Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

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...