New Game: Avernum 2

System: Windows 7 PC (XP compatibility)

Year: 2000

Well fresh off the heels of Avernum I’ve started Avernum 2. So beginning impressions. well, first off the graphical style is pretty much exactly the same as the first game so If you didn’t care for the somewhat primitive of PC retro graphics of the first game your not going to like the second either. The story is that basically after assassinating the emperor of the Empire in the first game the Empire was understandably pretty pissed off and begun a full scale invasion of Avernum. Avernites having the home advantage have been putting up a valiant defense but they have been steadily losing ground to Imperial troops and only the Empires inability to transport large numbers of troops to Avernum has denied them a crushing victory. To make matters worse recently strange magical barriers have sprung up across Avernum cutting off entire areas. We start off with the character creation screen where your to make four characters who are new recruits to the Avernite army and are stationed in a remote base in an area recently cut off via the barriers.

So first off you have more choices for species. In the first game you were limited to humans but now you can have Sliths and Nephils (lizard & cat people) in your party. I decided to mix it up and add one of each. At first glance on starting a new game one would think its basically the same game as the first and not even the setting has really changed but fortunitly that is not the case. technically speaking Avernum 2 is a much better game and many of the issues and short comings of the original have been addressed. Very early on in the game the fort your stationed at is attacked. Its a scripted event of the type that was never seen in the first game and it really helps bring the world of Avernum alive. during this battle you’ll also notice that now enemies and yourselves have HP meters so you can actually tell how low an enemies HP are where in the first game it was all a guessing game. Another example of a more live feeling world is later when you infiltrate the attackers fort there is a gate that requires a password to open. I the previous Avernum you may have been required to search a certain area where you would get a dialog box saying something to the effect that the password was found and you “take note of this”. In Avernum 2 you just find a sheet of paper and you actually have to think enough to use the sheet in your inventory and see the password written there in order to discover it. A small difference indeed but more immersive in my opinion. There are a lot of little tweaks such as money automatically being picked up when you search an area and maps of areas being able to be smaller allowing for some smaller areas to explore rather then every dungeon/cave you enter being a full complex. The mouse/movement sensitivity has been toned down is is much nicer now. one click in a direction moves you one click in a direction where as in the first game the movement interface seemed wildly oversensitive at times moving your group past where you wanted, sometimes into traps or lave. The new sensitivity allows for much greater precision and control.

Some old friends

One much welcomed addition is a new quest log. Now instead of simply struggling to remember every quest or copy every conversation into your journal there is actually a quest log that keeps track of active quests and removes quests once they are completed. I cannot stress how welcomed this addition is. There are also new spells and a plethora of new monsters. Some monsters also have area damage, for instance a fire lizard has a heat area around it where you take slight damage when next to the monster. The area dissipates eventually once the beast is slain. The world of Avernum is familiar but still changed around enough that its not a complete retread of the the previous games areas. This is explained by the passage of time as well as many major and minor “cavequakes” that has somewhat reshaped the land. There is some fun though in revisiting cities from the first game and seeing the change or talking to old characters. The blacksmith that reforged the Demon Slayer sword from the first game now brags about it and poor Matrox the friendly dragon that loves to see human visitors is now under heavy guard and given restricted guest visitations after Imperial assassins attempted to kill him.

I liked the art for the previous games giants better, this giant just looks out of place stylistically

The game is also now broken into chapters. This doesn’t mean you cant backtrack and the end of any one chapter is little more then a text screen and a nicely drawn image it does help make the plot feel like its moving along. I spent the first few hours re-exploring the north eastern corner of Avernum much in the same manner as I did in the first game. The big difference is your given a limited amount of space to explore since the mysterious magic barriers have appeared cutting off  multiple sections of Avernum. In my quest to discover the cause of the barriers I went to the largest city in the area and was greeted with a nice scripted event where a cavequake occurs and a strange magical being appears and asks for to meet with some humans if they will follow the tunnel created. This was a nice surprise as I was expecting nothing but a complete retread of Avernum but now your given a completely new and vast land to explore. After following the trail downward you embark on a boat and are told to venture downstream to the land of the Vahnatai, a ancient race of magical being that dwell even deeper underground. what follows is a fun river travel section through unknown land with limited resources though admittedly this wasn’t as harrowing as it first sounds as I found it rather easy and was rarely concerned for my characters. After finally getting to the land of the Vahnatai you discover they are a magical race that has just reawakened from a long hibernation cycle. You also learn they are responsible for the magic barriers and blame humans for stealing 3 precious soul gems. Not all Vahnatai believe all humans are evil though and have asked your group down to prove this.

The land of the Vahnatai

The Vahnatai lands aren’t as vast as Avernum but they are different and the monsters are also mostly different with lots of giant insects and hydras. There’s also some new skills and magic you can pick up. It doesn’t take to long to figure out that the Empire is behind the missing soul gems and are supporting a rebel group of Vahnatai. I found a few areas here beyond the abilities of my party and decided I had best save them for later. The rebel fort was especially challenging at spots and figured I needed to level up before reattempting it. Eventually I succeeded via the completion of trials in seeing the high council and explaining the situation. At this point your given a sort of grand quest to retrieve the three stolen soul gems and a portal is created that acts as a link between the Vahnatai lands and Avernum (at the point of the tower of magi). After returning to Avernum and exploring the old tower of magi I left the tower and thus began chapter 4.

 I felt this was a good place to stop and write about my beginning thoughts on this game. So far I think its managed to retain the old school charm of the first game while adding new things, giving a fun plot and fixing so many of the minor irritations of the first Avernum interface wise. I look forward to the rest of the game and retrieving those crystal souls (previously I called them soul gems).

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RPG 143 beaten: Avernum

Welcome to the annual Avernum body builders contest

Well as of now I’ve decided to take a slightly different approach to things and I’m going to try to keep each game down to three posts covering my progress and impressions at the beginning, middle and end of a game. When I left off last time my party had explored much of the eastern section of the map and I was finally getting to the middle and west. Little did I know there was still a lot more to this game and tons of unexplored areas. The great cave is basically the center of the Avernum government and its where the king resides. When you get to this point in the game and talk to the king the new focus is on the Sliths who are the lizard men and there evil leader Sss-Thsss. I really want to make a witty joke about that ridiculous name here but..alas. This involves exploring much of the middle of the map which is there domain and you do a lot of this buy buying boats and navigating the rivers. This is also where the game feels a little more mysterious since these are unsettled lands and there’s lots of fun things to discover. even in the map that comes with the DDL of the game these areas are not clearly marked adding to the mystery. This is also a point where you need to really start looking out for artifacts left by the fabled first expedition from the surface such as parts of the “Demonslayer” sword and the orb that allows you to fly. One thing you really need to do is look for secret passages EVERYWHERE. I had to end up going back to places later in the game and search dungeons and areas because I was so unaware of the huge amount of secret passages , many that lead to things like spell books. Another thing I learned is do not be afraid to pick locks. I didn’t do this at first because I was afraid it would hurt my reputation but it doesn’t. It also doesn’t matter if a guard is right next to you as long as you don’t actually steal anything labeled “NY” (not yours). There are a lot of things like spell books and a few vital things to the game that require you pretty much break into areas. The land of the giants is also above the Slith territory and although your technically supposed to go there later I think I ravaged those lands at this point.

Liberating the first piece of Demonslayer from the Slith

 After the defeating of the Slith be sure to report back to the King and he tells you that there’s more trouble this time at Fort Remote that guards the  pass to the unknown west. I also journeyed north at this point into the Abyss where all the people that Avernum doesn’t want like bandits and such are double exiled? There are only two cities there but a good deal to do in them. Its sort of this semi lawless area with corrupt officials and where everyone hates Avernites and looks on them only slightly better then the Empire. Its here you start learning of a secret organization that’s working to strike back against the Empire and its also where you start finding heavy clues that the Empire actually has a covert presence in Avernum and that War between the two is coming. Now, I though this was cool and all but of course my mind starts asking questions. What did the Empire think was going to happen to the thousands of people exiled? I guess it assumed they would all wonder around and die. I guess that makes sense but once learning they were forming a rival nation why does it continue to supply them with food, materials and manpower via the portal only making them a stronger threat? I also wonder at the timeline. Its stated the exiles started something like 50 years ago and granted that’s a long time but how did these people build all these cities and such infrastructure in a mere 50 years from such meager resources? Yes magic accounts for some of that but damn. Anyways that ridicules nitpicking but that’s usually how my mind works.

Another cluster f@*k battle at the ruins of Fort Remote

Now at this point as you continue to explore you become more aware of three “Great quests of Avernum” as the game calls them.

1 – defeat the ancient demon Grah-Hoth

2 – find and escape route from Avernum to the surface

3 – assassinate the Emperor Hawthorne

But these can be a bit tricky and confusing cause they require multiple fetch quests and searching and mini quest upon mini quest. Its made even harder to keep track of things as there’s no real quest log as in more modern games to keep track of all the side quests and there’s literally a ton of them. The only way in game to really keep track of side quests and information is in all dialog there is a little book icon and if someone says something you think is important you click it and it saves that snippet of dialog in your journal. its not a terrible method but it is cumbersome and your journal can fill quickly with lots of pages. also these pages do not indicate when the quest is completed, you must manually delete the entries. For awhile I was also a bit confused because I though escaping from Avernum and killing the emperor was one combined thing but its not. There are actually two separate ways to leave Avernum and although it makes sense now at that point it didn’t to me as I was finding separate information on what I though was one means to escape.

Tower of the fabled enchantress Erika

 One enemy attack I started encountering at this point was the dumbfounding ray that sometimes…many times demons would use. It kind of acts like a silence spell and zaps your MP which can be really really annoying. I’m usually not a potion user in these kind of games either so I rarely stock up on potions but in Avernum its really to your benefit to stock up on healing and energy elixirs as well as others or better yet invest skill and money into potion making. So after exploring most of the map and generally finding all the important locals its mostly a game of running back and forth getting all the pieces you need to complete the quests. for instance to get access to the teleporter to take you to the royal castle to kill the Emperor you first need to talk to Erika. she tells you you need a royal seal and a ritual to make it past the defenses. so you need a royal seal then also you need to learn who created the magic barrier. I discovered it was the dragon Koth but to teach you he requires I get his scroll back that was stolen by the Empire. Once that’s done and you get the ritual you learn that now you need to find five brooches (I already had two) to enable accurate teleportation. All the clues are in the game so you can do it but its just a lot of steps and a lot of back tracking. For the exit quest you have recover two items stolen from the dragon Sulfras and then track down four parts of a password that various people around Avernum have. Granted the game points you in the right direction and your not left clueless or with obtuse solutions like some early 90’s point and click adventure games but it can get to a point that its like “really? more stuff?”. Your really going to need a few of the ancient relics that have been talked about in game at this point like the blade that cuts anything found in the Tower of Magi (its not a usable weapon) and the orb of flight. Things like the Demonslayer sword really help and finding its three parts isnt to hard if you have been keeping track of notes though its requires backtracking and it stumped me for a little as to where the pommel and tip were hidden.

The demon lord Grath-Hoth

The easiest of the main quests to complete is probably finding the exit from Avernum as there’s really no boss battle involved just an annoying back and forth trek through a area littered with respawning golems and impenetrable “fog of war” darkness. Its really more of a test of endurance as you trek back and forth finding wheels to turn to unlock areas when being assaulted by monsters. The trek through Grath-Hoths lair though can be frustrating if unprepared though and it took me a few tries. You really want to battle him at full strength. I had to use some strategy other then charge him since anytime I tried that I was decimated. I basically retreated to the back of the room killing the monsters there then spammed monster summons and used as much range attacks as I could to whittle him and his allies down before running in to attack him. Killing him will eliminate any remaining demon underlings.

The last Quest involves the assassination of the Emperor which is debatably harder then Grath-Hoth. It only took a few reloads for me since at this point I was prepared but it actually starts as a rush though the castle corridors fighting Imperial troops blocking the way and searching rooms for the Emperor while reinforcements are constantly spawning behind you in hot pursuit. There actually a few rooms that prompt you to rest and recharge (like found in many RPG’s in dangerous places) but if you do attempt to rest as would happen most likely in real life is your captured sleeping within the hour, interrogated and executed. After fighting up the tower I finally reached the Emperor and his guards. I died about twice in this battle and had to reload but at this point I was so powerful I had a spell Arcane Shield which you can cast on one character which makes him invulnerable a few rounds. I just kind of cast that on my main warrior, made sure everyone was hasted. I spammed major monster summoning to keep the guards distracted and just kind of maneuvered my warrior up to the Emperor and hacked him to death. After this a portal appears and you have to get your guys to it to escape.

The final confrontation.

Its pretty much an open ending. after each of the big three quests your just given a text and a nice hand drawn image that reminds me of early D&D art and given the option to keep playing as an open world ending. So now that’s its over what do I think? Well I really liked this game. I never got to easy or to hard though near the end as I became more aware of some powerful spells it may of became easier (besides I think there’s a difficulty setting). It kept me engaged the whole time and the sense of exploration and discovery in my book rivaled games like Skies of Arcadia. Its a shame some people, no offense, (graphics whore’s) will pass this game up solely on its looks. It really is a great throwback to earlier computer RPG’s and its a wonderful game that was created despite the smaller budget and amount of manpower that created it. It defiantly has its flaws if your not going to count graphics. the side quest management was to archaic for my tastes but understandable. At least there was some kind of way to keep track of things. I’m really looking forward to starting the next Avernum game and seeing where the series goes from here. I own 1-6 of the Avernum series so expect more to come.

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Year: 2000

Platform: Windows

Length: (2/3)

Difficulty: (2/3)

The Grade

A

Game World – The world of Avernum is nothing short of awesome. A vast underground dungeon setting is certainly not new to the genre but the world of Avernum captured my imagination and sense of exploration as few games do and despite the dated graphics and game engine the world itself drew me in to the same level as something like fallout. The nation of Avernum is well laid out and is full of unique places, encounters and dungeons. it always felt there was places to discover and explore. Grade: A

Controls – The interface is basic but works. There are some control issues though. The mouse controls are oversensitive and I had constant issues walking places I did not want to. The issue with enemies spamming monster summons could also get very aggravating. Probably the worst aspect was the lack of any kind of quest log to keep track of all the side quests (and there are many). Grade: D+

Game play – Avernum can be a long game yet it never seemed to overstay its welcome and I was pretty sad to see it end. The game world is pretty vast and although you can get sidetracked and lost at times the game always seemed to have a general direction and flow. Difficulty could be erratic but never unfair. Grade: C

Plot – I loved the whole plot about being thrown into an underground prison realm and having to explore and find your way out. Its not completely original but it was well done and there is a definite ending satisfaction with the assassination of the emperor Grade: B

Graphics/Sound – This is a hard one because the graphics are obviously very dated yet considering its an independent release by a small studio and with what I think is a retro intention is very hard to judge. but even by the standards of a mid 1990’s PC RPG the look is dated. There really no music to speak of and the sound effects though adequate aren’t stellar. It also gets a little grating to hear the trumpet diddy every time you enter a city or town. Considering the feel and small studio I have to give the benefit of the doubt. Grade: C-

Protagonist (Main characters) – The thing that pulls this category down is the character creation. The mix of classes is nice but being limited to humans in a game like this is slightly limited but understandable. There isnt anything like alignment which one would expect from a game of this type and your characters are silent for the most part. Grade: C-

NPC, Antagnoist (main villain) – The NPC’s and characters that inhabit the world are great and many NPC’s have dialog. There’s a lot of dialog available in the game and I was constantly meeting new NPC’s and wanting to meet ones I heard rumors of (Erika). The villains are good and even though you don’t meet the emperor till the end he makes a decent villain by his deeds alone. Grade: A

Weapons/Armor/Items/Magic – Avernum is a world full of items both rare and mundane. The armor selection is pretty standard but defiantly sizable. The weapons I would say are above average with many hidden rare ones and a fairly extensive variety from swords to darts to crossbows. Magic is split into wizard and cleric and both classes have a good variety of your DnD type spells.. Grade: B

Enemies – The enemies of Avernum are a mix of the traditional and some unique creatures. everything populating the underground realm feels correct and encounters are varied. Grade: B+

Stability – had the game crash randomly on me maybe twice under Windows 7, It may have performed perfect in XP. Grade: B

 

 

Avernum: entry 2

battling the evil spider hordes

Well, continuing my epic trek through Avernum we left off with me facing a lair of evil spiders with the mission of freeing the friendly spider captive.  Wasn’t to hard of a task. I think at this point in the game I started feeling that maybe the game was getting to easy and that money was just to easy to come across but that’s really not the case. Every time I start to get that feeling I encounter a new area that challenges me and there’s still spots I need to revisit because the battles were just to hard. since the game is completely non linear traveling north or south (I initially went north) has the same challenge level but as you travel west the challenges ramp up in general difficulty. After the spiders I decided to check out the south of Avernum and backtracked. In the south we have a few more cities, one plagued by undead and the Tower of Magi where after poking around you discover there’s some shady business going on with the summoning of a powerful demon lord. This required me to find a wizard that had departed the tower and I admit I was stuck for awhile trying to find him. It took me awhile to figure out I needed to buy a boat to be able to access where his hidden tower was.

At this point challenging a demon lord is WAY over my head and apparently I need something aptly called the Demonslayer sword to have any chance. As for my feelings after getting several hours into the game? There pretty much the same. Despite the primitive look the sense of exploration is still fantastic and I thoroughly enjoy all the places to discover and encounters that you can stumble upon, both monsters and just random things. For instance I have begun to encounter the sliths whom are pretty much lizard men that are also besieging the human population of Avernum. The present a more formidable foe then the cat people. At one of their outposts you find an egg nursery with the option of smashing the babies. If you do your assaulted by a powerful group of sliths that I have yet to be able to defeat. Time also passes and like games such as Daggerfall there are special holidays where things like weapons can be bought for a reduced price.

lost cave cows

There are some annoying areas. One such area is the “living statue room” right before encountering the Dragon Athron (there are no Dragons left on the surface and only a handful that escaped underground). See in this game as far as I can tell enemies never run out of magic spell points as you do. also there is a summon monster spell that summons several low level monsters. The problem is your party can be swamped by an ocean of low level summoned monsters as at times enemy spell casting monsters spam the summon creature spell over and over. Its not as easy as just slashing through them or casting area effect spells since at times the enemies can mass summon faster then you can kill them.

me being overwhelmed by enemies

I have mostly explored the east section of Avernum though there are still several side quests and areas I have yet to fully clean out of monsters. My next destination is “The Great Cave” which is the seat of human power in Avernum hosting the capital of the humans. beyond that is something called the Abyss and some uncharted lands. I’m also hunting down a reclusive and super powerful mage whom I need to ask for help against the demon who I assume lives to the far west.

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New game: Avernum

System: Windows 7 PC (XP compatibility)

Year: 2000

Started a new RPG on the PC, Avernum. This game is a little different and interested me on several levels.

First off its an indie RPG that I don’t think ever had a real retail release. now i’ve seen it on compilation CD’s. those $3 jewel case deals you used to see at Walmart or at goodwill, “100 best windows games!” and such crap. I know the company Spiderweb software used to mail you the games on CD when you ordered them from them but as I said I don’t think it ever saw a retail release and the “official” CD’s are hard to come by which brings up an interesting point for me. How do I determine which RPG’s are “worthy” of my cause. Now that may sound elitest and that’s not how I mean it. The goal is certainly already neigh impossible but I cant play ever RPG Tom, Dick and Harry makes at home in C++ and Visual basic. That said I think the Avernum games have achieved a level that although they never saw a retail release they are “official” enough and well regarded enough to qualify for my play through and I suppose those multiple “best of” compilations count for something.

So first off some history. Avernum actually is a remake of a the 1995 game Exile. actually all the games in the 90’s Exile games were remade in the early 2000’s and renamed Avernum and very recently it appears they are being remade again. Now I try to play the “definitive” versions of an RPG and Avernum works for me because it improves a lot on the originals adding more quests and features as well as updated graphics. Now from what I read the newest remake actually dumbs the game down some taking out some “hard core” features and removing some of the more humorous parts like the talking spider colony which I thing adds flair to this game, thus I went with the Avernum series. I also took the unusual route (for me) of just downloading the entire series from GOG for something like $12. now I never EVER go the DD route as a collector I must have a physical copy but as I said earlier I don’t think this game actually saw retail release. I know the original Exile trilogy was available on CD mail order from the company but I have no idea if this was ever the case with the Avernum games so…meh. I actually did contact Spiderweb Software by email about attaining physical copies and their response was “sorry, digital downloads only, we gave in to peer pressure”. 😦

The nice thing about these games is they play natively on XP and windows 7 so I can just play them on my main rig. Also being a Windows 7 game I can take direct screenshots and not have to resort to using the digital camera.

Ive been wanting to play this series for several years now since I stumbled across it on the web. The game got a lot of flake from some people about the very poor graphics for a game coming out in the year 20xx but honestly what do you expect from a team of a few guys probably doing it just for fun. I freely admit some games from the late 1980’s look better then Avernum but for me the look adds to its old school charm. In a way it reminds me a lot of playing Ultima and this games oozes character. The story, atmosphere and game play more then make up for any visual deficiencies but to me the look is part of the charm.

The story without going into high detail really grabbed me. its about a place underground called Avernum. On the surface the world is ruled by an oppressive Empire who have waged a war of genocide on all mythical surface creatures (like a darker version of Shriek) and anyone who speaks out against them or defies them is banished to the underworld of Avernum via a one way magic portal. So your thrown into this alien underworld populated by monsters and thousands of exiles that have managed to make a society underground against all odds and with few resources. As a group of adventuring exiles your quest is mostly to explore this new realm, help its people and eventually find a way back to the surface. Starting this game gripped me with a sense of exploration and adventure that few games really have recently.

Character creation is pretty basic and the game overall feels very Dungeons and Dragons influenced which is fine by me since I am a D&D fan and player. You can only be human and you have your basic classes to pick from and some other interesting ones like Rebel and Shaman. I though felt compelled to stick pretty basic when making my four party members. I made a solider, rouge, cleric and sorcerer. Your dumped off in the Fort Avernum and that’s it. the interface is very basic but pretty easy to learn especially if your used to old school PC games. I liked how the setup was somewhat realistic with how this new society of exiles has built and organized itself and it even has a system for new arrivals when someone greets them and basic supplies are made available. After asking around the fort and getting the lay of the lands I set out for adventure.

outside of Fort Avernum

As you can see the graphics are pretty basic but you shouldn’t let that detour you from a pretty solid game. its like people that refuse to watch a great movie because its “to old” and in black and white. most of the beginning has been spend traveling to the nearby towns and leveling with the monster encounters along the road. also did some minor quests with ridding the locals of bandits. There are lots of nice minor touches and places/secrets you can stumble across while exploring the underworld.

A battle with brigands and some giant lizards

I’m really enjoying the game as like I said before it gives off a real Dungeons and Dragons feel. classes do not seem to be very rigid and really only are there for initial states after that you can mold them however you please. The game isnt to hard though I have encounter a number of battles that I could not win or had to return to. Saving can be done at any time and it seems monster generally do not respawn so if you say come across a bandit fort and need to take it down you can enter, clear out a few rooms. Exit the fort and rest then reenter and repeat which I have mixed feelings about since it feels like it makes things easier. There is a difficulty adjustment with four levels but I never really like those kind of things for an RPG and always go with “normal” as to stay with the baseline of what the creator of the game intended.

After traveling north to a large city I learned that the neighboring cat people nation, known as Nephar, whom are also exiles from the surface have been organizing more daring raids and have stolen the mayors magical necklace of leadership. So being reasonably leveled and equipped after sacking the troublesome brigand fort I ventured into cat people country. I stumbled upon a small fort which with some effort I wiped out and came across a bronze key which lucky for me I needed for the main fort of the Nephar.

My group, storming the Nephar fort like we own the place.

To the north of the small fort was a much larger fort which in my arrogance I ignored all warnings and stormed from the front being decimated by hot oil traps, window archers and a heavily guarded entryway. resting my save I sneakily made my way to the rear of the fort taking out some easy sentries and entered from the obligatory secret entrance. Stealthily I made my way through the fort picking off its inhabitants and looting as I went until finally on the second floor I came across the room with a shaman, undead guards and several cat man warriors whom after defeating I was able to finally recover the necklace in a adjacent room.

As it stands now my exploring has taken me to the west past a notable mining city and into the realm of some strange friendly talking spiders (whom were apparently removed from the latest remake). So I’m off to save there spidery friend that was kidnapped by the neighboring evil intelligent spiders. Oh and the friendly spiders also find your party oddly attractive.

I’m cute huh? strange species attracted to me WWKD? (What Would Kirk Do?)

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