Universe - Won!

Written by MenhirMike

We left the Mekalien crawler with a cloaking device in our hand, where we can insert the Power Gem. This results in a device that’s powerless and devoid of life - wow, for all the trouble we went through to get the Power Gem, it’s been pretty underwhelming so far. Since the Mekalien didn’t give us any direction, I figure that making my way to the Mekalien Defense Outpost one more time would be the way to go. After all, if the Emperor is leading his fleet to war, a defense outpost sounds like a perfect place to meet him and maybe use the cloaking device to sneak aboard his flagship?

Alas, it was not meant to be, there is nothing except for empty space on the defense outpost. Not even a “Go away or be blasted out of space!” warning one would expect when approaching a military base in the middle of an active conflict. While flying around aimlessly again, I finally ran into a Colossus prison ship when entering the Mekhallantor Galaxy, which showcases yet another great piece of artwork. Neat, so maybe I’m going to use the cloaking device to spring Malinaa and Silphinaa out of prison and escape with them in tow?

If only the writing was as good as the art.

We are brought aboard and meet Man-Brute, who turns out to be the leader of the rebellion and has captured the prison ship. So much for my ideas of where the plot could be going. He tells us that they are on their way to the Virgan Empire’s capital planet Coros to launch a direct assault as a last resort before the Emperor becomes too powerful. And since we’re Boris Verne, we’re part of that assault because the legends say we’re the saviour! Our contact on Coros is named Doshiv and with that, we’re dismissed. The only thing we can really do is to use the transporter which brings us back to our PTV and have us land on Coros. I’m probably repeating myself a lot, but I am once again disappointed by a promising location being used for so little. 

There are worse looking places to be stranded on. I wonder if I have to eat blobs to survive?

Coros looks like someone had a bit of synthetic carv and a bucket of paint, but that’s not a bad thing. Another location, another unique and spectacular look, which also scores with explosions in the sky and shimmering water next to the landing pad.

We’re greeted by a welcoming committee consisting of two thugs that need transportation off the planet and decide that our PTV is the way to get it. Trying to steal the car that I stole myself fair and square? No deal! Turns out that they have a gun, so one death and reload later they take off with Ms. Tyrek’s PTV.

The last option does not curse us.

On the next screen I meet Doshiv, who leads me to the outside of the Citadel where tunnels to the Emperor’s personal quarters are hidden behind the walls. Neat! But I’m confused once again: I thought that Emperor King Neiamises is standing on his Flagship, leading a war to Mekalien space right now? Coros is pretty far away from that, so what are we going to do here?

I’ve tried a few things on this screen to get access to the tunnels without success. The gun I stole from the assassin has no use here, attacking the droids with anything isn’t an option, and talking to one of the droids makes it identify me as a subversive and kills me. I find the exit back out to the street and then another exit southwards which leads to two impressive looking sentinels that block my path. They are delightful. And great at blocking my path. I tried using the cloaking device without any success. Finally I talk to an ornamental droid, which is another delightful dialogue. Its job is to decorate the place - I DECORATE, THEREFORE I AM. Always great to see anyone that found their purpose in life! We are telling it that the sentinels have an important message, but they’re not playing along. So we tell the ornamental droid to use the secret password (FISH), which convinces the sentinels that the droid is malfunctioning and blast it to pieces.

Boris Verne, Esteemed Saviour and Part-Time Sociopath.

The debris includes a set of batteries which can be combined with the cloaking device to power it. Which continues to undermine the narrative of the Power Gem being this mighty artifact that we had to get from a lost planet. Using the cloaking device took a bit of experimentation, I have to use the arm computer with it to cloak. There is a countdown until it de-cloaks which is good because there is no way to manually de-cloak. When cloaked, Boris is just a shimmering transparency, which makes pathfinding issues even more enjoyable. After clicking a bunch I make my way to the next screen where Baron Kaleev teleports in and shoots us. But this time, the power gem reflects the projectile back at the Baron and knocks him to the ground. Boris realizes that it rejects evil energy and directs it back at the source, which is the Baron’s suit and evidently the source of his mystical powers. We steal his ID chip before he teleports away.

I guess that power gem is pretty cool after all!

With the ID chip in my inventory, I was able to convince the droids at the Citadel that I was Baron Kaleev and command them to blow a hole into the side of the wall through which we enter the tunnels. A moment later, the real Baron Kaleev appears and tears the droids a new one for not making visual identification and to go after us immediately. The ID chip will help them track me and since the Baron wants it back, he instructs the droids to not destroy us. What a merciful and generous person!

We’re from the Doomslayer’s school of making holes.

We’re in the tunnels now, time for another rant. This is a timed maze - if we’re too slow, we get caught by the droids and it’s game over. There are a few things we can do like opening a doorway, hiding in an alcove, or prying loose a rock to stall the droids for a little bit. But since they are tracking the ID chip, that doesn’t do anything overly useful. I eventually make my way to a giant Morklag lizard blocking the path. I figure out that I need to throw the Baron’s ID chip at the lizard head, which will cause the droid to go for the lizard’s head and get eaten.

Unfortunately, I get caught immediately after throwing. I’ve already had to do a bunch of reloading and retrying to get here only to find myself in a dead man walking scenario. Nothing I can do here will give me enough time between throwing and the droid catching me, and cloaking is disabled in the tunnels for some reason.

I had to reload an earlier savegame and run through the tunnels quickly so that I have enough time to throw the ID chip and hide behind the lizard’s tail while the droid gets eaten and blows up, conveniently causing a cave-in that blocks any other pursuers.

Does this count as a dietary iron supplement?

After losing the spiked synthetic carv earlier, this is the second game breaking issue I ran into. While the carv issue seemed like a scripting bug, this here feels like bad game design. Why does the game not stop the pursuit while I’m throwing or at least give some extra grace period when I enter the screen? I somewhat praised the real-time nature at the very beginning with the spinning asteroid, but in this section it screwed me over. The tunnels felt underwhelming for a late game puzzle, all the difficulty came from the pursuit and none from the puzzles, of which there weren’t any until the lizard. If one was hoping for something like the Labyrinth of Crete from Fate of Atlantis or the Catacomb of the Ancients in King’s Quest VI, well, consider those hopes dashed, ground, smashed, pulverized, and extinguished.

The fortress is impenetrable, but it has one weak point. A tiny venting shaft.

Climbing out of the lizard room leads us to the roof of the citadel, where a laser gun immediately shoots at us. After a few hits to the roof cover it disintegrates and we die. The cloaking device still doesn’t work until I find the battery that the droid helpfully expelled when it exploded in the lizard mouth. So cloaked I could escape the laser and make it to the next screen. There are a bunch more droids blocking the way and an exit to another rooftop with nothing to do. The solution is to cloak myself and pull out wires from one of the guard droids who then proceeds to shoot the others and self-destruct.

These are the droids I was looking for.

On the next screen I find an injured Man-Brute who tells us that the Emperor will soon unleash his DNA-wave! Boris offers to destroy the DNA-wave generator, but there is no time - we must destroy Neiamises himself during the public appearance he’s about to make! Our only hope is the Power Gem because ours is aligned towards positive energy and might work against the intensely evil energy of Neiamises. Man-Brute wants us to throw the Gem at the Emperor and gives us his armor glove to ensure the aim is true.

I love the armor glove. It’s so bad.

Did that all make sense? Because it sure did not to me: What is this talk about a DNA-wave? And why is Neiamises here and not leading the war against the Mekalien from his flagship? Or did that war already happen and the Emperor succeeded in getting enough Power Gems, thus making the DNA-wave generator? Once more, I have to wonder if half of the game got cut or if I somehow missed important plot elements despite talking to everyone and trying anything I can think of. Did I miss another vision maybe because I didn’t look at a specific speck of dust?

At least there’s an explanation why Neiamises makes a public appearance, he’s the kind of villain that wants to do some grandstanding while he talks about crushing the rebellion instead of just, you know, crushing the rebellion first and then talking about it. I appreciate this because not only does it give us a chance to defeat him and win the game, but it also lets us look at some more great artwork of the giant golden robot.

You merely adopted the Gold. I was born in it.

Neiamises proclaims himself a god and that he will lead his people to victory over the evil Mekalien Empire. He has constructed a lethal weapon capable of destroying everything he desires - I have to assume that this must be the DNA-wave that we just learned about. Baron Kaleev spots us and starts the final confrontation. The moment that the entire game has worked towards. The epic conclusion where the saviour of ancient legend stands against the tyrannical Golden Emperor King God Robot Neiamises. A clash that progressive rock bands will record concept albums about for centuries to come. No more running away, no more hiding, it’s Boris against Kaleev and Neiamises in a… dialogue puzzle.

Whatever option you choose, Boris will tell Neiamises that Baron Kaleev has worked against him and goads him to check. A quick look into the imperial records and personal files confirms this (good thing the Baron keeps records about his subversive activities!) and causes him to banish the Baron in a fate worse than death. With one opponent out of the way, Boris engages in another dialogue with Neiamises that ends with us choosing the option to throw the gem at him.

The armored glove does its job and the Power Gem hits him straight on the forehead, which is enough to destroy the evil Emperor God King for good!

Even his biggest detractor has to attest that Neiamises was very bright.

Afterwards, we get to celebrate. The followers of Neiamises throw their lot in with the rebellion and declare a new government with Man-Brute as their leader. With the war against Mekalien over we get to meet Silphinaa again, and also finally Malinaa. We’re even being offered a cushy government job, which should be a given for fulfilling the prophecy. And it’s here where Uncle George makes his appearance. He followed us into this parallel dimension but was always a few minutes behind until just now. We bid the other people farewell, teleport out with our uncle, and arrive home safe and with Silphinaa’s suit as a souvenir.

May I recommend Man-Brute to adopt a different moniker as the new leader of a peaceful government?

And thus ends Universe. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. I’ve not had high expectations of the puzzles for a while, but this last part was just plain insulting. The last puzzles of the game included me using the cloak generator to escape the laser, pull wires on a droid, and click through a dialogue tree that always results in success. The tunnel maze and lizard was the last “real” puzzle of the game but the part afterwards wasn’t even a victory lap. We didn’t even get to actually throw the gem! And where did the DNA-wave generator come from? Seriously, if I missed mentions of it earlier in the game, please point it out in the comments.

At least the artwork of Neiamises demise was excellent.

I will have a brief look at the Amiga CD32 and MS-DOS ports in the next entry, before giving the game a final rating that will account for both the good and the bad.

Session Time: 2 hours 45 minutes

Total Time: 12 hours 00 minutes