Sleeping Gods Lie: Deja Vu

I feel like this blog is cursed sometimes. So far, a lot of the games I've played fall into at least one of three categories, bad, broken or tedious. Since Sleeping Gods Lie is fun, that means at some point it becomes tedious or it'll be broken. Tedium is a very good possibility, since the game involves a lot of wandering around trying to find things to interact with. Surely the game wouldn't be broken? People have actually played this.
I left off in the bandit's den, about to rest. I don't know how long the game expects me to rest for, but I just rest through the three hours of the night. I feel like an actual RPG would say things like "You need to rest" or something like that. I wonder if the game is playing tricks on me. Its not unheard of for a manual to lie about the contents of a game. Magic power doesn't seem to fully regenerate. The manual says that demons will notice me more when its higher, but I'm curious if there's an actual purpose to it.

So, the continued exploration of Calia and Taira. If it looks or sounds like I'm holding back on something, I'm not. That's all this area looks like, endless flat plains. The game advertised flight sim technology, but as I well remember from A-10 Tank Killer, they had hills. I'd really like this game if it had hills. It'd make the game feel better. I guess making such engines beautiful came later. Considering I can see a bandit respawn if I look in the right direction, that wasn't their concern.

In another section of Talia, I meet the bandit leader, a red renaissance painter. Pay no attention to his speech, he goes down like any other bandit at this point. The only new thing is that he is much more eager to run away. Killing him nets me the map the hermit wanted. Yes! Success.

Returning to the hermit, he tells me to find the magic tree in Taira's hills. I like that the game recognizes that I already have the circlet. Now what? I guess I have to explore Taira...but there aren't any hills...outside of the skybox. Maybe there are more doorways than just the obvious ones.

There's not much the game can hide, even at a distance, but it does try. These stones aren't the most obvious object around, but they seem important when you do finally notice them. They lead to a mountain valley different than the rest of Taira.

Its here that the very obvious magic tree is. Who promises to send me to Sylvar, a very foresty kingdom. Cool. Send me there game.

Yes, this eventually goes away, leaving me to do nothing but wander around this area forever

...Game? I guess I just did something wrong, so I'll reload and return. Now, game, send me to the next kingdom.

Damn. I guess the game is broken. Rather, the Amiga version I'm playing is probably broken. Its not like people have been rushing to finish this game, is it? As the title suggests, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. At this point, I've become rather annoyed at games broken like this. Where one version seems to be poorly dumped and no one ever bothered checking it. I never finished it, but Galactic Empire was one of those games, possibly in multiple ways. Well, unlike many other games I've had the misfortune of this happening with, I checked online and someone has indeed advanced considerably far in this game. I find it moderately funny, because its infamous preservation figure Saint, the man who was responsible for leaking Zeddas 3, that obscure Japanese adventure game more known for being impossible to find than for its actual quality. It is definitely not the DOS version.
Part of the reason why I've been so loose with years, beyond not entirely knowing what I'm doing at times, is because of crap like this, where a game from this era, on all computers, is seemingly broken on every one. I attribute issues with the Atari ST partially to the fact that I've never had much reason to play it, since I'm not going to do that when an Amiga version exists. I try the ST version, but that straight up refuses to load. This does raise the question as if the disk dump itself is bad or if my emulator is somehow broken. I have played multiple games on the system, but I don't really understand anything about it.
I resolve to try the Amiga version one more time, in the hopes that my original copy was bugged, or I missed something important. A bit tedious, yes, but its worth pointing out that for once the game's lack of music works in its favor, I can listen to something else while doing this. I in general would prefer that the game have music, but this does give me a chance to focus on something else.

All this nets me is the discovery of a one-way passageway with a pair of trees. They need the water I can get from the bowl. Sadly, this doesn't actually do anything with the teleporter, so I put off the game for a bit longer. I then try to save in-game, hoping that would work, but doesn't register my created floppy or my in-emulator harddrive. I guess I'm not playing the Amiga version, then. Maybe its because they're write-protected? No, that doesn't allow me to save or advance through the game. Its official, I am cursed when it comes to playing these games. Problems that any other person wouldn't have are crippling my game. If there's something like an error with the specific computer I'm emulating I couldn't tell you.Since I just checked to make sure the Amiga had the right settings, I should be able to find the ST settings. Success! The ST version is on a STe and now it works...or at least it does through the intro. Guess I'm going to have to play the DOS version after all.

This Session: 1 hour 50 minutes

Total time: 3 hours