Swords and Serpents (1990)

Beat. I started by looking online to find that the best party was warrior, thief and 2 mages, so I spent some time rolling their stats. Chovus the warrior with 14 in all stats, which I think was an incredibly lucky maximum possible roll since I never seen any stat higher than 14. The other 3 were not as lucky. Xalveris the thief with 14 str, 13 agility, 12 int. Crystal the mage with 14 int, 10 str, 8 agility. Valcaria the mage with 13 agility, 12 int, 10 str. This game was much like Might and Magic, Wizardry and the Bard's Tale, but very simplified and without a lot of the obtuse bullshit. Smaller party size, only 3 classes, no changing classes or advanced classes, only 3 stats besides hp and mp, xp for the entire party rather than individual. Death was only a minor inconvenience as I could always return to temples for free healing and mana. The game actually had an auto map shown on screen at all times, but it could not be zoomed or scrolled to see the entire floor and deleted after going 2 floors away. This meant I still had to refer to online maps, especially as the floors became more complicated. By the end game I was max level no longer getting xp from enemies and rushed through the last 3 floors using online maps. There was annoying stuff like secret doors, invisible walls (thankfully only on 1 floor), damage floors, teleporters, walls that could be passed through with magic, and walls that could not be passed. I did not like how so much of the game was designed around using that passwall spell. It was annoying to use and there was no way to tell which walls could be passed or not until spending the mana and effort to cast it. The game was impossible without that spell and it made no sense how monsters could survive in places with no physical way out. I loved this same spell in the Elder Scrolls Arena because it was not needed there and felt more like a cheat for being a magic user. Magic should feel like cheating. At least the maps had loot, spells and clues spread around to somewhat reward exploration.

The warrior and thief classes were nearly identical as they had the same stats and could use most of the same equipment. It did not seem like the warrior fought any better except late game because the best weapon was warrior only. The thief occasionally assassinated enemies with 1 hit. None of the other class specific weapons seemed good from looking at the stats but I did not try them; the thief's daggers were weaker than swords while the warrior's big weapons and quickblade were likewise poor stats. I have no idea if there were hidden effects not listed on the item stats screen. I was a little confused with the efficiency stat, about whether a higher of lower value was better. I ignored that stat though and focused on damage and number of hits to maximize dps. The mages instead focused on AC and were more like clerics, focusing on healing and occasional buffs instead of nuking as I found the nukes did pathetic damage. Mages lacked good spells and it was very tedious to scroll down the list to choose which spell to cast. It would have been much better to be able to reorder the spell list or go from the top to the last spell by pressing up. The full heal spell was right at the bottom, and the group heal was not much higher. Passwall and flight were also towards the bottom, so the most used spells required several+ button presses. The basic heal was the 1st spell, thank god. As if healing up after battle was not already tedious. At least they did not have nonsense names. The combat system was almost more like an action game with only 3 options; attack, cast spell and run. There was a mechanic where holding up or down would target the enemy head or legs. Early on I aimed up for zombies to destroy the head and down for soldiers to get around their shields, but the game did not give enough feedback to properly use this mechanic. Eventually I used turbo mode and held the turbo attack button down to get through the battles faster while completely ignoring direction attacks. It was faster to load state and try again if someone died than to fool around with tactics and spell casting. There was no way to control which targets were attacked so literally the only tactics during combat were which spells to cast and whether or not to have low hp characters run. Even the mages had the same hp and AC as the other 2 so they could survive, but their damage output was poor. Despite that it did seem like the mages took more damage. Enemies did not have names or stats shown and there was a lot of palette swapping. There seemed to be only 3 mechanical types of enemies: normal ones that did damage and took damage, tanky ones that for some inexplicable reason did not take damage until after a few hits landed, and annoying ones that did lots of little attacks wasting significant time as every enemy attack took several seconds. Turn order was indecipherable with characters and enemies often getting multiple turns in a row. On one hand I read that intelligence contributed to more attacks, so that was a good way to make mental stats useful for warriors. I think of it like tactics, ambush, and smart parry riposting. On the other those damn mage enemies could take minutes to complete all their attacks before I could do any input. That was the main reason I started turbo mode. The final boss was not too hard as the fighter and thief killed him while the mages buffed and group healed.

Final stats all max level 16. My gold went higher than 4 digits and I do not know how to decipher the letters in the count. Gold was useless past the early game though as finding good gear from enemies was common.

Chovus: 18 str, 20 int, 19 agility, ruby sword, fire shield, plate, helm.

Xalveris 20 str, 16 int, 18 agility, +3 sword (for number of hits to try and get more assassinations, switched to fire sword for final boss), ruby shield, magic plate, helm.

Crystal: 18 str, 17 int, 12 agility, spell staff, glow cloak, ruby ring, helm.

Valcaria: 15 str, 19 int, 16 agility, spell staff, mage cloak, ruby helm.

While this game was better than the games it was based on due to not having so incredibly user unfriendly mechanics, it had enough with explored areas not being saved and over use of the pass through walls magic. The simplified nature of the game made it both more approachable and less engaging, while the combat missed the tactical nature that makes rpg combat fun. The combat felt a bit more like later games: eye of the beholder, might and magic 6 and 7, and similar, but lacked the ability to move around during combat. I had some fun and it was fairly impressive for a nes game, but its flaws made the experience a bit of a slog.

6.5/10