Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

The Good
After Hero's Quest introduced the wonderful blend of quality Sierra-style adventure with light role-playing, Trial by Fire takes the same concept and transplants it into a Middle Eastern setting reminiscent of nostalgically cheesy recreations of popular stories from the Arabian Nights.

Trial by Fire expands upon the ideas of the first game. It is generally more challenging; and while some of the difficulty lies in figuring out rather vague clues and spending some time studying the world's layout, those are by no means the focus of the game. There are simply more things to do. As an adventure game, the sequel offers tougher puzzles and cleverer ways to overcome obstacles; as an RPG, it is somewhat more demanding in combat. There are fewer battles and generally fewer "shortcuts" to absolute dominance; but the fights themselves are more interesting, with a wider array of options and moves.

Of all Quest for Glory games, Trial by Fire probably has the highest replay value. The differences between the three classes are implemented most consistently. In particular, the Thief truly flourishes in this installment, having several unique options available only at his disposal, and generally turning sneaking and breaking into people's houses into a goal in itself. In addition, a fourth class (Paladin) opens up if you have performed enough good deeds, which are monitored by your new Honor attribute. But even within a same-class playthrough, there is an abundance of little side quests and secrets to discover. You'll be able to appreciate this game more if you dedicate enough time to exploration and trying out various actions at every location.

The first game had a small city and a large wilderness area around it. The sequel works just the opposite way. I actually prefer the world design of its predecessor, but it cannot be denied that the city of Shapeir is a great place. It is huge and remarkably lively, with colorful, vividly portrayed characters, and loads of things to do. Talk to anyone about anything, wander through tricky mazes, visit magic shops and other exotic spots, buy souvenirs, watch cool Oriental dancing, or just go back to the inn and sleep. While the desert is much less exciting, the contrast between its unfriendly, ominous repetitiveness and the cozy colors of Shapeir does add to the atmosphere.

Storytelling and characterization is where an improvement over the first game becomes clearly noticeable. The plot is more complex, has darker undertones, and involves more characters occupying important roles in it. The denizens of Shapeir are more interesting overall, many of them having developed background stories that flesh out the setting considerably. The side stories of the game are well done, with one particular quest standing out as one of the most moving events in the entire series. This emotional intensity doesn't in the least reduce the game's humorous elements, which are perhaps even more plentiful than in the opening title.

The Bad
Every major location in Trial by Fire is built like a maze. I know this sounds extremely off-putting, but I must say I enjoyed deciphering the twisted layout of Shapeir. Also, you can buy a map that will make navigation much easier. Unfortunately, there is no map available for the desert; while you'll spend significantly less time there, you'll still have to visit it to fight enemies and complete a few quests, submitting yourself to aimless wandering and becoming prone to death by dehydration.

The city of Shapeir is huge - but in the end, it's just one city. The desert is mostly bland and cannot compete with the individually designed forest locations in the previous game. The second city, Raseir, is disappointingly similar to the first one, and you don't have that much to do in it anyway. Also, you cannot visit it before you have completed all your Shapeir quests, which occupy the by far larger portion of the game.

There are other slightly annoying elements in Trial by Fire. You can get irrevocably stuck in the game if you don't rather counter-intuitively talk to all the citizens of the first city one more time before departing to Raseir, acquiring a vital item needed to complete the game. Some of the tasks are obscure, and a few puzzles depend on timing and can get a bit too hard to figure out.

The interface begins to show its age in Trial by Fire. In general, I think Quest for Glory games were the ones benefiting most from the switch to icon-based interaction. Pure adventure games owe their existence to text parser; but RPG elements add many more variables, making figuring out the correct sentences needlessly difficult. Conversations are a good example of this: since topics have to be entered manually, I found myself stuck in the game without having talked to person A about topic Y, simply because it never occurred to me that topic might be of any importance for that particular person.

The Bottom Line
Even though Trial by Fire can get mildly frustrating, creaking under the load of an outdated interface and favoring mazes a bit too much, it is a beautiful, rewarding game with a wealth of options and gameplay depth. Many people name it as their favorite Quest for Glory, and I can certainly see why.

The Good
Incredible graphics for its time, great story line, exciting battles, no obscure puzzle solving made this the best of its series. The game was also way longer than the way too short So You Want to Be a Hero and Wages of War, had a better setting (Arabia) and characters than the fourth game (which also got way too serious) and was just downright better than the fifth one. I never ever forgot Ad Advis, the sexy moneychanger, the Erasmus and Fenris references in WIZ, and the lovable Katta.

The Bad
When you got really good at throwing, throwing dirt at a brigand just about killed him instantly.

The Bottom Line
Computer role-playing at its finest.

The Good
(Long overdue review...my original was only 2-3 paragraphs long)

The fact that Hero's Quest had a sequel was thrill enough. QFG 2 may faired better for people unfamiliar with Hero's Quest or at least those who created a new character.

One of the features I enjoyed most about the game was some familiarity of old characters from Hero's Quest. Graphics were upgraded a bit, combat was fairly better though not noticeable. The city atmosphere was considerably more "alive" though, compared to Spielburg, the city in Hero's Quest. More people, more interaction, more colors, more animations. The most of them are merely graphical and not really interactable.

Regardless, I never could quite figure out why this game won an award...

The Bad
Well, if you've noticed, I'm the only scumbag that doesn't appreciate this game. Which is quite odd really since this is the only QFG game I loath. Why do I despise this game so much? The fun starts here...

The first fault was probably mine...mine being a hardcore QFG...uh...Hero's Quest fan. My first fault for being a fan was IMPORTING my old hero into this game. My old hero that perfect stats which was way higher than the stats you get when you start with a new character in the game. This mistake was probably seriously overlooked by the developers back then.

What makes the Hero's Quest series so "addictive" is the relentless process of turning a geek into a hero. Seeing those stats increase is one of the most exciting features in any RPG game...character development which balances game difficulty. When I started the game with an imported character, my character didn't start as a geek. He was somewhere between "geek" and "hero", so I lost around half of the game play that required character development...and this shows when I played the game.

The monsters I met in the desert weren't difficult to kill, if not incredibly easy. Although I would like to commend my veteran combat skills cough, that had nothing to do in this case. My stats were just too high for me to "appreciate" the difficulty and pains of character development. Remember the guy that walks on the rope on the city square. I succeeded in walking the rope in a couple of tries (or a little bit more). There goes the challenge.

Since character development was rudely taken away from me, all that was left is the crumbs of "gameplay". That didn't fare well either from where I was standing.

Yep. I hate mazes. Damn got lost in the city at the beginning of the game so many times, I virtually had to give up (try walking through the city without a map). Got over that eventually...then they had to create this dead hunk of mass called: A DESERT.

If there's one thing I hate more than getting lost in a middle of a crazed city is getting lost in a desert. Hey, if you didn't die of thirst every so often, maybe it wasn't so bad. But noooo....you had to die. I remember the same irritating feature in King's Quest V. I hate deserts...and a reminder to any developer who dares create a scene with deserts, I will personally THUMP you!

I was expecting a more vast area in QFG 2 in comparison to HQ 1. In HQ 1, you knew your territory. Spielburg was like your backyard. You knew every rock, tree, grass and so on. Here it's just sand...sand...sand and more yellow stuff. The desert feature somewhat killed the "leisure" of adventuring that I experienced in Hero's Quest. You can't have leisure in the desert when half the time your trying to find that freaking oasis (since you don't have much landmarks in the desert) and trying to find that freaking Saurus that loves to abandon you during battle.

Oh well, I had my hopes up when somewhere in the game you discover the existence of a 2nd city. When you mention a 2nd city, I expected to totally new city like the first city. Complete with new puzzles, new people and (hopefully) more possibilities of character development. To my disappointment, it was a small shack with crumbled black walls. I figured as much.

There is also one thing that I really hate about this particular version of the game. This QFG game is the first that introduced the "Paladin Class". A class to my opinion that is DESTROYS THE BALANCE of the other 3 classes. It's like the ultimate class, which I tried to avoid. I never played the Paladin class, since it appeared to have more advantages (especially in later series) compared to other class. I could be wrong, but I was not amused by the introduction of this class. Anyway, it kinda killed the "Fighter Class", since both of those classes can use the sword.

The Bottom Line
This game wasn't worth an award. It was good to see Erasmus and Fenrus (or was it Fenris?) again though...