Obitus: Lost

Something I didn't realize when I was playing the game the first time is that there actually is a VGA mode, which looks nicer, but is still 16 colors. It also has an animated intro. Which is not very informative.

The mines are still very visually nice, and it makes the whole limited number of possible exits from any given section a lot easier to swallow. Since it's basically just a passage carved out of rock. A new enemy type are dogs, which actually attack as opposed to waiting for you to come around.

I wander around for a while, finding more ammo and food, along with a rope, a light key and a gold bar, until I meet this guy. He says some cryptic stuff, which I am supposed to parse as, give me a silver bar and I'll give you a heavy key. Since I'm not making my own maps and using ones that I've found online, it mentions the whole trade thing. Except there is no trade option, and I can neither use nor drop items to perform an exchange.

After flailing around for a bit, I assume that I'm going to have to call this one lost, until in a fit of insanity I use info on him. It works. It freaking works. The manual says nothing about this at all. To trade you cycle through your items, then click trade, then on the item you want. I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure any of this out except through trial and error.

Going through more of the area, I then end up talking to this guy, who is in the way for one of the other areas. He has a lantern, but that isn't what's interesting here. Instead, you're supposed to just kill him. This random, inoffensive and non-violent guy. In order to continue through the game, kill an innocent guy. This is a level of unawareness that I haven't seen in a while.

There are two ways out of this place. The first is through a hole, which seems to be a one-way trip. The rope is used here, except that you actually use it when you're on the other side. Figure that out. This leads to the catacombs, a giant place under all four castles. It's a very large and confusing place full of more items which I collect just for the sake of collecting.

There are more enemy types, which of course, are not at all very different. They're just sort of there. It's basically just more and more busy work until at one point, I find that my stamina is rapidly draining. Not because of any hostiles, but because I just picked up too much stuff. Not really sure how I'm supposed to work around that considering how obtuse this game is so far and how picking up items and killing hostiles is the only gameplay this game has.

I do discover that if I click on the left side of the GUI I get this screen. Not sure how helpful it is or how I was supposed to figure out out. I can't sleep yet and eating doesn't really do much, so, uh, that probably would have been helpful.

The other way out is to Drakehurst Castle, which is like the side-scrolling sections, except with the adventure GUI. I've seen other games like this before, pretty sure those are a lot better than this one. It's easier to spot when an enemy is going to pop out, but there's not much looking around. If it isn't part of the wall, chances are you can pick it up or shoot it.

Oh, I didn't realize this was built off The Kristal's codebase. You can go to the foreground and the background. Not sure why we needed that. So, the whole puzzle aspect of this section is basically, use the right key on the door. Only in order to reach the boss there are six doors, and I seem to only have six keys to open that kind of door. Go the wrong way and you've lost. The worst thing about this, there are items in some of these places.

The correct path is full of unavoidable enemies and traps, to the point that once again I get pretty low on health. So, healing, food items heal you, as well as potions you can find. Sleep meanwhile, doesn't seem to do much of anything. It just lowers a fatigue meter which has been gradually filling since I started the game. So, health items are very limited and there's not much you can do to heal yourself.

This is about as far as I'm going to get. I can't make it to the proper end of the area without getting dangerously low on health. And that's with using all my health items. There's no boss fight in this version, but there is in the SNES version, apparently. At the end of it are some magic powders, one of which kills the knight from the opening forest.

At this point, there's nothing for me to do but restart and try to optimize the hell out of my actions, or chest. As I'm not enjoying this, I'm doing neither and just ending it here. A disappointing ending to a disappointing game. Which just leaves a disappointing rating.

This Session: 40 minutes

Final Time: 1 hour 30 minutes