Welcome to the bottom half and finale of this game. We gathered the magic artifacts the sage foretold of; Erik's royal sword, an onyx signet ring, and a magic scepter, as well as a "sphere of annihilation" and a few other doo-dads. We helped the wizard Zin drive away some haunting spirits and recovered an ancient tablet, we befriended an owl, and learned some magic words. But none of that helps right now; the vampire has us, and our stuff. Sabrina and I are imprisoned, and Erik is about to be dog food.
Lack of inventory and places to go means there aren't many things I can try doing. I'm in no condition to summon the owl with a whistle, but Sabrina is, once I splash some water on her face, and it brings us a beehive. This plugs the drain, letting water fill the pit, and we float to the surface.
I wake up Erik and we explore.
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| Oh, come on. A literal maze of twisty passages? In 1985? |
My stuff is scattered throughout the dungeon, and I gradually recover bits of it as I explore and solve whatever problems I can as I encounter them.
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| A magic seashell turns into a magic shield |
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| The sphere of annihilation does its job |
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| A cave troll's got a lantern and our bag, and now our scepter too. |
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| A rare encounter with natural life, but I'm not sure what to do here. |
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| Gotcha! |
I can't seem to get the sack or lantern, but I am able to retrieve my scepter, which impresses a dragon roosting in the eastern side of the maze.
His name is "Fury" and promises to answer if we call.
The next part has me stuck, and I need a walkthrough. There's a darkened room nearby, and I thought for sure that the troll's lamp would get me through, but you can't get ye lamp (and I'm certainly not going to tell thou why). Nor does the dragon answer here.
Instead, you wear the onyx ring.
The sage had hinted that I'd need a pointy weapon dipped in holy water to defeat the black fiend, and I indeed had encountered a basin of it in the maze, where I had immersed the centaur's arrow. But finding the right verbiage here is the real puzzle; SHOOT MAN and SHOOT ARROW prompt me that I am forgetting something. Also, he kills you after three incorrect actions.
The correct actions; LOAD ARROW and SHOOT ARROW. He dies, and behind him, a massive set of iron doors yield only to Fury.
Enter, and observe an epic monster duel.
I'm helpless, but Erik isn't. Unfortunately, Erik is useless, and refuses to fight the vampire, claiming we just need to escape. But he also refuses to leave without us. The game hints that I must find a way to break the vampire's charm, but also refuses to let me wear the crown, since only the heir to the throne can do that.
The solution? I had to look this one up. GET ERIK.
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| Is this supposed to be a Samwise Gamgee situation? I don't buy it. |
We simply leave, and return to the seaside cove, where our ride home meets us.
GAB rating: Average.
It's... fine. A casual, mostly solvable adventure, with adequate graphics, adequate writing, and mostly free of the genre's traditional annoyances. Mostly. But it doesn't feel as fresh, exciting, or atmospheric as the first game, whose only noteworthy fault was being very short. I'd say the first disk side in The Crimson Crown is about as long as the original game, but the second side just feels like an epilogue. The werewolf and time limit of the first game might have been annoying, but they respectively contributed a sense of danger and gravity that just isn't here in the sequel. And while it goes out of its way to ensure the game is solvable, with ample clues and few ways to die or softlock yourself, there wasn't a single satisfying puzzle in the whole adventure; all of them are either obvious immediately, obviously signposted, or solvable with brute force, with the exception of the endgame which I just found dumb.
My Trizbort map:
I went back and played the pre-release version for comparison. It is incomplete, and ends at the disk flip.
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| An intro scene unique to this version |
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| It's familiar, but cruder. |
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| Fullscreen proses are not illustrated yet. |
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| The Griffin's riddles are in the game, not the packaging. |
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| The zombie's fate is more violent. |
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| A very different depiction of Karel Thurg |
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| Whoopsie. |
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| Some different banter. The grating is pre-opened for you! |
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| Zin, sans silhouette |
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| The end! |
I kind of wonder what the Comprehend engine was even doing.
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