#25
Post
by DarkJaguar » Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:41 am
I never knew I could get on the pirate ship while the wizard's still "human". So what, does he sink the whole ship, terrifying the pirates in a maelstrom of horror? Or, does he just kill you privately when none of the pirates are looking, which would disappoint me a bit because I love evil scared by other evil.
The mountain path was tricky, as was the climb down from the yeti's cave. I've since learned it very well, but at the time I had to set "speed" down to the lowest setting to navigate without killing myself. The rock hiding my character was the hardest part, but it did add a certain amount of tension I'll admit.
I absolutely loved putting together the spells. Yes I had to do everything exactly as the manual said, but of all the copyright mechanisms they could have picked, that was certainly the most fun. It really took away from it in IA's remake when I found that doing the spells was all just done automatically when you had everything.
Wandering around Llewdor and all it's environs was also one of the most fun moments in the game. I loved it all from the 3 bear's house to the little critters all over the place talking about you (the ridiculous nature of these woodland critters being privy to these sorts of rumors is a lot like the stationary ROCKS in Ocarina of Time (the gossip stones) that somehow are all aware of all sorts of rumors in that game) to that little port town where bandits and pirates come to visit all the time.
The most disappointing parts? Well, the desert really felt under utilized... There's this whole vast thing and the only stuff you need is right at the very start of it. Wandering west from there is nothing more than death. The fact that Medusa's just sitting right there waiting for someone to wander in was also a little odd. Is she like Davey Jones but in reverse, she can only walk on sand? I think actually having to find your way to her lair to kill her to gain not just a snake skin, but a snake skin in her lair from one of the snakes on her own head would have been more interesting.
I was also disappointed in Daventry. There's this huge build up to getting back to a land ravaged by a dragon and all you get are a couple of screens of the devastation, with all the focus just being on going back to the cloud land you went to in the first game. The epic battle against the dragon itself using thunderbolts to kill it was pretty awesome, but I would have liked to explore a bit more of the devastation, perhaps finding how how to get to the clouds myself rather than just being told 5 steps into the place.
The pirate ship... I enjoyed it as a kid, but in retrospect you're right. It was under utilized too. Just like everyone else, I think the insane wait time to "move the story along" at that part really could have been done better. Instead of doing, well, anything at all, the best thing to do at that part is literally just sit down there, wait for them to spot land, then put everyone to sleep.
I will say this. The trip down the mountain? That's not that big a deal when you only have to do it once after you get the magic map. I love that thing. That said, that's only a relief once you find out about the map and how to hide it between wizard trips.
One little note... As much as I love the visuals, I wish that the wizard was still wearing a black cloak instead of the new grey one. To me it just fits better, plus there's that whole business of the black cloak society. That said, if my guess is right I'll wait to see if he's actually wearing the black cloak in secret or something and just using the grey one for his day to day Llewdor business.
Oh! On a storytelling point, as much as the story of a slave to an evil wizard plotting escape was an interesting one, I have to admit I never did much buy that wizard's reasoning for using human slaves. The manual DOES state he "preferred slaves to conjured spirits" because apparently spirits are too much trouble (and admittedly, the conjured spirits Mordack uses kinda prove the point, being as incompetent as they are). However, what we're basically being told is that Mananan actually found it easier to raise a human being FROM INFANCY to an age where they could actually be useful for doing chores, training them to do the chores WELL instead of making a mess, and then having maybe a couple of years of actual useful slave work before killing the slave and starting all over again. It seems like he'd be spending more time raising and training his slaves than actually having slave work. At that point, is it really worth it? Maybe if there was some plot point about him abducting the slave, then sending the child off to some horrible camp to be trained and then going to fetch the slave when he was "ready" it would work, and heck he could kidnap them more often to offset the time without a slave if it worked that way, with one slave trained while another was still being raised at some anonymous location. Of course if there's some group raising slaves, then the question comes as to why the wizard would be doing the abducting instead of that slave trading group, but that's at least something a little easier to swallow. Any thoughts on this, or did I just think about this way too much?
