I played this game a lot back in the 90s, first as shareware and then the second part on floppy disk. In the beginning I did not know how to move diagonal so I took phase door as my starting spell. Eventually I figured out the controls and always started with heal minor wounds. I do not remember what stats I started with nor what equipment I ended up with, though I believe I played on the hardest difficulty.

Now I have played through the game once again, this time reading a couple online guides to see if there was anything I did not know about the game. I started out with Con as low as possible, allowing me to nearly max Dex, Int and Str. I then exploited the shooting of offensive magic until Con went so negative that it wrapped around to extremely high. This made my character a bit overpowered, but it was fun. At one point in part 2 I had to do this exploit again because the undead enemies had drained my Con to be below average. Playing the late game with max hp only in the 40s was an interesting experience. I started off with magic arrow, found heal minor wounds in the shop, bought some basic gear (non magic bracers, gloves and cape), and headed off into the dungeon with the crappy starting dagger. The core gameplay was a ton of fun; the tactical turn based combat in randomized dungeons. The flavour text for combat was always cool, but as the game progressed it was more about ignoring the text and just watching my guy and his hp. Save scumming was a big part of success, even so far as doing it during combat to edge in healing. I did not die very often though, especially during part 1. Part 2 had much nastier enemies that could suddenly do a lot of damage. I overall preferred part 1 for its simpler towns and dungeons. Everything in part 2 was just a little too big and it was a little too long, turning a bit into tedium.

General strategy was to retreat to choke points so as to fight as few enemies at once as possible, and fight on top of stairs if possible for easy retreats. I used phase door any time I was in an open room with multiple enemies, and sometimes when stat draining undead closed to melee. Detect objects and traps were the next things done after securing a landing. I often used wands, scrolls and potions for those. I cast light into every dark room just to save time. During the late game I had a helm of detect monsters, but the only times I bothered to use those items or spells were when a thief stole from me and vanished. Since the spell had a limited duration, I did not see the point in spending mana on it, especially when combined with save scumming. All healing spells were important and I put the very best in my first spell slot. Even though the weaker spells were more mana efficient for healing, healing from resting was simple enough that I only ever used the most powerful healing spell. It would be a good idea to downgrade the healing to match your max hp though, like when my Con was seriously drained. Neutralize poison was a priority pick, as was identify. I used resist element spells when fighting powerful dragons to help mitigate their breath attacks, but did not find much use for shield. Nukes were great for weakening enemies from a distance. I especially used them on thieves (who always stole the backpack in my belt slot, since I wanted higher loot capacity rather than belt slots), stat draining undead, and the most powerful enemies. Firebolt was overall the best. Occasionally fireball if I wanted to hit multiple targets, or could not get a direct hit with a bolt. Frost bolt was good for fire enemies, while lightning was good for demons. I did not really use the cold and lightning area nukes, nor most of the other spells. Sleep, slow and transmogrify could help with large groups and stat drainers, but so did phase dooring away. And of course rune of return to warp to and from town to unload loot was the best spell in the game. Casting spells was a bit tedious though as the quick cast bar could only hold 10. Healing, nukes and identify absolutely had to be on the bar given how frequently they were cast, while everything else could be done through the menus. I did not like the lack of keyboard shortcuts for the spell bar, which made repeated nukes a tedious process of moving the mouse from the bar to target over and over.

I used wands, potions and scrolls from my free hand liberally, while checking the shops for better gear. I bought an upgrade to the dagger after completing a few dungeons levels and ended part 1 with a magic flail. I made it to level 11 and the amount of xp needed to level up past level 10 was absurd. My stats ended up being: max Str, nearly max Int and Dex, 45% Con, 216 armor, 150 hp, 143 mana, 1.6 million money. I had every spell, a ton of unused consumables and my final gear was:

Bastard sword with very strong + to hit, damage and armor

Very strong bracers of defense

Plate mail with very strong + to armor and fire resist

Necklace of resist lightning. I also had the other 2 elements, and the amulet of kings for life drain

Very strong cloak of protection

Meteoric steel helm with strongly + armor

Small meteoric steel shield with strongly + armor

Gauntlets of slaying with very strong + hit and damage. Also gloves with very strong + armor in my backpack.

2 rings with strongly + armor

Boots of speed, and boots of levitation in backpack. Speed was better for combat but levitation made me immune to most traps.

A large pack of holding, with a medium pack of holding on my belt slot.

I downloaded a version of this game packaged with dosbox to be able to run this on windows 10. The only problem I had was figuring out how to run part 2 since the package did not include a shortcut for that. Instead I had to go into file, run, browse to the castle2 folder and pick castle2.exe. This was a great game back in the day and probably the best game ever that could run on an absolute lemon of a PC. Every playthough was unique and there was a lot of opportunity for self imposed challenge runs. The tactical challenge and Dungeons and Dragons vibe was enthralling, even if the game did get a bit tedious and repetitive towards the end, and there were some interface quality of life issues; sleep until mana restored and spells in particular needed easy keyboard shortcuts.

8.0/10