Goblins Quest 3 – Final rating

By Ilmari

My experiences with the Goblins trilogy have been a mix of charm and frustration. The quirky humour and the intriguingly innovative gameplay have been a strong backbone of all of the three games. Then again, the first game had a frustratingly hard interface, with a diminishing health bar forcing you to replay the levels until you nailed it perfectly, and the second game was just too long and repetitive. I feel like the third game has nailed it, since there really was nothing to annoy me – even the length of the game was spot-on, the end coming after the most ingenious levels. We’ll see how far that gets with the PISSED rating.

Let's see where we'll land

Goblins Quest 3 – Won!

By Ilmari

What the…

Goblins Quest 3 – Fairy chess

By Ilmari

French opening?

Goblins Quest 3 – Day and night

By Ilmari

I had almost forgotten that Blount was supposed to be a professional reporter. I guess the newspaper articles of the events have been penned by the goblin himself, but it’s so easy to forget that when you don’t see the actual process of putting them down. Of course, it has been a tradition since at least Tintin that the famous reporters do more of the hero business than the actual job they get paid for. In any case, Blount had just found an opportunity to do an interview with queen Xina, when something dreadful happened.

It’s full moon again

Goblins Quest 3 – Up the nostril and into the ear

By Ilmari

So there I was flying…

What was that?

Oh fu…

Goblins Quest 3 – Mixing potions

By Ilmari

The game’s definitely getting more and more complicated. This time, I faced a three-room level with an intricate puzzle sequence involving alchemy. But let’s start at the beginning. As you might remember from the last time, I was heading to the grocer, who supposedly had another way of transportation for me. Let’s take a look at the surroundings.

Goblins Quest 3 – Dragons, barbarians and incas

By Ilmari

Last time, I had just resuscitated Blount from the brink of death, caused by a wolf bite. Blount’s love interest, Wynnona, had left him a letter, telling that she had set out to search for Fourbalus, the person who had stolen the key to the maze. She had also left Blount a potion that would make him a giant.

Very effective

My next task

Goblins Quest 3 – From heaven to hell

By Ilmari

I began the game in an empty flying ship, bombarded with stones, starting to slowly sink to the ground. The obvious goal was to get out of there alive.

Even if there’s a parachute lying around?

Game 163: Goblins Quest 3 (1994) – Introduction

 By Ilmari

Is Crash Bandicoot making a cameo?

It is again time for that inevitable question that necessarily raises its head…

…is this a Lemmings clone?

Companions of Xanth – Final Rating

By Ilmari

Looking at the discussion in the comments section of the game and especially the messages from people who have actually played the game, one might expect Companions of Xanth to receive a rather disappointing score. A surprising contrast to this atmosphere of dislike is provided by Digital Antiquarian’s take on the game, since there the game was portrayed in a more positive light, especially in comparison with the book series it was based on. I am not yet sure where I will land on this spectrum, and there’s only one way to find out, so let’s begin scoring!

Our readers are always ready!

Companions of Xanth – Won!

By Ilmari

Last time, I had just arrived at the gates of the castle of Good Magician Humfrey. I asked Jenny, my new companion, how to get in, and she suggested using her cat, Sammy, to find a way in.

Sammy kept pawing the wall, and checking it, I wound a loose brick, behind which I could find a switch. Flipping it opened the gate and let me in.

Companions of Xanth – Ogre, Ogre and Dragon on a Pedestal

By Ilmari

I bet that “sail” is meant to be taken literally

Would this do the trick?

Apparently not

Companions of Xanth – Faun and Games

By Ilmari

What was my goal again? It seems that for a couple of posts I’ve just been going through various parts of Xanth, without any clear idea where I am heading. There was some sort of prize I was supposed to find out, and I had to look for the Good Magician Humfrey… Really, neither of these plot points have had anything to do with the challenges I have been facing.

This one’s the next one in line

Companions of Xanth – Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn

By Ilmari

Scorching desert, and all directions lead just to the same place. After a few futile attempts, Nada, my companion, identified the place as Void, one of the elemental regions in the northern Xanth. Despite what the name says, it’s not empty, but more like illusory – there’s nothing real there, but you can use the illusions as if they were real.

What was that? Did I see a door appearing and vanishing? I talked to Nada and she didn’t believe I saw anything. Talking to her enough, with sentences that indicated me believing in the door, made it reappear as solid.

Companions of Xanth – Roc and a Hard Place

By Ilmari

Last time, I had just arrived in the magical world of Xanth. Without any idea what I am supposed to do, I ask my companion Nada Naga for advice.

Ah, the good magician Humfrey. No trip to Xanth would be perfect without a visit to the Good Magician’s castle. Originally a human with no talents, but a lot of curiosity, he eventually enrolled in a demon university and earned a degree of a magician of information. After a long period as a king of Xanth, Humfrey retired into a castle, but people began coming up and asking him questions, since he knew so much. Eventually, he decided to ask anyone visiting him for a year’s service – even his future wife, Gorgon (yes, the one with snakes as her hair and a petrifying look), when she wanted to know if Humfrey would marry him. Relatively recently in Xanth history, Humfrey and his family went missing and the place of the magician of information had to be temporarily assumed by Grey Murphy, magician with the talent of magic nullification and the son of an evil magician Murphy (the famous one with the talent of making things go wrong, if they can go wrong). Humfrey was eventually found in the anteroom of Hell, where he had gone to ask the demon X(A/N)TH release her previous wife, Rose of Roogna, whom he had forgotten due to drinking a lot of forgetfulness potion after her disappearance. Eventually X(A/N)TH conceded, but also returned Humfrey’s all earlier wives (now up to five and half) back to the world of the living. Since Xanth allows only monogamous marriages, Humfrey’s wifes have to take turns in living with Humfrey, while others reside in Hell.

Sometimes the Xanth series seems like one big soap opera.

Companions of Xanth – Man from Mundania

By Ilmari

The plot device

In the deep end, then. I wonder what a complete newbie to the Xanth lore would understand about this discussion of two demonic figures with weird names. And what’s that Mundania they keep talking about?

Game 145: Companions of Xanth (1993) - Introduction

By Ilmari

I must have been twelve years old when I picked up a copy of Golem in the Gears from the library shelf. My motives were pretty clear: it looked like fantasy and it said so on the back, so I was bound to try it. It seemed hilarious at the time, with the hero of the story being essentially a man smaller than a frog, riding a monster under the bed.

I can still recount many of the more intriguing sections of the book. Take the time when the heroes were trapped by the evil machine called Com-Pewter (notice the pun?) and had to fight for their fate in a game reminiscent of old text adventures. You see, Com-Pewter could change the structure of its immediate reality with text prompts, and the heroes were supposed to enter their own prompts, with the goal of getting out of the lair in a set number of turns. Noting that Com-Pewter had countered their move of finding a safe passage without any dragons by introducing a dragoness, the heroes made a cunning plan. This time, they stated that they would find an exit with nothing dangerous in it and particularly no egrets, and when the Com-Pewter inevitably answered that there was an egress waiting for them, thinking it would be a mean female egret, the heroes could simply take the egress, which is just another word for exit. Besides, egrets are just harmless birds.

I think what finally sold me was the ending. I mean, how many fantasy books spend time explaining what the Prisoner’s Dilemma is all about and how to solve it?! Being those days an avid fan of the works of Douglas Adams and Monty Python, with their, let’s say, more refined type of humour, this seemed like more of the same kind.

Inca II – Final Rating

By Ilmari

My short affair with Inca II – and oh boy was it short, this is a quick game – has finished with more amiable terms than the stormy relationship I had with the progenitor. While both were pretty to look at, Inca senior was definitely the grouchy one, always kicking me in the groin when I least expected it, while the offspring was more tender and forgiving to play with. We’ve agreed with Inca II that this was it and we won’t ever be getting back together, but at least the little time we had together was entertaining enough. I am sure the fonder memories will reflect on the final rating.

Inca II – Won!

By Ilmari

Now that was easy! But let’s not be hasty, since we still have things to do.

Breathtaking landscape, part XVI

Inca II – By the power of Inca

By Ilmari

Last time I had crash landed on a planet, where a local astronomers set up her computer to calculate positions of three planets, where I should place three great powers of Incas, which would help to destroy an asteroid, which Aguirre, leader of space conquistadores, used for some malevolent purposes. While the computer was doing its calculations, I took a train to…

…search some caves?

I thought I was supposed to use the train to transport my spaceship. Apparently not. Caves it is then.