Elvira: Won

One of the nicest sights in this game.

Now that I've done what I remember, I need to get started on what I don't. Around the main courtyard area are towers, most guarded by guards on both the ground floor and the top floor. These guys are here for the easy experience, more experience means my skill goes up, and skill going up is good. Down on the towers leads to the catacombs, which I need to deal with somehow later, for now, I can only deal with upstairs.

This is mostly just a way to remind me of what I needed to do. There's a cannon up here which has a convenient fuse and is pointed at one of the towers. The tower in question holds a knight who is invulnerable in melee combat. Somehow I know this just walking towards him...which got me thinking, maybe I could use a spell or a crossbow bolt. Because invulnerable in melee is one of those exact wording things games like to use, and I'm right, because a crossbow bolt knocks him off the battlement and into the moat surrounding the castle. I file this away as something that will be useful in the future. Clear out the easy enemies and hard ones will appear in their place.

The layout of this room in relation to what's outside is weird. This only makes sense if it's an L-shaped room with the entrance being off to the right, which it isn't.

At the front entrance of the castle, where I came in, there are two rooms. One which has a bunch of nice stuff you can examine but otherwise has nothing, and one containing the captain of the guard. He's tough, possibly the toughest regular enemy. He's fast too, just a general tough cookie. Which is why using a few spells on him is the best policy. The room has a few pieces of paper which reveal quite mundane things. But if I take one of the notes off the noteboard you can get a key, primus. Still nothing that opens any doors I've seen.

There's a wolf no one will confuse for being friendly.

The next part is to deal with the werewolf, a guy hiding out in the stable and turns into a werewolf when I get close. In order to take him out, I need a silver tipped crossbow bolt. That's what the silver crucifix was for, not dealing with the vampire. Turns out I already had everything I needed to kill him. There's a forge on the same side of the castle. Just drop the crucifix and a bolt into a crucible, put that crucible on the fire, then return to the werewolf and just use the bolt. For my efforts I get some horsehair and if I check one of the walls, the secondus key. That's four out of six. Surprisingly far all things considered.

I've been carrying the bones the entire time, since I'm not really sure what the point is.

I decide to do one little cheat, find out where the key to the herb garden was. It was my bad for not exploring the garden shed more, it turns out they were in the seed packets in the tin there. Sometimes a bit of knowledge can be a bad thing. Anyway, after taking out two of the lizard people, I can now clear out the herb garden of everything useful. After taking the herbal honey spell I prepared earlier.
 

If you see this bit, alas, its already too late for you.

Now it's time to deal with the part of the game that gave me the most trouble, the garden maze. Here you need a ton of spells to deal with the pesky little goblins that pop up here. See, you can't fight them in melee combat, they explode. Since it's Elvira, this is a problem. That means using the crossbow, of which I have a limited amount, and spells. As I go to start mixing spells, I realize I'm lacking in many essential components to make any offensive spells. I'm lacking nightshade, belladonna and surprisingly enough, bird eggs. These aren't in the kitchen, the herb garden or anywhere else I've looked. This is what I mean when I say even the walkthroughs are no help.

In retrospect, I made a mistake in going after the captain of the guard, that lightning spell would have been a help in this maze. It's entirely luck if I can reach the end of the maze successfully. You can't fight goblins, if you try, they explode and set you on fire. Or steal stuff. Which in this game is worse than slowly dying. The one attack spell I had ahead of time is useless against the goblins, so basically I have to hope I have enough firepower to reach the end of the maze where the goblin nest is. You need to hit that twice with a bolt or a spell. But inside, is all the rest of the lovely spell components and Elvira's Ring.

Considering how this sort of thing goes elsewhere, putting the object in the convenient hole seems too logical in retrospect.

 I decide to try out the chapel, since this is the only place where a jeweled object fits in. There's an altar covered in fancy objects, a cup, a cross and two candlesticks. There's a slot in the cross that just so happens to correspond roughly to the size of the ring. I put it in and the altar explodes in a flash of light, revealing a set of stairs down.

Continuing Horrorsoft's fondness of putting corpses in walls.

Inside is a room with a crown and a mural showing a king getting knighted by an angel. There's Latin writing I don't understand. Take the crown out of the room, and the room collapses. Remember that Bible verse I had from upstairs? Turns out that's the answer. I looked that up because I assumed the game expected me to translate the Latin and I'm kind of tired of dealing with that. This reveals that there's a skeleton inside the mural, which I can put the crown on to get the Crusader's Sword. Which is presumably more powerful than the one I'm using, but still decreases my skill for the moment. I find it somewhat amusing that they couldn't code the sword's skill to count for two weapons.

Unfortunately, I lack a number of easy foes to clean out. I still have the battlements, of course, but I don't know how many trips I have up there. The catacombs have a monster I'm not sure how to deal with, which leaves the dungeons and the upstairs part of the castle. Going around the dungeons results in significantly less enemies than I was hoping and the upstairs castle has suddenly cranked itself up to max strength.

Yes, this is a guy I want to fight.

So I decide to do the catacombs. You enter here through one of the southern towers. This is a scary and dark place full of creatures which are not easily killed. Including an ogre monster which I assumed was invulnerable to physical damage, but it turns out you just need to use a certain weapon and then click it in certain places. This comes off less as a matter of cleverness and more as a matter of luck. Until this section no enemies have required anything more than just getting the correct attack.

The reason why this becomes a thing here is that you have to deal with flying skulls here. I'm not sure the proper method of dealing with them, but what I'm doing is clicking where they are and eventually they die. Eventually the flying skulls get used as a weapon by fishmen. Which is still weird, but mostly works by the usual rules.

The giant is holding a stone with runes on it, and guarding a tomb which has a key in it. Lots of graves in here, including one room with two empty coffins. Only problem is, one of them leads to under the well and floods the room. The other is where I guess you're supposed to put those bones I've been lugging around since I cleaned out the dungeon. What this does is unexplained. Also unexplained, a random vial of dragon's blood in the entrance to a random set of coffins. I have no idea how you'd figure this out without a map explaining where everything is.

There's a spell to read the runes, which just tells me there's a secret passage in the catacombs. Useful, but unless that's the tomb that fills up with water, I'm probably going to stumble upon that sooner or later. I mix up the last of the spells I think I'll need, turns out that I used up all my nightshade and I'm not going to be getting anymore, so no super powerful attack spells for me. I do realize that I should make a light spell so that Elvira can go through the area behind the dumbwaiter to the left of the kitchen.

An entire jungle of stuff that doesn't matter.

One key left, which is outside, in the moat. The key I got from the tomb is not one of the six numbered ones, it's one that opens an actual door. Or rather gate to the outside. The moat is accessed from the well, which is where there's some moss, after I've given up on using the rest of the spells. The moat is a risky area, because you get very little warning before you die from lack of air and the whole area is wide and vast. There's probably spell components here, but good luck finding them. Instead, I just need to grab a key off the knight I shot earlier. Finally, the set is complete. Now what?

It's kind of disappointing that this is what most of the game has been building toward, instead of the final fight, but it makes sense that the evil witch lady would be easier to reach.

This allows me reach the chest, and after using the six keys in order, I get a dagger and a Scroll of Spiritual Mastery. Now to find where the villain of the game is, which is in the Catacombs. Thank god I have a map. Random women pop up to throw fireballs in my face as I explore now, because I've been having too good a time lately and the game needs to remind me I'm its bitch.

Considering what kind of license this game is, it's surprising that something like this isn't an entendre.

From the entrance I take, to reach Esmalda, you have to go right then left. It's a random hole in the ground, which is always nice. Examine, the put the stone in. Finally, the confrontation, and it's somewhat underwhelming. There's a hole in the center there which obviously requires...something. I took a leap of faith and guessed that it was the Crusader's Sword I needed to use, and it was. From there, it all falls into place. Use the Scroll, and she's further stunned, and the dagger finishes her off.

I get the feeling that these guys lacked the talent to write dialog, which is a mistake for what this game should be doing.

There's no grand ending, just text saying that Elvira is calling our name, and then an image of Elvira giving us a come hither look. No points for sex jokes, that's basically what's happening in-universe. I wonder if they knew that was going to happen when they signed off on this game?

This Session: 2 hours 30 minutes

Final Time: 4 hours