The Mask of the Sun (1982)

Look: 7/10 Definitely a unique look and writing style.

It even attempted to "animate" walking toward people in a still-screen text adventure heh. Also, this map heh

And heh, they basically animate driving forward without any controls from you

The pyramid parts get a bit dry, especially with the sheer number of rooms you must navigate throughout the epic game. Kinda lame it didn't seem to usually illustrate all the items available on the ground. Maybe that's to harken back to early text adventures, but really felt more like a missing feature at this point in '82 graphic text adventures. Also, tho the animations feel innovative and fun at first, they really just add time to an otherwise, thankfully-quick-drawn Apple II graphic adventure. Anyway, a lot of beautiful screens I couldn't manage to capture them all cuz I wanted to enjoy the game but here's a taste, just a random moment, not one of the most spectacular screens or anything

Sound: 4/10 The sound interludes and, worse yet, the sound effects are annoying at best.

Play: 7/10 I just don't understand how Apple II versions often predate the Atari 8-bit versions. I mean they're usually even the Commodore 64 versions, but that's more preference-based than legitimate.. Again, the Apple II version is my preferred one. I really liked the font used for the text in this, and tho it's long-winded, it was a nice change of pace from the very sparse last few text adventures and because it was somewhat interesting. Decidedly too worried tho, as the game continues. The premise is decent and whatnot, but I just didn't get sucked in enough to read every word. Just the obvious key words. There is a bittttt of the action segment idea that I saw in Escape from Rungistan, but not nearly as prominent.

Feel: 8/10 Cool to see that almost all the '82 text adventures have a clear lineage now to Zelda style "puzzles." e.g., give food to the old woman for a flute, felt very Zelda. Now if only these later adventures and, even later, Zelda adventures had eliminated or minimized the nonsensical "maze segment" trope that has been so popular since even Colossal Cave (you could say Death Mountain an iteration of that). The driving segments were innovative and beautiful, and served a function in the story etc., but eventually felt old when having to wait for so many slow movement animations throughout the game. Wow, there's even like a series of pyramids (dare I say temples?), very Zelda-esque indeed. I am glad to see Statue of a Cat has become a sort of trope in early 80s graphic text adventures. Navigating through the plain pyramids did get a bit dry tho, and the length is a bit much in general (albeit epic and well-done, undeniably). I do feel the lengthy, arguably unnecessary walking animation parts were a big part of that.

Attachment: 7/10 Dang, I felt like I was playing FFIX or Legend of Dragoon or something with having to insert a new disk each part of the adventure--I suppose that shows how expansive and epic this game was for its time! Just a bit too expansive/epic for me to play this a bunch, and a bit too much pyramid navigation, but it's all-around a top-notch game!