Missed Classic: Loremaster - Won! (And Final Rating)

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

Up until this point, I've been playing far ahead of the CRPGAddict. I started very early in May, and it took a little while before he started up. You know character creation? Yeah, he figured out how to get that working. create [charname] (case sensitive, so daniel is daniel but Teal'c is Teal'c) [password] [class]. Characters are visually distinguished by might and magic. (actually, everything, but I didn't care enough to check it that thoroughly)

LanHawk, who I don't think actually posts here but is probably reading, sent me a textfile from a pirate release of the game, which is undoubtedly the closest thing to a manual we'll ever get. It was mostly useless, except for the most important aspect of all. I can move with the keyboard now, it's the numpad, it's a numlock issue. Even better, I can go diagonally.

Below the Full Bloom Cherry Blossom Forest

Reminding you that going over this game I'm listening to every album by the Japanese band Ningen-Isu, in order, because I am that annoyed by this game. (though frankly, you really should be reading these in order, not that this game makes any more sense if it is) I am actually listening to these, because it's actually a good divider of time and ensures I don't go "stuff this crud" ten minutes in.

Continuing my trend of playing this game like an obligation, I take advantage of more knowledge obtained from the CRPGAddict, that I can teleport Gaiasbane to me. Only I'll have a sword, because I haven't been using magic. Because well, this parser is frustrating. I find out that it doesn't work that way. I'm teleported to Gaiasbane. (I actually asked him about this, turns out I can teleport to or summon him, which works differently) Who kills me, but that gives me another idea.

Meh, the one in Memphis is bigger.

Finally, Iseult. Wait, WTF? Why is there a stone pyramid...why have I lost (?) levels? I need to get back to her, first, I need to figure out how to get here. One south is wraith country, and I end up going east until I return to the place with the doppelgangers. Okay, I just need the armor, since in theory I can deal with the enemies with magic. In theory, casting spells seems to drain your level. Why? Because this game doesn't give you an easy way to do things. Right, well, I spotted some items on the town's side of the wall, sneakily placed so that the player can only discover them after leaving the town. Let's just take the...junk. Maybe there's something on another screen?

And I fell down a hole. When most RPGs do this, they're doing so to make the game a challenge. "Dare you get past the Dungeons of Morpheus?" so to speak. This isn't doing it, it just puts a trap on every single item that you could possibly use and then laughs.

So I explore the town again, taking advantage of my newfound abilities. I reach the one area I couldn't get past before. I can get past it now, but the spider here turns out to be hostile. No matter, I don't need a sword, I can cast spells. I just incant ice, cast spider, when in visual range, and he dies. Not permanently, sadly. This gives me a MASSIVE amount of karma. Make your own jokes here. He's guarding two oldgems, I take the one I can and go off to the merchant. That gets me 130 gold. Which is 540. That definitely means I shouldn't be holding multiple items I want to sell. This may screw me over later if there's more to buy than a sword and platemail.

"Look, the old coins are nice, but I haven't had a good meal in weeks, and just look at me, I just EAT!"

Finally, I find some more items. I find out there's a path to the door behind the king and queen, which leads to this treasure maze. You're REALLY making me work for this money. Anyway, between the fact that I can only pick up one copy of an item in one room a session and how I sell all items as one item, this means many trips. Hey, at least Butterman is buying food for 120 coins. At which point the game tells me I feel a grumbling in my stomach.

Kidding, but you bought it, didn't you? A very real problem, meanwhile, is that whenever I go off-screen, piles of treasure have a nasty habit of turning into trash. That doesn't just mean I can only get one item at a time, that means I can only get one item period. It's annoying.

I find lots of little treasures, but most interestingly of all, coins, gems, and what should have been a hidden treasure in the church, behind the altar, but it already changed into junk. The most interesting was a mask I should have gotten, which turned out to be next to a trap, taking me to the underground. I gamble here, unwisely, trying to fight the slime. I can only cast spells, and while it takes two fire spells to kill it, I can't really type fast enough, and the actions aren't properly executed, for that to be reliable. I do get some more coins. Is it enough? I need one more item. I can reach the mask, but I end up underground again and decide to keep the mask for now, and sell more gems I find underground.

I buy the platemail, that's cheaper, and then I buy the sword...and the game tells me I can't do that at my character level. What, now that I actually bought something I can't go into debt? Because I doubt there's much practical difference between being 2300 gold in debt and 2000 gold in debt. Right, that last album's been over for a while.

The Golden Dawn

That's optimistic as hell. The armor turns out to be a terrible idea, it interferes with spellcasting. So I can either survive attacks or attack. I chose to not wear the armor for now. Ice and fire spells work against everything I stop to fight. Curiously, there's a golem at some crossroads which doesn't attack me, but doesn't say anything.

I've never had a NPC make fun of me for talking to them before.

I make it to Iseult this time around. Now, for some more answers. I'm sorry, did I say answers? I meant to say she's going to say she doesn't know to 90% of things I ask, and what she does tell me is nothing helpful. I do find out what one of the rot13 comments on the Addict's site were referring to, only, they were referring to pillars inside the pyramid for some strange reason. There's also a crystal ball I can take with no problem.

Are you kidding me!?!?!

I ask Iseult more stuff. She asks me a mathematic question. If I have this right, 3 is added to 1 to make 4, then 5 is added to 4 to make 9. The next odd number is 7, so I think the answer is 16, but everything I type to respond to it does nothing. I try answer, I try say, I try every number from ten to twenty. Nothing. She occasionally asks it again, but I can get something from here when she forgets about it.

Anyway, I have an actual quest now, besides kill the bad guy...and find random sword in dungeons. Tristan is held hostage by an elemental, probably the wind elemental since I've seen him. She talks of three personal trials, her own is one of hope, that Tristan will return. She mentions three other kinds of trials, faith, wisdom and truth. She, the one wise beyond her years, has nothing to say about wisdom and truth, but for faith I should ask Francis. Firstly, I try to cast summon to teleport Tristan to here, which doesn't work. That works on Gaiasbane, but not a prisoner. I mean, I know why it works that way, but it's just amusing.

Because of the weird way leveling works in this game, I'm all the way up to level 80, since I'm blasting every monster I can, but I'm not actually better at anything except being able to survive more deaths and cast more teleportation spells. I also spot a "simple wand", no idea, since it disappeared at one point and I can't get it back, and a set of platemail in the woods. Argh. I don't really have anything better to do, so I guess I'll teleport to Tristan.

Tristan is a golem for some reason, while the creature holding him hostage is an earth elemental. It turns out that Tristian may have stolen one of the jeweled stalagmites around the room, and he wants it back. Guess that means I have to do it. Guess it should be somewhere around here. Time to explore the underground. My magical spells seem to be less effective down here, which is...a problem. I spend the a while fruitlessly exploring the underground, not even killing anything.

Rashomon

I believe that's from the same source material. In a way, fitting, you're getting the opinion of what's going on here from multiple people. They're a very literary band, they're probably the closest thing to the often said statement "metal is just like classical", at least in the same sense of inspirations. I still wouldn't really say it, because there's more to Wagner than adapting confusing Arthurian tales into neat operas.

Spellcasting observations. It's tricky hitting enemies with spells. You have to type incant [spell], the cast [target]. Cast works about 50% of the time, in the sense that it registers. If it doesn't work, it's because you have blocked visibility to it. As in, you can move directly towards him. There's also a mouse mode, but it's tricky aiming the cursor on an enemy, and if you click on a wall, you have to incant again. Fire and ice are very strong, when they work. Some monsters have resistance to one or both. Harm is another option, but that drains Myth's level and it doesn't actually kill enemies. I'm not going to bother with death, I don't need to kill anyone THAT badly. Slimes are proving to be the most deadly of all, since they seem immune to both my usual options. Then I realize I have a lightning spell. Aha!

Holy crap, that slime must be very powerful to shoot me from level 82 to 87. I have no idea where Chet's going to go with this, but the RPG part of this game is schizo as hell. Now, let me just get a few cleric levels and...

Uh...so your character changes depending on what his hidden character stats are? Clerical and fighting abilities have been trained by NPCs, not that increasing stats via levelling up is especially reliable. That means I need to find a wizard to train Myth in wizard arts. Or a Sage. Iseult isn't going to work. I can't just teleport to a wizard, I have to find out who he is. I end up having to restore to an earlier save thanks to ending up in an unfortunate situation with a spider.

Then I end up in an unfortunate situation in which a basalisk casts hold on me. There's seemingly no way to heal yourself from this spell. I mess around with spells, until I find out that the "gift" spell increases all your stats for seemingly no cost...until I die of a heart attack thanks to old age...There's also an age spell. Hmm. I wonder...? Nah, it doesn't work in combat, not really. Anything strong enough that you'd want to use it against you can't seem to cast it enough times.

Climbing the stairs is usually terrifying for someone of Myth's advanced age.

Continuing in the underground, I discover that the shield spell works quite well against most forms of offense, except the shackle spell. Unlike, say, death or sleep, which you can speed up by using the judge or rest command, you have to wait for the shackle spell to disappear. Considering that the creature using it against you isn't going to let you do that, this makes the spell crippling in a game that can kneecap you easily. I discover a staircase in the same room, so I wasn't going to just teleport out. Unfortunately, I can't actually go up or down, which is just...come on!

Eventually I make my way to a strange place where the game keeps telling me something funny is going on. Clearly SOMETHING is happening here. What, I have no idea, because it seems to link back to a place I met a minotaur, a creature which seems special but isn't. Still, I make my way east because I have to do something.

Hello. Seems like we found our third elemental. I wonder if there's a water elemental somewhere? His dialog is interesting, but hard to parse. He offers nothing but riddles about what I ask him, but he does tell me that Tristan didn't take the Stalagmite. I don't know anything else about it, just that he didn't. He does ask me a riddle, the above, but with the added bit "always bringing them back to the place they started". I instantly cue in that I'm supposed to answer with alcohol, but then I have to ask myself...what word should I use? Nothing, oh, I have to do the answer like "answer [character] [answer]". It's wine, and only wine. What does that get me...?

NOTHING.

I teleport to Francis, he doesn't magically have it. I teleport back to the fire elemental, and answer him again. He gives it to me. Damn it, I was hoping the game glitched and I could give up. I give it to Francis and he gives me a holy book that cures fear. I don't need a book that cures fear, I need a book that cures sleep or paralysis. Fear is a status effect I have NEVER encountered. Ah...cue another Ningen-Isu album.

Dancing Dwarf

In the faerie sense, I believe. Anyway, I guess I've won a quest? Technically? Right, let's fall down a hole so we can return to the surface so I don't have to teleport back to Francis. Let me just go south of here and...

This game rivals horror adventures for how terrifying this is.

There's a troll (?) named Crunch. Is she friendly? No, she's moving towards me. A slime appears. I get the heck out of dodge. South eventually leads back to the area under the church, and thus an easy return. But more important, I have realized something. There's a fire elemental, a wind elemental, and an earth elemental. Either there's a water elemental or there are a wood elemental and a metal elemental. So, I teleport to water.

LAME. She doesn't even show up at first. She reveals a bunch of important stuff. Firstly, the sword I was told about hidden somewhere under the church is probably the sword I need to kill Gaiasbane, so that's likely to be found near the end. Secondly, I should ask the fire elemental about a secret and the wind elemental about a rumor.

Firstly, I try to figure out what path it is to somewhere I recognize. Left of the water elemental, is amusingly, a hydra, no idea how hard it is, probably typical, but eventually I find myself next to the fire elemental.

The wind elemental, has cryptic things to say about most items and people. There's a bell that banishes a banshee, and a candle that ends icy fright. Asking him about the Loremaster gives me a riddle:

I sore like an eagle
when ones gay and regal
or sit like a stone when lonesome alone.
All take and all use me.
I take what I mend, and I'll most likely
meet my own tail in the end.

This is a toughy. I tried a few things, but none of them took into account the last part. Then I tried taking things on the last part, but that didn't take into account the first part. This takes a while, so long my album is over, so I decide to just open up the game files...and I find nothing. Eventually I just randomly put in time. That's it. I don't know if that it's that I just wasn't getting it, it was actually a clever riddle, or it's a stupid riddle, but I'm going to put this bad boy behind me.

The clue is, I should get the bell, the book, then the candle, in order to win the sword. That's it. The entire plot of the game. Interestingly, the elemental's questions are context sensitive, I said yes to a question of "do you know the name of the blade" when I didn't really, and he told me it anyway, Runesword. It doesn't matter, I just need to decapitate a dude with it. But I still have one last question, what about the troll? Wind implies that he's the one who stole the stalagmite.

The Resident of Infinity

Or Blade of the Immortal. A more fitting title given what's about to happen. All right, I now know how to solve most of the game, but I'm not quite sure how to kill the troll, assuming brute force fails, or how to connect what I know about the troll to the Runesword.

So, I teleport to Butterman, summon Crunch, and hide so he can take him. I'm a hero! He's just slightly tough, not immortal, so a lightning spell takes care of him. He disappears in a puff of smoke and a collectible appears where his corpse was. Yeah, a COLLECTIBLE. I wouldn't be able to take it were it not for context, but it's the stalagmite. Turns out something about it is glitching, in the sense that you should be able to inspect it to reveal what it actually is.

Tristan looks like the kind of wizard who's on the run from other wizards for some disgusting offense.

I teleport to the Earth Elemental, and he says he found the thief, but before attacking me, he turns Tristan back into human form, he teleports off. What's going on there? He stops attacking me after I give him the stalagmite, but not before killing me once. All right, now to talk to Tristan...

And now for some reason Iseult is trying to kill me. Or not. She's trying to give me an item. Why would you design it like that? Well, let's talk to her first. Firstly, she gives me a magic candle, then I answer her riddle, it was sixteen. I don't get anything for that. So, Tristan. Tristan asks me how many fairies can I fit on the head of a pin? It's another series math question, which doesn't get me anything.

He doesn't have anything of value to say. I can't even ask him about Iseult. What he does say about things is so pretentious as to be effectively meaningless. I need to figure out who has this bell now, so I go back to town and ask everyone. I get stuck on the queen, because she asks me what kind of help I'm seeking. As a question I have to answer, and let me tell you, the answer is more obscure than the riddles. I answer several valid things, none of which are good enough, so I leave. Nobody has anything of value to say here, so that leaves me with one person. Who isn't Gaiasbane.

Samwise the farmer. He also blathers on and on, but reading between the lines, he has the bell I'm looking for. Unfortunately, he wants items, and says so in vague terms. He asks if I've seen gold, and I'm supposed to say yes, and then get him some coins. Fortunately, there's a dragon to the east guarding two piles of ancient coins.

Decadent Art Exhibition

Unfortunately, I gave one of the ancient coins to Samwise before getting the quest and the second turned into a key. Well, I should still have some stuff to take at the church, so I teleport to Francis, and he attacks me. Okay...and my karma is so bad I can't be resurrected. I have to quit a few times so I can pray enough to get positive karma. What did I miss since I quit? I have about 16 karma after being resurrected, and NO ITEMS. Hopefully the book and the candle aren't important.

If it weren't for how I still have my previous gold, I'd swear the way I died broke the game, because it seems like killing me put everything right. For Samwise, I just pick up some gold coins, he turns into a leprechaun and gives me the bell.

Banesthrall, the entity holding the Runesword, dies to the bell. I do my last trick of summoning him to Butterman's store so he can fight him while I figure out what tasks the game expects me to do. It works beautifully...except...I get an oldscroll. Oh, it doesn't say that, I have to figure out there's a pick up function. It's not a glitch, I'm not done. The Runesword is hiding in the tail of the Daemonkoshi, which is either a clever way to refer to a succubus or a name the author pulled out of his lower back. I'm going to solve this the same way I did the Banesthrall and...uh...whoever the last guy was. Just to be sure, I check to see if I can't get the other two special items again. I can. I guess it takes some effort to actually break the game. Huh.

I didn't spot this while in combat, but apparently this guy broke the game.

This thing is annoying, because to begin with, you need to read the holybook while under threat of attack. Though this isn't permanent. Secondly, you need to have the candle in your hands, you can't juggle items, or even put something you're holding away, it seems, you just drop what you're holding to hold something else. To kill it, you just hit it with the magic candle, more annoying than it sounds since both characters are dealing with fear status effects that prevents actions from taking place. Now, despite the fact that I should, I'm not going to do the cheap way with Gaiasbane, I'm going to do it properly.

Well, kind of, I teleported to Iseult since I didn't want to wander around the entire map. From there, I entered the dark and ruined part of the map, where evil creatures dwell that can kill me in one hit, never seem to die, and always come back. You know, like every other part of the map. I make it to the wizard's foul lair. He readies a spell that will send me straight to hell...

But I'm quicker. And I have the mouse, which sometimes helps. At least this time Myth didn't commit seppuku again. He drops ancient coins. What's his treasure? Ancient coins. Actually, the item he dropped just glitched, it's a Yelraf Scroll. Before I hand it to the old guy, I read it. It's a scroll entitling the bearer of the scroll, based on meritorious service to the kingdom and registered owner of Loremaster I, is entitled to a discount on the next game. (That doesn't exist)

I fiddle around for a few moments, giving the Yelraf scroll to Yelraf, on the off-chance I won, but eventually it happens automatically. I've never seen an ending like this one before. I'm not sure that getting a discount off a non-existent game is worse than some other non-endings, like "THANKS FOR PLAYING" or "OR IS IT".

This Session: 5 hours 40 minutes

Total Time: 10 hours 30 minutes

The song doesn't have anything to do with anything, even sarcastically. It's just there because it was on the last album I listened to, and it provides a nice sense of perspective.

So, this wasn't a good game by any means, and I dare say that this will likely be the worst game that we and the CRPG Addict will have blog about at the same time. But unlike most games of this awful nature, which are either games which have no effort put towards them, or look like something a five-year-old made in two months, despite being made by a thirty-year-old over five years, this just plays like an alpha that somehow got leaked, even though I know that isn't true.

Every game is really just a matter of what you're directing your manhours towards. On the gameplay side, you have the systems that enable you to interact with the game world and the content that makes up the game world. This doesn't really come up much in adventure games, because unless you're Coktel Vision and are for some reason making another adventure game with shooting, you're just optimizing something you already made. In RPGs this is usually more of a concern, unless you're a thirty-year-old with five years and RPGmaker.

Now the thing is, while that's a concern, the focus is still on content. I can think of many games with lackluster gameplay systems but great content that people love, but I can't think of the opposite. Heck, I'm not sure I can even think of the opposite as a general example. Loremaster is different.  I can't see where the gameplay hours went towards. This is effectively an alpha.

Let's take movement. Everything is on a tile-grid, and it's real-time. None of the movement options are easy. Your typical cardinal direction parser movements are not intended for a tile-grid. This is not convenient, and you can't go into corners this way. The mouse is inconvenient, since there are far more important things you could be doing with the mouse, like using it to attack enemies or inspect something you don't recognize. The keyboard is best, but to do so, you have to have the numlock in a specific state. None of these options are thought out, they're just there.

That's basically the entire game, just there, but no thought put into how you're supposed to deal with it. It boggles the mind, because very little of it actually matters. Combat is simply, who is the fastest, with protection generally offering a chance if you aren't. Your experience level goes up and down, reasonably, but what that actually does seems impossible to grasp. None of your stats beyond karma seem to truly matter.

So, the RPG part is tacked on...except, the adventure part doesn't really feel like it's anything more than what you'd get out of your typical RPG. How many RPGs involve finding a bunch of items to kill the bad guy? How often do you get random classic artifacts that you trade for seemingly unimportant baubles? It feels like this is a case of it being declared an adventure because it has a parser. Then again, it's not a RPG either, that doesn't matter. In the end, it seems, incompetence has a way of crossing between genres without intending to.

Spellcasting seems quite broken, another kind of character would have an absolutely awful time of this game. Sure, with armor you survive a lot longer, but the shield spell also exists, even if it costs levels, and teleportation is a life-saver. And I didn't even use all the spells. Not that I ever saw a reason to use aura or fear.

One more thing before the rating. You can train your fighting ability with Gerald, your clerical ability with Francis, for as long as you wish, yet there is no mage trainer that I could see. The only time my mage ability increased was at a few specific events, non-repeatable. I wonder if this is an ill-thought out attempt at balance, since there is absolutely no reason to play a character other than Myth, and no reason to not play a mage. Teleport and summon are by far the most useful spells in the game, and anything that gets in that way is a bad thing.

Puzzles and Solvability

So much of the game is spent just figuring out what it is you have to do that the fact that almost all puzzles boil down to just finding certain items to give to certain people stings less. (Stabbing someone with a sword is a kind of giving) This gathering of information is fun, but I can't be too sure this is intentional or if this is another case of the game being incompetent. I actually enjoyed it, it didn't actually break, and it was surprisingly designed to not screw over the player, despite everything else.

4

Interface and Inventory

What interface do we want? ALL OF THEM. None of them are done very well. The parser demands precision, generally you can only use one word and one word along to do something, and to touch an item. No shrinking things down. This is a problem when you have to type "hold oldscroll" then "read oldscroll" in order to, well, read the old scroll. A lot of verbs are bizarre. "Possess" gives you your possessions, health gives you your stats, but status gives you other stats, like your gold and what you're holding.

Then we have the cursor. Accuracy is questionable, but it has every important action, of which there are about 4, then a bunch of other actions that didn't need to be on the cursor. I need to inspect, attack and move to the cursor, I don't need the cursor to say, meditate or give me my status. Since the only way to change actions is to right click, this adds a lot of crap, and makes preparing the attack action ahead of time best or just breaking down and hopeing you can spell whatever it is that's trying to kill you.

The inventory is curious. There's are item limits, both in the number of items, and that you can't carry more than one of an item. I believe the latter is just a poorly thought out programming error. But the former is tied into your strength, and I'm not clear on how you could ever change that. Since the RPG aspect never really worked.

Also, you can only pick up one particular item in a room at a time, several objects exist which can't be interacted with despite seeming otherwise, and there is seemingly no way to unequip an item, you just drop it. Commands also have a nasty habit of not going through.

1

Story and Setting
It's not very clear what's going on here, beyond kill the bad guy who killed your parents and is corrupting the world around him. A lot of words are said, some of which don't quite make sense with the rest of the words. Locations are also very confusing and not very well thought out.

2

Sound and Graphics
In general nice. Scale is off, everything has to fit in one tile from a spider to an old tree. This involves some cleverness, but it is noticeably limited. The occasional backdrop or portrait looks nice and helps get away from the monotony of the endless underground. Though even that threw in some occasional interesting features. There is only PC speaker sound.

4

Environment and Atmosphere
Despite being able to interact with very little, the gate does a good job of throwing environment actions at the player. As you walk across the screen, various messages pop up, ranging from screaming at you for walking on the flowers, nothing ever attacks you for it, to once per screen descriptions, to dead monsters screaming at you. It makes an otherwise somewhat lifeless world feel that much more living, in a certain sense.

In general, this game does feel like there's something going under the surface, but that's all it ever is. Perhaps fitting, in a world where the game keeps trying to hammer home the point that everything good seems to be dying to the cliched villain.

6

Dialogue and Acting
Characters are well thought-out and have a decent amount of dialog, but man, is guessing what they want to talk about not fun. Even the tried and true method of asking them about words that are bolded doesn't work sometimes. Getting more dialog out of someone was always fun, even if it wasn't that particularly helpful.

4

That's 4+1+2+4+6+4/0.6=35. Minus 3 points for broken character creation, broken save system and the game occasionally deciding that random NPCs should try to kill you for no reason whatsoever. That's 32. CAPs go to Alex Romanov and Vetinari since nobody got it exactly right and they were the closest otherwise.

Anything good about this game is just buried under so much crap that there's no point in recommending it. Real-time parsers are usually bad, having to use a real-time parser that's unreliable is very bad. The only advantage is that there's about as much consequence for dying as there is for falling down in a bouncy castle. It's looking at someone's alpha and expecting a finished product.

The Addict ended his review by saying he'd have liked to see Loremaster 2. I think that's somewhat optimistic, I'd like to have seen Loremaster 1, but having actually had some testing done, iron out the issues. While the author [so and so Farley] company did apparently exist for some time, no other game exists. Frankly, I'm not so sure I'd play a sequel to this one anyway, knowing now what I know of this one.

Back to Valhalla, it seems as though the delay may prove longer than anticipated, as coming up soon is Cosmic Spacehead, which is going to be...interesting, to say the least.