Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

aka: HQ2, Hero's Quest 2: Trial By Fire, QFG2
Moby ID: 169
DOS Specs
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Description official description

Trial by Fire is the sequel to Hero's Quest: So You Want To Be A Hero. It takes place in the town Shapeir and the desert surrounding it, in a Middle East-like environment. It seems that the powerful elemental spirits have been troubling the Shapeir folk recently. Something, or someone, is behind those troubles. It is the hero's task to find out what is going on, get acquainted with the many inhabitants of Shapeir, and prove once more that he is worthy of his heroic title.

Like its predecessor, Trial by Fire is a hybrid game that incorporates elements from adventure and role-playing genres. It has a text-based interface, puzzles to solve, inventory items, characters to talk to, as well as pure RPG elements such as character growth system and battles. Player character can be either a fighter, a thief, or a wizard, and can also become a paladin during the course of the game if he follows a strict moral code.

Real-time combat is presented on separate screens and offers more options than the previous title. There are several types of high, mid-level, and low attacks, as well as parrying and dodging. The hero raises his combat proficiency and other skills by fighting enemies, training, and performing various actions that influence the corresponding parameters.

Spellings

  • 영웅의 길 II: 매서운 시련 - Korean spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 21 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 99 ratings with 7 reviews)

The best of all the Quest for Glory series

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.

DOS · by SebastianLi (52) · 2000

One of the Top 3 best Sierra games of alllllll tiiiimmmeeee.

The Good
If you ever need to roll out an example of why text parsers are cool and how graphics do not make the game, this is the title that should immediately come to mind. Actually, even if you don't, just thinking of General Coolness (as opposed to the lesser-ranked Major Disaster) alone should bring up thoughts of this game. This is really the Arena/Daggerfall of it's time (save for the lack of various game crashing bugs). It has a huge playing area, and it also puts out an honest attempt at creating a living, breathing city and country-side...amazing for it time. And it's really as good as the sum of its parts. Allow me to go into more detail...

The first thing that crosses my mind, in regards to the (many) good points that this game possess, is the scale of the thing. The City of Shapeir is conceived in an impressive manner. Not only does it have vendors and important characters that move around the city from day to day, but it has a variety of lovely townspeople who you can spot wandering around town adding little bits of detail. And while it does have a mostly featureless "infinite" desert in the style of King's Quest V, it's desert is superior based solely on the fact that it's better executed here, and is not as dry (ahem) as KQ5's.

Also on hand are scores of memorable characters. While most of the characters in the first game of the series are totally forgettable, the ones in this game are for the most part well defined. Besides the welcome return of Erasmus and his familiar Fenrus for a brief section of the game, you have (by means of example) Dinarzad, the naughty moneychanger who has a job on the side, and Shameen, a previously dull Katta from the previous game who now as a very interesting and distinct personality (specifically, he's ultra-polite and bugs you constantly about events at the tavern). Not to mention Shema, Ad-Avis, Omar The Poet, The Dervish, Keapon Laffin, Uhura, Ali Chica, Ali Fakir, Harik Attar, Rakeesh, Issur, Aziza, Abdulla Doo, Khaveen, Signor Ferrari, Zayishah...among others. In a way, this game highlights the utility of the text parser. You can have a limited form of conversation with them on various subjects. Amazing, especially considering this was made in the VERY early 1990's.

The other features this game touts are not as impressive, but are still quite good. It has very well done EGA graphics, perhaps the best use of EGA in any of Sierra's games. It also has SoundBlaster support, and the FM music is of a high quality, though none of it is particularly memorable. The combat system is an improvement over my earlier experience with Quest for Glory 1 VGA Edition. I much prefer to cast spells with the text parser than to fool around with a stupid menu. One last note here: I like the ability to import and export your character to the other games in the series. A lot.

The Bad
Eventually you'll die and you won't be able to play it anymore.

And I would have liked it to have an estimated completion time of 8760 hours (one year). They could have added a few hundred extra sidequests.

The Bottom Line
One of the best RPG's ever. Though it has since been surpassed in technological complexity by The Elder Scrolls series other such modern creations within the gaming community, its gameplay and replayability factor is still formidable even a decade after it was released. If you have a week or so to spare, I would strongly suggest that you purchase this game immediately, should you be lucky enough to find a copy.

DOS · by Longwalker (723) · 2003

I appear to be the only idiot who loathes this game...

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...

DOS · by Indra was here (20756) · 2001

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Remake now available! Donatello (466) Aug 25, 2008

Trivia

Anagram

Raseir is an anagram for Sierra.

Bogart Fan

Obviously, somebody's a big Bogart fan. While in Raseir, references to 'Casablanca' and 'The Maltese Falcon' abound.

The Dead Parrot

The Dead Parrot Inn, complete with dead parrot, is in Raseir. A dead parrot was featured in a Monty Python skit known as "The Dead Parrot Sketch".

Guest cameos

King Arthur--from Cindy Marx's game, Conquests of Camelot--sometimes makes an appearance in the desert. He is dead and lying on the ground. If you walk near him, the body will fade as if it were an illusion. If you right-click on the body before it disappears, it will say something about how he should have visited a Camelot before going into the desert.

All of the Marx brothers make cameo appearances. Lori and Corey Cole (The creators of the QFG series) make cameo appearances as Katta. There is also the Persian Golfer, who makes occasional appearances in the desert as well.

Katta

The Katta are humanoid cats - but what kind of cats? All details confirm that they must have been based on lynxes - they have very short tails and (as a close-up on Shema and Shameen in the final scene shows) also other features typical for lynxes: ear tufts and cheek mane. Curiously, the Eurasian lynx rather doesn't appear in the Arabic lands on which Shapeir is based. This part of the world is rather home to the caracal, also known as "desert lynx" (though not directly related to lynxes) - however, caracals only have lynx-like ear tufts and not the other lynx-like features.

Name change

At the very end of Quest for Glory 2 it says that the next chapter in the series would be called "Shadows of Darkness". The third chapter, however, was called "Wages of War" and "Shadows of Darkness" was the title of the fourth game.

New class

Quest for Glory 2 was the first game to introduce the fourth character class of Paladin to the series.

New vs. imported characters

Quest for Glory 2: Trial By Fire was meant for newly made characters. If you import your 'perfect' character from Hero's Quest: So You Want To Be A Hero? one will notice how incredibly easy and virtually unchallengeable the game becomes. This is due to the fact that newly made characters start with lower stats than imported characters - provided that your imported character has full stats, of course.

Sierra SCI 0.5 Interpreter

QFG2 is the only Sierra game that used the Sierra SCI 0.5 interpreter.

SCI0 was the interpreter used for QFG1, LL2 and 3, and other EGA Sierra games, while SCI1 was used for the VGA point and click games.

The only obvious difference is that if you right-click on things, it is the same as typing "look thing". Another added bonus is the fact that you can use the MT-32 emulation of the SBAWE32 on it, which you couldn't on SCI0 games.

Awards

  • Enchanted Realms
    • July 1991 (Issue #7) – Distinctive Adventure Award

Information also contributed by Indra was here, Nowhere Girl, WONDERなパン, Eurythmic, Narushima, Ryan Prendiville, Swordmaster, OceansDaughter, and PsOmA

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    Various walkthroughs and guides for QFG2

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  • MobyGames ID: 169
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Eurythmic.

Amiga added by POMAH.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, OceansDaughter, Jeanne, Shoddyan, Pseudo_Intellectual, lee jun ho, Narushima.

Game added July 18, 1999. Last modified January 20, 2024.