest for Glory game. But coming back to it as an adult, with a better understanding of game design and a lot more experience playing video games under my belt, I can see all the shortcomings. Quest for Glory III was never supposed to be part of the original timeline, and it was rushed, and both of these are obvious. It's still a good game, but it suffers greatly from its constraints.
You're not in Spielburg anymore.
Let me start with the good parts. First, the setting. Even to this day, I think QFGIII is the only game I've played that's explicitly set in a sub-Saharan African setting--"East Fricana," as the game calls it. The hero is the odd man, out with his light skin and his straw-colored hair, and everyone else is either from an Arabic background or an East African one. Several of the merchants in the major city of Tarna speak Arabic, and all the characters the hero has to talk to speak English (or whatever language is supposed to be his native tongue), but most of the people in the game only speak Swahili. The game uses (mostly) real Arabic and Swahili for the languages, too. The Simbani, the nomadic herders who plan war with the Leopardmen tribe, are based almost directly on the Maasai, and while other tribes don't appear directly in the game, they are mentioned in dialogue. One of the members of the doomed peace mission was Mjura of the Tamba tribe, who was explicitly brought for his magic, while the hero is warned by Rakeesh not to use magic around the Simbani because they hate it. The setting is really interesting and probably the main reason the game is memorable for me.
The second is the continuity from QFGII. Importing a character from game to game was a revelation for me, but QFGIII has much more continuity between it and QFGII than QFGII had with QFGI. While Abdullah Doo, Shameen, and Shema went with the hero from Spielberg to Shapeir, none of them played much of a role in the main plot. They allowed the hero to stay at the inn and talked about the elementals attacking the city and that was about it. QFGIII features Uhura and Rakeesh from QFGII, the Simbani woman who left the tribe to reconcile the--to them--mutually exlusive roles of woman and warrior, and the only paladin in the history of the liontaur people. When news comes that the Simbani are planning to go to war with the Leopardmen and pull Tarna into the war, it affects both of them personally. Rakeesh goes to the Simbani village to plead with the Laibon for peace, and both of them fight with the hero against the demons who are the real threat. They repeatedly advise the hero during the main quest. It's a taste of one of the best parts of Quest for Glory V, where everyone gets back together for the last hurrah, and I wish that it was enough to carry the rest of the game.
If only the artist spent less time on the tree and more time on other places to go.
Okay, now, the bad parts.
The most obvious problem with QFGIII is that it was rushed and doesn't have the series' usual breadth of content. The branching paths for the three classes are still there, with the most obvious example being dealing with the Leopardman prisoner. The warrior or paladin has to undergo a Simbani manhood ritual in order to be accounted a member of the tribe in order to pay the bride price, while this doesn't even come up for the wizard or thief. The thief can steal the Leopardmen's Drum of Magic and the Simbani Spear of Death and return both of them simultaneously as a token of his sincerity. And the wizard has to engage in a magical duel in the Leopardmen village against the demon-possessed shaman to prove his bona fides.
However, there's almost nothing to do outside the main quest. Tarna doesn't have an Adventurer's Guild and, for obvious reasons, neither does the seasonal village of the nomadic Simbani. The only wizard quest is the one to get a magical staff. Early on there's an event in Tarna where a thief is caught and stripped of his honor, which foreshadows the fact that there's no houses to rob anywhere in the game. There are almost no walls to climb or locks to pick, either. One could justify the lack of mechanical locks with the East African setting, except that one of the few locks that does exist is on a chest in the Simbani Laibon's hut. And as a crossroads city of trade, Tarna really should have an Adventurer's Guild. Certainly more than Spielburg should.
Furthermore, there are almost no locations outside those two villages. There's the Pool of Peace, the Mother of the World, the Venomous Vines, and...that's it. There's a giant anthill on the map which points to cut content, and there are plot locations like the Lost City and the Leopardman Village, but there's nothing like the dervish oasis from QFGII or the goblin base from QFGI. The world feels bare-bones, a skeleton hung around the quest to stop the war, with nothing outside that.
No honor in the combat system either.
I even feel that QFGIII is not great mechanically, especially around combat. The CRPG Addict thought the combat was the best in the series so far, but I don't understand why. It's true that unlike QFGII you can't just spam attacks and win everything forever, but I found the timing almost impossible to predict. Often my attacks would get interrupted by a dodging or flinching animation (I'm not sure which) and the enemy wouldn't take damage. Unlike previous games I never got the hang of the flow of combat, and frequently I'd resort to just spamming spells rather than trying to figure out the attack timing. I didn't figure there was a point to dodging because it seemed to happen automatically, unless that was me taking damage? I really don't know.
Furthermore, in a lot of ways QFGIII abandons the RPG part it it's heritage. The reason I love the Quest for Glory games so much is that they're both adventure games and role playing games, and it's not enough for the player to know what the proper solution for the puzzles are, the character has to have the skill to implement that skill as well, so like an RPG, you need to seek out challenges and increase the hero's skills, otherwise you won't be able to win. In QFGIII, however, there's much more of a binary system. I never once ran into a puzzle where my skill was too low to succeed, and that's a good thing because there are some skills that there's basically no way I found to increase. The Open spell is required during the duel against the Leopardman shaman, but every time I tried to practice Open out on the savannah not only did the skill level not improve, it didn't cost any mana either. I wasn't sure if I was even casting the spell or not, and eventually I gave up trying.
The same is true of Dancing Lights, Reversal, Levitate, and several other spells that have a skill level that doesn't seem to matter. There's no way to fail to Levitate out of the hole the shaman drops you in as long as you realize you have to cast the spell.In some ways, I suppose this is good. QFGIII is a much more directed and linear game than QFGI and QFGII (except the end), and it'd be easier to get stuck somewhere without the skill necessary to complete the puzzles if there was a Levitate 200 requirement to beat the shaman or whatever. But the main thing that speaks to is the dearth of non-required content. If there were other puzzles that exercised the hero's skills, there'd be more reason to make skill level a gate for passing puzzles and more reason to actually play the game as an RPG. Instead, by the end I was mostly just casting Dazzle and running from battles, and while I still used up all my mana practicing spells every night before I went to bed, it was only out of habit. There was no real reason to do so.
Basically, the major problem is that QFGIII simply doesn't justify its existence as an RPG at all. It could easily have been a standard adventure game in a way that QFGI and II couldn't have. Have skill -> pass puzzle isn't too different from the usual have item -> pass puzzle adventure game formula, and while QFGIII still makes far more logical sense than most adventure games--another reason I think the QFG games are some of the best RPGs around--it's not just an adventure game. Or at least, it shouldn't be.
Oh come on, this game isn't that bad.
Back when I only played Quest for Glories I, III, and Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, QFGIII was my least favorite, and that didn't change when I finally went back and played II. There's too much lost potential, too much missing, too many ways that it doesn't live up to the rest of the games in the series for me to really like it. While the African setting is great, the game ends up short-changing it by wrapping all the action around the main quest and not really allowing the player to meaningfully interact with anything else. If there were other Simbani who had quests they needed done, if the bulletin board in the Welcome Inn in Tarna had actually quests to do, if there were even other places to go, I would have liked it a lot better. As it is, it's just a stop on the way to Quest for Glory IV, my favorite game in the series.
