Mysterium: Tarnished Silver Key

The dragon has seen me in his crystal mirror, I must find his lab and create the Golden Wand. Yeah, sure, whatever. I get a scroll that should help me, pour mercury into acid twice to create a deadly weapon. Wasn't mercury about 5 levels back? No, mercury is here too. I'd guess now I'm about one weapon away from max attack power.

This level is sneaky. The first key works well on one door, but that doesn't lead to anything but another key. That key doesn't work on the nearest door. I have no lizard, so this is pure trial and error. But I figure that the key I got when I put the mercury into acid once is the key I'm supposed to use. Oh, and then for the next door I'm supposed to have a gray key, that's something I wouldn't have figured out if the mercury on this floor didn't create a lizard when put in water. The gray key? You need antimony to make one of those, fortunately, I still had some healing items made with the stuff.

When I finally get a piece of mercury I can transmute into a weapon, I decide to drop my old one into the acid as well. Since that spawns a monster who drops something. Well, the something it drops is another weapon that raises my attack power by a sliver on the bar. Oh, hang on, the mercury isn't something I've had before, its been the pools. Its a relatively uneventful level despite that, but I am getting really low on torch strength, using up any just barely before I completely run out. I don't think I've completely run out yet. There isn't an end of level crystal here, which is good.

Level 9, oh nice, quality game design, monsters at the starting point again. The intro dialog is something about how this makes sense to the ants but not to me. Yeah, the scroll they say should clear up my confusion. Put a key into water to alter its nature...oh, yeah, that's real helpful. The material here is silver again.

And the level is over just as soon as it began. There's a crystal near the exit, another flowery bit. I would mess around up here, but I checked quickly and the next level seems to make any progress I've made here moot, so...

Level 10, here there are materials of each type. I guess this is the final exam. These things make the rest of the game feel like a tutorial that ends just when the game gets good. Well, I must admit I don't think that's the case here...since I don't really care for the game, even at this point, but I'm here and I might as well beat it. There are four pools and one door. I have no lizard. Great, so I handle things cheaply, make a lizard with mercury, see what key, a glass one, then reload.

In the next room, more materials, a scale of fire, and a scroll with more flowery text. Ah, the game wants me to use the notes with the crystals to find the correct materials to make something. I don't remember what was in the crystals. Okay, let me think, how would I do this? Hmm, iron has dark in its description...but so does another material. I eventually get something out of tin and iron, but wrong answers blow me up. It takes less with each successful pair, but I manage to get four combined elements...uh, does this mean I should put in the combined elements until I only get one item? This gets me a dragon key, which I can use to open the only locked door. It doesn't disappear like the others, which is really nice, for a change.

Oh, wow, I found Cadmus. That's the guy who came before me. I need the golden wand to free him and his ant friends. Interesting. This looks like the black mage from Final Fantasy. I'm sure that's a coincidence.

His ant friends just look ridiculous chained to a wall. Anyway, I don't really care for this level on the whole. Running through, when you find a locked door you don't have the key for, you have to go all the way back, and there are still spinners in this level.

There's yet another scale puzzle, this time on mercury scales. This isn't that confusing either, and with that you get the Golden Rod of Hermes, which is another key. This leads me to another pit, taking me to the final boss.

Its not that impressive. You have to wait until he's finished breathing fire, then attack by rushing in. There doesn't really seem to be any fail state at this point, or at least you'd have to try to reach that. This gives me another wall of text, spits me back to the level and I can use the rod to free the prisoners.

This seems triumphant, but it doesn't seem like I've won? Wandering around the level again and I can open some more doors with the rod, but these don't lead anywhere. Returning to the pit, I fall down, only to fight the boss again, this time he's even lamer. What I'm supposed to do, and I wouldn't figure this out if I didn't look it up, is go to the upper right corner of the map and then use the rod. What amazing design, the actual end-game state is tied to something that should be dedicated to secret hunting. So much of this game is questionable, and I think its fitting to end on that note.

This Session: 50 minutes

Total Time: 2 hour 40 Minutes

Mysterium: Metal Soul

The intro text has the ant tell me that they're sorry for making the monsters, because they created them when exposing metals to sunlight. That's...uh...that's...what? Is this magic metal? My head hurts again. The ant gives me a scroll he says can help me.

Nice, starting off right next to a monster. A phoenix. Dunno if that's the technical in-game term, but that's what they look like. The scroll, which is actually on the floor, tells me that I can drop stable keys into acid for a shield against metal creatures.

Oh, oh, very nice, monster number 2. Who needs game design when you can just throw ten thousand enemies at the player. Still, this gives me the theory that aiming has something to do with dodging. During my next combat, this seems to check out. So there actually is some skill to it. The element of the level is salt. That's right, salt. I'm not supposed to put it in acid. Curiously, it seems the game finally bothered hiding the lizard.

In theory having finally understood the game's combat system I should be having fun, but really, its just a step above those games where your crosshairs also function as targets. You're still liable to get hit, so it doesn't really feel that skill-based, and this doesn't really make up for the rest of the game's blandness.

Halfway through the level, I find a note that says to put the salt into acid, then mercury to get some kind of mixture. A few combats, and one well-placed healing item later, I have found the exit and most of the vats. As I turn around at the acid vat, being earlier in the level, where I already killed all the monsters, I am assaulted by a Djinn. This wasn't summoned by the game, he just popped out. Great...just great. There are a lot of them around, not just Djinns, but ghouls too. This puts me in a tricky spot because I wanted to mess around with my useless items on this level. Is this some kind of timed respawning or is this level unique? I've accidentally left the game running in the background before and nothing bad popped up. Curious...curious...The mixture, naturally, I have no idea what to do with it.

Still, I find something to do in-game. With sulfer (water>fire) I get a weapon that's getting close to maxing out my attack power, and with salt I get an easy health item. I'm going to take a gamble and drop the crystal items, they're mostly just saying meaningless mystic sayings and I suspect they're just information.

Level 6, more meaningless text, and another key. The element of the level is antimony. Bit of an obscure choice, but whatever. There's a bit of trickery going on in this level, the lizard is at the level exit. I got lucky, since I had the key to the door. There just wasn't much to say here. The game keeps giving me advice that ends up screwing me. Here, a scroll tells me to make a teleportation item. There's literally no need for such things in this game. Instead I make a weapon and two healing items out of the levels supply. I'm this close to maxing out my attack power.

Level 7, because I wish this game over with soon enough. The element of the level is lead. Its not a very helpful element, only having a few keys as an item of value. And the level gave me a lot. However, I did notice that summoned monsters drop an item. I got a healing item out of a pool of acid this way. I'm running out of torches by now, which is...eh, I don't really care. Which once again, sums up my attitude towards this game. The game is pulling the typical Dungeon Master trick of having you shift directions. It did it last level, but it wasn't noticeable unless you went into a very optional area. Here its annoying. There are also a lot of doors here that are optional.

Gotta say that I don't really care for how this game is set up. Having to write down combinations of materials, spinners, and monster respawns are all good and dandy in a PC RPG, where you can be expected to track all this stuff down. Here, in a Game Boy game, where you can't actually save, it all seems to be overshooting the system somewhat. I suspect this is all just a way to heavily pad out the length of the game. On a real Game Boy, I'd probably have restarted the game several times. Or more realistically, sold the game off cheaply.

This Session: 40 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 50 Minutes

Mysterium: Tin and Tonic

This level's opening text is fairly useless. The last guy here disappeared. I'm sure he did, otherwise I wouldn't be here. That's a fairly annoying cliche, but whatever. I also get a note. Putting any stable weapon into water gets me a healing item. This is a lie. I wasn't really in a mood for a game that lied to me, but I guess I don't have a choice at the moment.

My tactic from last time of trying to dodge attacks isn't working. Attacking from as far as you can, where the enemy is inside fog, works, to a point. Which has its own problem, namely, some enemies aren't in areas where that's an option. Plus either way I still have to deal with aiming, which is incredibly annoying. I'm an hour in, combat is an unplayable mess, and there are no saves. Its even more of a Dungeon Master-clone than a FPS, just without any RPG and a strange magic system.

The element of the level is copper, and there's not much of it. You only get like 2 or 3 pieces, and one is needed for a key. I remember getting a shield from a fire source, which I'm sure is absolutely necessary for later. All this means if you were playing on original hardware completely legitimately, this game would involve you restarting it so much. Just so much. That's two strikes against it.

Further, the game isn't really much to look at, and the puzzles don't amount to much yet. Just find keys for doors, any items that don't improve my stats, allow me to see what key I need for a door or open those doors are useless right now. I can't even detect where I am in the maze really, not without the map. And I haven't mentioned it yet, but I'm getting crystals at the end of each level and the game is implying they're important, but my inventory is leaning pretty closely towards being full. All this is leaning towards a bad game, but its too late for me to scrap this entry and just do a summary, so, onward to level 4.

Typical fluff, but if I drop a stable key in a pool I can summon "a great power", which either means a monster or hopefully a good weapon. Also, starting me RIGHT behind an enemy. This game is ticking all the flaw boxes it can. Also, what's the point of having to find the lizard statue to see what door needs which key if they're always right in front of me? The bad design continues, now there are black widows shooting at me, and they are difficult to kill and zap my strength like it was nothing.

The element of the 4th level is sulfur. And my criticism of of the puzzles being nothing hits me in the face. Because the game leaves a note that I have to put sulfur in fire, then water to get a healing item. Considering every encounter on this floor has been sheer terror, that's nice and not-so-nice. I'm sure I could explore the alchemy system more thoroughly in order to figure out how to maximize my usage of these things, but in order to do that I'd have to essentially savescum, or cheat. I'm just trying to do this so I'm not playing through the whole game again and again. Like Galactic Empire, for instance. Still, I did a little, and figured out that dust of elements can be transformed into those elements, which makes things interesting.

I'll give the game one thing, I finished the 4th level here, meaning I'm starting at the fifth next time. Roughly halfway and just over an hour. Still, if this is any indication of the future, I'm not going to be enjoying future Game Boy titles.

This Session: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 10 Minutes

Mysterium: Putting the Myst in Mysterium

Yes, its another Game Boy exclusive FPS, this time developed by Maxis, from the same guy who would bring you SimFarm. If anyone tries to tell you the '90s weren't a more interesting time for video games, well, shucks, you have this. The story is...

Oh, the story is I'm a wizard sent to solve some weird mystery plaguing sentient ants. That's cool and I guess the author has a theme he likes, ants. Surprised he didn't do SimAnt. I guess alchemy elements factor in. Gotta say I'm not digging the soundtrack, but its not the usual blend of 8-bit noise I absolutely despise. 

In-game...okay, A shoots, B aims, start pauses and select opens a menu?

A menu. That's right ladies and gentlemen, this is not only a FPS on the Game Boy, but its also an adventure game. Despite my hatred of Faceball 2000, and other general issues, I don't hate the platform. Its just this isn't going to be playing Yu-Gi-Oh! games or something else the platform was decent at, its action games. This whole thing just blows my mind. This is just...bizarre.

Anyway, the first puzzle is very subtly told to you by the game. There are items here, a lizard statue, a torch and some iron. A scroll tells me to drop the iron in fire to get a glass key, and there's a pit of fire here.

Behind the door is my first pair of enemies. A snake and a wizard of some kind. I start with a staff that works well enough. Its mediocre at best, but loads above the previous Monster Maze style games. Turning does a weird quasi-turning quasi-Dungeon Master flat turning spectrum, you turn and the direction shifts a little before changing views. With aiming activated, you shift inside that view aiming at whatever nasty tries to kill you.

The shooting here can be as mediocre as it wants though, since this is no longer just some crummy portable FPS, its a crummy FPS with puzzles! Does the previous incident with iron mean that all further iron items contain keys? Yes, because that's how magic in this game works. Further experimentation revealed that dunking iron in mercury creates a sword, in acid a monster, and in water a herb. The sword doesn't seem to be stronger than the staff I start with.

The first level is really just getting used to what iron does with various objects. Most of the keys needed to progress are just lying around, with exception to two glass keys I need. There are several useful, but not technically necessary items I've found so far. That lizard statue allows me to see what key a door requires, not absolutely necessary yet. The torches allow me to see. Not sure if that has any real effect on things in-game or not beyond a slight change in color, but I've been using them. The third are roses, which are health items. Its proving difficult to find enough to safely counteract the amount of damage enemies are doing. I so hope that monster I accidentally summoned won't be my own undoing.

What is it with B&W games and cute dragons?

I reach the next level via a hole in the floor. There's another door I can't open, but my map tells me it just leads back to earlier, and there's nothing to be done about it. There's more story, apparently a dragon is preventing the ants from digging further. I'm pest control for pests. Yeah, this game has some of the Maxis charm in it. Its a bit buried, but its there.

The item of choice for this floor is tin. Everything I found out earlier is useless. That's cool. What's not cool is this level is a bit denser than the last one in terms of monsters. Either my new weapon is an unwise choice, or the game isn't so good about combat. Controls aren't responsive when it comes to menus, but wandering around is decent.

And I die. The game offers me the chance to respawn, but I just reload, a savestate, since it seems this game lacks a real save function. Choosing my encounters better, I find that I can get silver strength from a well combination from tin, but I doubt I'll be using that. Using tin in water gets me small arrows, which seems to help me survive some encounters. That, or figuring out the pattern. Turns out enemies go in a set path. They'll still attack you, and it seems the only solution then is to quickly run out of the way. Fortunately, they don't attack me as much with this tactic.

The rest goes by very quickly. I'm unsure how I cleared the final monster, as I didn't really have the same do to the same tactic I was doing. Perhaps he fell down the level hole. This game is very interesting so far, but it has a distinct flaw in having no in-game save function. I suppose my method of using savestates is cheap, but smoke them if you have them, so to speak.

This Session: 40 minutes