Status Chovus Dec 9, 2023
Beat. I died twice to the slimes in the very first room; once from poison and then from stepping on one. I found these slimes incredibly annoying to fight because it was very difficult to judge how close I had to be to hit them without touching them. Then I decided to check a walkthrough to see where the first …
Beat. I died twice to the slimes in the very first room; once from poison and then from stepping on one. I found these slimes incredibly annoying to fight because it was very difficult to judge how close I had to be to hit them without touching them. Then I decided to check a walkthrough to see where the first save point was; yeah this was a Kingsfield game. The other enemies were not difficult, and once I had secured the save point it was a matter of save scumming the slimes. I killed them with the rapier thinking it would have better reach, but it was difficult to tell if reach was even a thing; it seemed like I had to be right next to an enemy to hit them regardless of weapon. I absolutely hated the lack of any kind of map, so I left the walkthrough open with its handy maps to keep my bearings. I avoided reading any strategy until after I had completed the area. I explored the rest of the human world and made sure to break both of my short swords and then trade them for health potions. I also traded in broken weak armor and a few unused shields. I did die a few times to skeletons until I rememberd to circle strafe and bait their attacks. Blocking with shield did not seem all that useful because I could not attack while blocking and it took precious seconds to raise the shield. The shield also ridiculously obstructed the screen.
Next in the earth world I saved in the poison cavern and took a run through the poison area to see how far I could get. Not very far it turned out, so I went to the rotting area. It took a few tries to beat those laser beam shooting plants without taking too much damage, largely because they were shooting me outside of visual range. Such cheap enemies. A lot of enemies in this game ended up being cheap with ranged attacks that came out of nowhere. I ended up using a torch so I could see better, and given how many unused light sources I ended with I should have used them regularly. I cleared out that area and repaired some of my stuff, then had no choice but to go down the poison path. I didn't even think about using a poison vaccine, and did so after checking the walkthrough. I let the knight holding the boulder die because I wanted to break a sword before giving it up. Probably should have kept 1 of those 0 durability short swords. I loaded the save and gave him my long sword. In the end it did not matter at all because I found 2 soul rings that slowly regened hp to 50%. It took a long time leaving the game running while I did other things to repair all of my stuff, and to recover after fights, but it was great to not be so limited on resources.
I had a lot of trouble killing the stone giants with their super cheap quake area attack. I tried to snipe them with bow and magic while leaving the game running to heal back up, but I kept dying. Several hours later I finally beat them. The trick was using the cleansing ray on the soul ring, which did more damage than poison or fire, and using a healing potion to stay in long enough to kill 1. I ran away to heal and save between each giant, and for the third I used a light bottle to shoot the bow at him from outside quake range. The rest of the earth realm was not much trouble. I did use a healing potion on the boss when he paralyzed me because I forgot I had items that could cure it. Then I was off to the fire world where I accidentally used a stone that gave temporary fire resist. I then got killed by the jinn boss because the fire resist had worn off just before finding him. The next time I bee lined for him to get the use out of the stone. The Juggernaut wheeled robots were among the most annoying enemies in the game. They attacked fast with a big fire ring at long range, so it was very difficult to avoid taking damage. I often had to run away to heal up, and throw some spells in to kill them faster. This was one time where I found it useful to attack before the stamina bar was full to try and interrupt those attacks. The rest of the fire world was not too bad though I did not like the solid black background that did not move at all, making it disorienting to not look down at the floor. I had a full set of fire armor and found it weird that the particle stat meant fire. The boss was no trouble with all that fire resist. At some point during the fire world I purchased the fortune helmet, the best in the game with passive mana regen.
Then I went to water world and found the healing fountain; definitely should have come here to unlock that before completing the fire world. The water world was all about acid, which was the melting stat. I dived into the acid without any gear equipped and killed a couple of fish knights by swapping out my weapons before they broke. Afterwards I checked the walk through to see what was in the area I had not went, since I seen no way to get back up. Turned out it was a way to lower the acid in this pool, so since there was a save point immediately before I decided to load. This time I did the area properly and lowered the acid, allowing me to fight the fish knights in full gear with much less worry. Though they were actually harder like this because more spawned at once. I took off my boots in the swampy area once I noticed they were taking damage from walking in the acid. Later in this zone an enemy dropped the full plate of honor, which was an awesome chest piece that forced the hand and foot slots empty; perfect for this area. I died instantly to the poison jets in the next area, largely because my health was a little low. Got through with higher health, melting resist gear and the caustic tower shield held up. I knew to use archery against the boss going in but I did not want to exploit that without learning it first hand. So I marched into his room and tried to fight him in melee only for him to randomly teleport on top of me and get stuck. I could not move either and had to drink a few healing potions but it was easy to slice him down.
The illusion world was distinctly lacking in illusions, or any other kind of trickery. Some of the enemies were annoying, such as those musicians that rapidly damaged me with their music and could only be hit with bow, corner camping curse causing heads, and those dual sword demons that were the only enemy that I felt was too dangerous to engage in melee. I used a spare shield to block the attacks of those wall heads until I got past them, though I missed a special key from sparing the one that was not attacking. I did find that key later, which was used to open the chests in the previous areas. I opened one with a decent sword, and according to a walkthrough there were two other chests with items while the rest had more keys or nothing. So at best you could get 2 items. The boss was separated into three different creatures and three different rooms, or I guess you could consider the first two mini bosses. The jester was the toughest and I almost had to use a healing potion, just because of the way he teleported around and shot while having so much health. The ruler disguise right afterwards went down quite quickly as I got her caught between the wall and a pillar.
Monster World had some tough enemies, and I almost died in the beast key room trying to kill those enemies while they were invisible. It was a much better idea to use the pedestal first to make them visible. This was a much smaller world without much else of Interest. Necron went down easily from bow kiting and those headless monkey enemies were the lamest in the game, especially at such high level. They reminded me of the headless ones in Ultima Online, which were trash tier. This area even had a warp back to the healing fountain in the water world with a repair shop right next to it, so it was easy to keep my stuff repaired. The final death world was also not very big without much of interest happening. The enemies were tough but not much of an actual threat. The most interesting were the teleporting archers. At one point a fat armored guy dropped the hardened full plate, which was very similar to my honor plate only with better defensive and offensive stats but a little lower strength. I switched to using that but at the next save point I went to the shop first and the game locked up. So then I had to save scum a few times to get that armor drop again. I got killed by a giant zombie thing when it paralyzed me and my inventory button didn't work for some reason, then I got killed by the boss when I ran out of arrows and decided to approach through his area nuking figuring it couldn't be that bad. The next time I killed him without running out of ammo. Then I did the cursed library, referring to the walkthrough to tell me to jump off onto that balcony at the previous hub; I wondered what that was for. Then I beat the final boss. The first part against the armored knight was easy and he never even got an attack out as I circle strafed around him. I tried using the best spells but his magic defense was too high to make it worthwhile. After he took off his armor the fight was a little more difficult as he could actually hit me and cast spells. Even though he did a point blank area nuke, it was sporadic enough that I could still weave in and out with melee strikes. I actually dropped him with a great sword. Then I went the wrong way and walked for a few minutes down the samey looking corridor. I started to wonder if it was endless or if it was a teleporter loop. I figured I had gone the wrong way anyway so I turned around and encountered the final final boss. It looked like it would be a flee down the endless corridor while shooting a slowly advancing but deadly boss, but it was actually a token fight. He just stood there doing nothing and was ridiculously weak to arrows. He was immune to magic and looked like he could do a lot of damage in melee, though his creature book entry said otherwise.
I ended with 75/99 cunes found, 142/265 items found, 576/630 creatures defeated. Most zones were completed 85 to 100%, with Phoenix cave being the lowest by far at 66%. I spread my attribute points between strength, speed, spirit and a little bit in defense with final scores without equipment being: 622 str (hp, weapon damage, encumbrance), 474 speed (attack and movement speed, maybe also stamina recovery), 383 defense (less damage from physical hits), 326 balance (poise, less chance of being staggered on hit I think), 338 slash, 322 smash, 306 pierce (bonus to weapon damage), 482 spirit (magic defense), 324 focus (mana), 328 harmony (speed for magic), 333 purity (recovery from status effects), 341 particle, 332 melting, 340 soul (damage boost for magic, I played thinking it was elemental defense), 5259 hp, 4408 mp, 4551/4921 sp (I think this is xp). I had to look up what each stat did and it was a bit overwhelming to have so many to choose from when spending points.
I acquired far too much supplies and equipment, choosing what to use based on raw stat increases and a couple suggestions from the walkthrough. My end stock was: 8 torch, 8 lamp, 11 sacred feather, 91 healing potion, 25 magic potion, 11 anti venom, 9 anti paralytic, 8 divine symbol (used a couple to cure curse), 6 evil eye (never used), 5 fire stones, 9 poison vaccine, 6 dust of rage (never used), 13 bottle of light, 7 acid vaccine, 7 spirit book, 21 ashes (never used). I definitely could have used those more often. It was not until after beating the game while writing this that I figured out I could view the special bonuses on gear in the equip info menu. I used the magical amulet for much of the game due to it's small str boost. Later when I no longer had to micromanage my slots to keep myself within the encumbrance limit, I switched to the swift amulet for its offense boost. I did not realize it buffed move speed. The endless amulet from the 2nd last boss was by far the best, with high stats and hp and mana regen. Some bonuses that stood out that I would have used: deadly improved crit chance and curing gave hp regen.
I chose 2 bracelets based largely on which had the highest offensive stats. I ended with the moon bracelet (great hp and mana regen plus high poison resist) and priest bracelet (hp regen and holy defense). Harden gave higher defense, sorcerer magic attack, deadly crit, mighty attack power, composure spell speed, movement gave move speed, and balance impact resist (poise l guess).
For rings I mostly left on the 2 soul rings for hp regen. Very rarely I switched to a couple with slight bonuses to melee damage. Other times I swapped them around to use nukes. My ring inventory: 2 summoner of fire (just fire attack), fire resist (fire attack and magic resist, though not clear if it only protected from fire damage), priest fire (attack, status recovery and magic defense. Not clear what is different between magic resist and magic defense). Sorcerer fire (boost to magic attack, crit and mp regen), 2 summoner of frost, balance of frost (impact resist, status recovery, mp drain). That balance ring was one I wore occasionally for melee attack boost (pierce attribute) and I tested that there was no passive mp loss. Maybe mp drain meant extra cost per spell. 2 soul rings (hp regen), dark ring (mp drain), dark priest (magic defense, mp regen, status recovery), dark sorcerer (magic attack, mp drain, lower light radius), poison (hp drain which did not hurt the player. Does it apply extra damage to physical attacks? Or is that the damage over time on the spell? 2 caustic rings, caustic priest (magic defense, crit, status recovery), caustic sorcerer (magic attack), desire (special powers. No idea what that meant. Unique spells?), dark souls (special powers again), dead spirit (special powers, huge hp and mp regen). I should have been using that last ring all the time! Otherwise I did not miss much. I could have used the priest rings to cure poison and curse faster. It was disappointing that every spell was direct damage, with no buffs or utility magic. Some had better range, accuracy and projectile speed than others. There were 2 spells for each element (fire, frost, acid, light, dark), though the dual poison and queen eyes spells broke that pattern and I do not know what element queen eyes was. Frozen hornet and bubble shower were the worst due to being short range. It was also disappointing that every spell was a projectile nuke. Some had area effect on detonation, and I think the poison spell had some damage over time, but there was a distinct lack of point blank area nukes like the enemies used.
The fortune helm was my most used with amazing stats and mana regen. Prior to that I used generic helms for defense. The fiery helm had fire defense, which I used in the fire world, harden had higher physical defense, the magical helm increased mana, and the wizard crown had significant hp regen and acid resist. I wish I knew about that hp regen. I had a crown of resist that gave less fire resist and another crown that I sold long ago.
My gloves were not very good so I used this slot to cut down on weight by using wooden or leather gloves. Later I found gauntlets which had better defensive stats. Very late I found deadly gauntlets with crit bonus, and arm guards of composure with magic speed and fire resist, but I already had full plate and thus never used them.
Boots were another slot that I used to cut down on weight by wearing simple leather. In the human world I found broken steel boots of resist (boosted magic resist), which cost a lot to repair. I had to wait until my str was high enough, then they became my most used boots. Steel boots of curing had bonus status recovery, which I figured because I would switch to those and armor of curing to passively get rid of poison. Steel boots of balance had nice hp regen and impact resist, but I never knew that to use them. And I had fiery, frosty and caustic legs for elemental defense, but I only used the fire for fire world bosses. Frost may have been useful for those bosses with the blue area nuke (assuming they were cold damage), and the caustic legs may have helped with the poison jets and acid pools, assuming the acid did not destroy its durability.
For chest armor I used up some basic quilted and leather early on until they broke. After that I was using scale and was able to reliably keep armor repaired. I used plate or curing and firey plate until I found that sweet full plate of honor. I thought for sure it and the hardened full plate gave hp regen, but testing revealed that they did not. Still both of those full plates gave such high stats that other chest armors and the entire gloves and boots slots were obsolete.
I found way too many shields, especially given that their durability only went down while blocking. I ended up selling a lot of duplicates. I kept a variety of different weight shields so I could adjust my equip burden based on what else I was using: sometimes it had to be a buckler, especially when I first started wearing heavier armor. Then I moved to large, then tower. The tower shield of honor was my most used shield for its hp regen, which the walkthrough mentioned. Otherwise I probably would not have bothered to repair it from broken, since it cost almost twice as much as those boots of resist. I used the caustic tower shield for those acid sprays, and a regular gothic shield for those wall spitters in the illusion world. Now that I can see the full stats, the gothic shield of power was the best with more hp regen, mana regen, only slightly less defense, str and balance, and only slightly heavier. The gothic shield of honor had slightly better hp regen than the tower for less weight and stats, but by the time I found that weight was not an issue. The gothic shield of resist had excellent freeze defense. The tower shield of balance had hp regen, poison resist and impact resist. The deadly shield had terrible durability but likely would have been useful as passive offense boost. The shining great shield had holy resist, and the fiery had fire resist, which I did actually use in the fire world. Overall not much lost by mostly using the tower of honor.
I did not find out much about weapons from the equip info; just that shadow tiger had minor hp regen (which was useless given that it was 2 handed), and that the warrior bow and silent sword had poison attack. Since weapons degraded so quickly I usually just went from left to right using them in order until low durability, which meant the axes on the far right were rarely used. I did not notice any effect for the different damage types, like skeletons or heavy armor taking more damage from crushing, though fiery would obviously do a bit less damage to fire elementals, like fire magic. All weapons did well enough with the only really noticable difference being the speed boost on rapiers for better hit and run, and the terrible slow speed on the 2 handed great swords and battle axes, with corresponding higher damage. My best weapon was probably the lethal bastard sword. My others in rough order of best to worst: deadly bastard, crushing bastard, shining bastard, fiery bastard, swift bastard, shadow tiger, guardian great sword, swift great, fiery great, keenest battle axe, deadly battle axe, lethal rapier, silent sword, crushing broad, bastard, keenest long, 2 great swords, crushing axe, 2 broad, 2 giant axe, crushing mace, rapier, axe, morning star. Also the bow and warrior bow. The only weapons I lost were those 2 short swords and a long sword. The long sword would fall somewhere around the caliber of the rapier and axe, while the short swords were the weakest weapons. I started a new game and rushed through to the earth world, ending up with a few completely different weapons.
I did not like this game as much as King's Field, largely because of the worst aspect being the complete lack of any map or navigational aid. How could they make such a down grade? It was also not fun humping random walls to look for secret doors, instead of there being subtle clues to find. While it was cool to have light items required to see any distance in the dark, the darkness just made it even more difficult to navigate. The second worst part of the game was using hp to repair items. While it was interesting to have to balance the trade off between repair and survivability, this entirely went out the window with hp regen items. They just encouraged what I did; letting the game run while healing up. It would have been far better to not include regeneration at all, or use money for repairing. Perhaps even redesign the entire ashes item and the trading stores to create a permanent trade off for repairing. Otherwise it was a fun adventure with a decent amount of variety. Interesting places to explore, enemies to fight and loot to use, though the story content was fairly bare bones. I especially liked the random variance in the loot, making each game slightly different. The slow turning speed was annoying, but fair given how slowly the enemies moved. In fact most enemies were far too easy to defeat by circle strafing or moving back and forth. I could see playing through again at some point, even doing a challenge run where I am not allowed to move around while fighting, and/or not allowed to use hp regen. There was no new game+. Instead beating the final boss warped me back to the beginning with everything already looted and cleared. At best it was a shortcut to explore areas looking for missed stuff, but I see no point to max out a save like that.
7.2/10
