Shadowcaster (PC-98,1994)

Name:Shadowcaster
Number:165
Year:1994
Publisher:Electronic Arts Victor
Developer:Raven Software
Genre:FPS/RPG
Difficulty:3/5
Time:7 hours 40 minutes
Won:Yes (63W/58L)

I said the last time that I played Shadowcaster that it would be the last time, unless I played the PC-98 version. Guess this really is the last time I play this game. I can't say I regret that. It's a good game, it just has some issues. Yeah, I played the game for under 8 hours, but counting time I just had the game running in the background, you could double that.

The game unceremoniously tosses you into combat, a bit of a theme.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, you can think of it as Ultima Underworld by way of the Wolfenstein 3D engine. You have a fancy save system like UUW, a map system that puts most used in Wolf source ports to shame, and a fancy control scheme. I don't really have anything bad to say about any of them. The controls are the kind of game where turning and moving is ideally done without the mouse, as that functions independently of the gameworld. Like UUW, its better than it sounds. I do note that when I played the CD version, that had a glitch with the save system that this didn't have. Bug added by the CD version, or bug fixed by the PC-98 version? Considering that the infamous glitch from UUW was only fixed in the CD version, not the various ports, I think the former.

The third and last time I used this guy.

The central concept of Shadowcaster, playing as one of the last members of a shapeshifting race, is interesting. Running around being able to change into different forms for different situations is interesting, its just that this combined with the RPG aspect of it is kind of awkward. Each form has its own experience and is implied to be its own character independent of the human one. The player has three metrics which are improved by increasing score/XP. Mana/power in the base, human form, health in all forms, and in one, the amount of time some relatively unimportant spells last.

This incentivizes you to use the human form as much as possible, to ensure you have the highest possible mana. While XP gotten in non-human forms transfers over a little to the human form, you don't get much out of it for most forms. Let's take the first form, the Maorin, a cat warrior. There is only one place you really get something out of him, and even that you can sort of just rush through. While he does do more damage, there's not really any reason to use him over the human form. Sure, its harder now, but later you'll really appreciate it when you have a ton of mana.

Meanwhile we have the Caun, an old-school elf or brownie-type. It is actual suicide to use this guy in melee, he's a pure special purpose form. Except most of his spells are useless. Hiding from enemies is pointless, stunning enemies is pointless, and reaching in the distance nearly so. You do not get anything from avoiding enemies. Instead the creature's only purpose is to cast healing and light spells, and jump over a few obstacles. This is also the only creature to actually get non-health advantage from XP, the strength of some spells increase as it levels up. You'd have to be dedicated to give it more than a few. You don't really get anything out of this, short of an increased length for its light spell.

Enemies can get stuck like this, and it absolutely is intentional.

Then the forms become useless or of limited utility as you get later forms. The Opsis is good for a little while, as it can fly and cast fireballs, iceballs and some other things you don't really need, its useless once you get the much faster Ssair, which only has a fireballs attack but can actually survive in melee. Nothing you'll fight at that point won't fall to one of its two attacks. The resistance each enemy has to various kinds of attacks does vary, but it doesn't come up much. Very few creatures have a high resistance to a combination of physical and whatever magical attacks you're likely to use. I had an issue last time trying to drive up as much XP to the base form as possible, which can only use physical attacks without items.

These red cloaked fellows absorb your health, making them one of the most dangerous enemies in the game.

Now, that said, combat isn't necessarily as straight-forward as I describe. Certainly, despite some forms having multiple physical attacks, you're going to focus on certain ones, at least before you get a sword, but I did find myself in some interesting fights. While you can blindly melee fight a good chunk of the fights, I found that some of the few sections that worked a fun reprieve from the more troublesome sections. I've been dividing things by physical and everything else, because that's more or less how it functions. Physical attacks don't cost any power, and even the physical ranged weapon, a shuriken, is infinite. Magical attacks either cost mana, on top of the usual maintenance cost for being in a different form, or are from items with a limited number of charges.

With the enemies you can't brute-force, you have an interesting variety of attacks. Obvious attacks usually come in the form of a special item you just got, like a silver sword against a werewolf, or the form you just got having special attacks that work against this section's enemies. If an enemy isn't swift enough, you can pelt them with the shuriken and avoid their attacks. Still, it feels somewhat underutilized. You don't really need to shift between a lot of forms if the terrain doesn't force you to.

Fighting a flying enemy with the shuriken, something I'm forced to do as I don't have a form with a ranged attack yet.

Moving back to not being able to brute-force, should you not have the option of a special attack or worse yet, run out of mana, you can run away. Its part and parcel of playing the game, unfortunately. Like most RPGs, you can heal when you're away from combat. As this is built on the Wolfenstein 3D engine, this works in strange ways. You just sit there and wait. No, no rest button. Yes, I do think the game should have had a rest button. Unless you're building a game around a lack of resting ability you should have one. You just wait some fifteen or so minutes every time you need to heal. I'd even be okay with it having an ungodly high amount chance of enemies spawning.

I'm torn as to whether or not this was a conscious design choice or one forced on them. There's a strict number of enemies throughout the game, for instance the base form can only just reach level 8, at least I think, I got to level 7 here, and the XP required increases quite a lot. Because there are no or very limited respawning enemies, you have to track all their positions as you sleep, in the Wolfenstein engine. Even just the alert ones would be annoying. I can see the design choice being that they thought was a cool idea, "you're always in danger", they think. Good luck, I'm hiding behind 7 doors.

Two of the items I have here could be ignored without any penalty whatsoever

And that leads into the game's items. I don't really think there's a good sense of how they should be paced out. I ended the game, me, an expert in the game supposedly, with quite a few more items than I needed. Health and mana items are a hard thing to get a sense of, because you can get to be very good at running away in this game. The only time they're truly needed is at the end of the game. Damage items aren't much better, because the enemies you want to use them against are bosses, who are introduced with little fanfare. Sometimes they even just look like every other enemy. And of course, using them too freely puts you in a bad place against the final boss.

This all gives the impression I don't like the game. I do, but it feels unfinished in the sense it feels like its missing something. Its not like a lot of games where it feels like they gave up near the end, rather, they managed it so it feels like some of the middle sections are lacking. The game basically has twice the running time it should have thanks to that regeneration system. Is that why it was added? It just feels like there could be more, more levels, more ways to take advantage of each characters forms. With games like Dungeon Master, Ultima Underworld and Pathways into Darkness, I know what it could be.

Fighting a lava monster as a dragon over lava, what could be easier?

This is in part because the game does some things very well. It didn't occur to me until this particular playthrough that Shadowcaster does something very rare for a first-person game of this era and technological limitations. Every section is unique. Not something you see in every dungeon crawler or FPS from the time. Quite the opposite. Even games that succeed at making levels interesting tend to look very samey. And to this day games can struggle with succeeding at this, both professional and indie titles.

A lot of the game feels just right, and its not necessarily an opinion I just got either, when I think back to my memories of my first proper playthrough, in many ways it felt well-balanced. Perhaps on the easy side in that you should be able to figure it out the first time you play through the game. I made fun of some of them, like a puzzle that consisted of a rope along with putting boulders on pressure plates, but it is hardly enough to put a damper on the experience.

An aspect of the game that works out surprisingly well is the game's visuals, specifically the fog. People tend to dislike anything that reduces visibility because we shouldn't have anything. Once again, I think this is an intentional choice, and it works. The thing about fog from a player perspective is that it only matters if it impacts you in a negative way. Like you can't shoot someone or you get shot at. Because Shadowcaster is primarily a melee game, that's not an issue. It does a lot for the game, causing some encounters to sneak up on you and improving the mood of the game.

This game does more than you would think at first glance. Its by no means a must-play, but I think the game does enough interesting things to make up for its short-comings. Others will probably be put off by the long resting times. It always comes back to that. Some things are good, some things are pretty good, but none of it ever truly makes up for that stupid little design choice.

Weapons:
Melee is satisfying, but its rules are unclear. Ranged combat is very interesting, as I mentioned the item issue. Using them has a sense of liberation about it. When you can finally attack enemies from a distance is a satisfying as other games ultimate weapons. 3/10

Enemies:
The AI is subtly clever. Its hard to see. Enemies run away if they're damaged enough, but continue attacking if cornered. If they chase after the player and lose sight of them, they actually chase after where they last saw them. Not that you'd ever see that most of the time. Otherwise there's some surprising variety here. Even though you can broadly categorize enemies into ranged and melee enemies, they feel different from each other. A werewolf fights differently than a skeleton or a wereboar. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
Some simple non-hostiles in one of the stages. 0/10

Levels:
Each section feels unique, but not always good. The castle section, despite having a very mazey part of it, did a good job in creating unique situations and encounters that this wasn't a problem. There's also the factor that some of the less good sections might be suffering only due to poor choice of the player's form. 7/10

Player Agency:
I've never found the right words to describe the Ultima Underworld style of controls, where you use the mouse as a sort of menu in addition to having normal-ish FPS controls. It works, but kind of strangely. You basically need three hands, one on the numpad, on resting in the middle, and one on the mouse. I like how the inventory itself works, especially right click to rapidly change items, but not how I might have to change between 3 forms to give an item to a form that needs it. Or how dropping items and picking them up in some forms is more annoying than doing this. Otherwise its fine, no real complaints about fighting or moving. 6/10

Interactivity:
Interactions are mostly limited to using a few scenery objects along with the odd destroyable wall. 2/10

Atmosphere:
There's a very good sense of travelling through the disused ruins of a once great civilization. From the overgrown gardens to lonely, abandoned areas, the game keeps a nice, dark mood. 7/10

Graphics:
Everything looks nice; wall graphics, even the more generic designs, feel like they belong together. Enemy sprites, while limited, are well-drawn. 7/10

Story:
A simple story, told primarily through two cutscenes at the beginning and end. The CD version was better with multiple cutscenes, even if those didn't age well. 2/10

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are nice and punchy, though I wish enemies made alert noises. Musically, it sounds nice, but its not anything special. 5/10

That's 44. Up 2 points from the last time I played. The difference, surprisingly, isn't just that I gave the sound category more, most things have jumped around. No pity point for non-enemies, atmosphere and story were a bit over rated, and weapons, enemies and levels were a bit under rated. Were it not for the increase in sound I actually would have rated the game one point less.

I still recommend this, but I have to admit, this doesn't really appeal to anyone. RPG fans, even those hungering for an old-school dungeon crawler, won't like how it has a smattering of RPG elements. FPS fans aren't going to like it because its very unusual. Even if this game uses the same mechanics as PS2 era action-adventure games, I doubt fans of that era would care. Those interested in augmenting their Japanese learning with video games are not going to care for a western game they could already play, when Ultima Underworld is right there. But yeah, for the two people out there for whom this sounds interesting and don't mind dealing with the awkward healing, its worth it. But perhaps I'll be proven wrong whenever the CRPG Addict ever gets to this.

Shadowcaster (PC-98): Won

The Kappa changes up the capabilities of the player considerably. While Kirt could go underwater before, he would quickly drown. The Kappa, meanwhile, can just swim around underwater consequence free. Since this hasn't come up before, you see those purple gems on the sides of the viewing screen? Well, below or above thos, and if Kirt can, he'll shift to that area. There hasn't been much point in flying higher as the Opsis, since these areas haven't had any reason to, but with the Kappa, you get an entire new level.

While this admittedly isn't quite on the same level as the stuff in Ultima Underworld, this actually puts the game as one of the first titles to have multiple floors strung together, even if in a cheating way, and with underwater sections. (Midwinter 2 beat it to the latter though)
Its also the strongest form so far, just below the Maorin in attack strength, but having a whopping 80 HP to start with, but just 20 more per level. It also gets an electrical attack and a sonic attack.

...both of which are completely useless against the enemies populating the standard return trip to this dark temple. New, green ssairs. We'll be getting back to those boys by the end of this entry, but for now they just exist to make my playthrough annoying. They deal some good damage to the Kappa, far too good. So do the serpants. Fortunately, the trusty shuriken will do wonders. Kind of a slog though.

From later, this is supposed to be poisoned, but at first it just seems like a poor attempt at rendering something majestic

Meanwhile the new location, is also a slog. There are more mines, but the Kappa's attacks aren't doing much. Instead I brought back out the Opsis. That's a good sign. This place has a weird Greco-Roman sewer vibe to it. This is supposed to be a majestic underwater kingdom, but I think that intention is lacking somewhat, falling to the usual FPS trap from this time of being rather generic. There are blue water areas, but also more green, therefore dangerous, water areas. At least the music track is nice.

As I wander around, I stumble upon this mud monsters akin to Muk from the Pokemon series. Last time I played I made a joke about a place called the mud mines, guess that's why they were mining it. I'm not sure if the Kappa's special attacks work against these guys, but they work better than previous attacks have. Its pretty slow going though, as everything on this level seems custom tailored to just eat up damage.

Eventually I find a trident, this is supposed to be the most powerful weapon in the game. Unfortunately, the first enemy I find next is a different kind of flying enemy. I swear I have to do more fighting as the Opsis than as the actual character this section is supposed to be centered around. I have been concentrating on the above water section, but come on!

At least there isn't much left here. Just the locked off doors containing the water, the key of which is hidden in one of the green slime rooms. Now the only above-water enemies are the ssairs. Or red ssairs, not sure what the difference is. They're definitely Opsis enemies. Its best to clear out everything now rather than later, because you really don't want to run out of mana underwater.

Speaking of which, this is slightly better than the previous situation. Now enemies actually do take damage from the Kappa's magic attacks, although this seems to come at the high cost of health too. Ah, good, more waiting around. Take out a few enemies, burn through most of both bars, rinse, repeat. We've got mines, much easier than ones above water, electric manta rays, random fish, and oh, blue Ssairs. They all fall easily to the sonic attack. Huh, it practically feels like I'm cheating. It seems to work weirdly, being able to take out multiple enemies at once, and possibly ones I can't even see yet.

Its fun, whenever I actually get to play it instead of waiting around for another 15 minutes. Doesn't help that this area is incredibly mazey.

Ah, the boss, well, I'll just use the water cannon thing I have...and he's dead. Wow. Behind him is his throne, containing a tablet which gives me a message about the next area. Its about the Ssair, my next form. It was hard at first because Japanese is not built for words with "ss" at the beginning. It seems to be telling me they were poisoned, and I need to use the tablet to heal them. This does make me check the official cluebook, primarily because I'm trying to figure out how much of the game I have left. Not a lot, guess this is the final stretch then.

Yes, that usually is how low my bars go

The next area is called the Ssair Wellspring, in which there are many Ssair. I have no idea how to use the tablet, which is great. This is actually quite an annoying area, because you start off in danger, and the teleport back out leads to the underwater area, which means a long swim back to land. Even though the Kappa has a decent swimming speed, this is incredibly annoying. Guess I'm going to have to kill them after all. Just to even be able to manage getting through this section. And after killing three of the guys just so I don't have to swim back and forth again, I right click on the tablet above the green water and suddenly its solved. Sigh...The message I get on this second to last obelisk is that the Ssair is a flying dragon.

The game introduces so many elements like this as one-offs that I kind of feel like the game primes you for them

The Ssair starts off with a whopping 200 HP and 40 every level up. Its strongest form so far. It flies, much faster than any previous creature could walk, and it shoots fireballs. And it does the most physical damage, its tail attack does decent damage, but its claws do more. Not that it matters when it has a significant boost with melee weapons. I can actually kill enemies at a reasonable rate with the trident in this form.

This stage is the actual "mud" mines. My new enemy? Spiders again. At least I can just glide around now, and killing things is a piece of cake again. I even end up finding the obelisk tip fairly early on. Probably just luck. Its guarded by one of those flame traps, which you can't seem to get past without activating. Well, I'm a dragon, I don't care!

I do appreciate that they gave an appropriate character for an appropriate location.

Mud minotaurs? Or mud elementals? Considering the only way to find out the names of any of these creatures is to open up the official cluebook, I question the wisdom in making a section mud monster. These are...strong to fire but not physical damage. What's more distressing is the horde of lava creatures that look the same in the next room. For all of five seconds, before one falls quickly. Really, the only trouble this area is giving me is that there are quite a lot of fireballs getting shot off walls, and even that's easy with how fast the Ssair moves.

There's a puzzle at the end of the level consisting entirely of putting rocks on some plates followed by pulling a chain. The next level starts off empty, but without any clear path forward at first. There's a wall tile that looks different than the others that I can attack, but it turns out there's a flame elemental behind it. There's a frog statue in the wall, but it takes a moment to figure out it wants me to shoot the Caun's fly attack at it. Can't help but feel like that was a shallow attempt at making the Caun feel useful again.

One of my favorite fire elemental designs

There's a puzzle at the end of the level consisting entirely of putting rocks on some plates followed by pulling a chain. The next level starts off empty, but without any clear path forward at first. There's a wall tile that looks different than the others that I can attack, but it turns out there's a flame elemental behind it. There's a frog statue in the wall, but it takes a moment to figure out it wants me to shoot the Caun's fly attack at it. Can't help but feel like that was a shallow attempt at making the Caun feel useful again.

Then its more flying over lava. Its funny, the area that's the most seemingly difficult is the one that's in practice most easy. The flame elementals, while kind of nasty, especially if they can sneak up on you, are easy to back away from and hit with the trident. The game provides way, way too many side areas for you to stop and rest then are necessary.

At the end of the area I find an obelisk teleporting between four spots. Aha, I think, I just have to figure out where the obelisk goes and put on the tip. No, but there is a notch for an hourglass I found not too far away. That stops it, getting me the final form, the Grost, a stone golem. The usual text you get doesn't seem to say anything important. But wait, this isn't the end of the level, because several walls are special, and only the Grost can destroy them. This is reflected in the creature's health, 300, and its damage, which with its fist is more than most forms with weapons. Finally, it has an earthquake attack and a paralysis attack.

I say there's more, but its just more killing of enemies. The Grost isn't the best on lava, because unlike the Ssair which flies over it, the Grost just tanks damage. But boy, does it deal it out. Given how effective the Ssair has been, I was floating the idea of using him against the final boss, but we'll see. Its hard to argue with something that can kill previously annoying enemies in 3 hits. As such, the final return to the temple before entering the final level just consists of me making short work of the serpent things.

The final section is a creepy inside human kind of design, starting you off in a river of bloody water. Funnily enough I started this as the Grost, meaning he can swim. First enemy, something that looks like a green Opsis. The Grost's earthquake attack takes them out quickly, but it costs a ton of mana, not helped by how it has a much higher rate of consumption compared to other forms.

This area has two halves and one big three column area which seems to want something. My first choice is to go underwater, where a bunch of ugly looking things are. I don't really have much to say about them, beyond that they fall fairly quickly to the sonic attack. Most of the time. It is just slow going, kill a bunch of things, wait for a while. While there are some areas that can only be reached via this underwater route, there's an enemy up there. Meaning you have to shift to human then to something that can kill that thing safely.

Why is it on the ceiling though?

Meanwhile, I find a heart in one chamber. It doesn't attack you or anything, you're just supposed to kill it to get a crystal. a Blood Crystal, I think. One out of three.

The three column area has three passages that don't lead back to the rivers of blood. My first path is to a maze with those freaky faced walls that sometimes make an appearance in Doom. Now we have tiny dragons. I guess those are dragons? Skeletons too, just in case you wanted the Grost to feel really powerful. An interesting thing about the Grost is that because its taller than every other creature this is reflected in how far from the ground you are...which is a problem in picking up items. I'm mixed as to whether or not that's good balancing, its not like there's ever going to be a point now where I won't want to use the Grost, and yet they do try to give the creature as many disadvantages as seems prudent.

This section's puzzle is to find a stone sword and place it on a statue, while...uh...tanking fireballs. That's what I enjoy about fighting as the Grost, how well it tanks damage. This nets me the flesh crystal. The third area is one of bones. There's nothing special about it, outside of the final crystal. This leads to the final battle.

Veste, just taking the same form as the old man from earlier. He says something about killing me or Kirt's grandfather. Right, well, this should be interesting. With the Grost and the Trident, I take out the old man form quickly. Because this is the final battle, it isn't that easy. He shifts into the forms of the bosses I've killed, first the wereboar leader, then the skeleton and werewolf lord. This is easy, I think. Because my health isn't draining at all. Then I notice my mana is draining very fast. I'm being attacked by a blue cloak. So I run around, only for one of the walls to disappear into acid, revealing a group of red cloaks. You clever fellows.
Unfortunately, this puts me in an unwinnable situation. I manage to sit down somewhere safe from the red cloak attacks and Veste, but the blue cloak is draining my mana, and worst of all won't die. No matter, I probably should be recording this anyway.

I restarted the fight, after having first killed that blue cloaked fellow, and recorded it. Its not technically different from videos already on Youtube, but I kind of wanted to show this anyway. Veste's forms are randomized, and I didn't realize the green Ssair was a boss. After dealing with all those, Veste choses a final form of that of a gargoyle. This is when things get serious. I end up having to shift forms quite quickly in my efforts to restore my health, but I manage it in the end. Then after I upload the video to Youtube I realize I have to do it again. I did it wrong and now my system's cursor is there, just staring me in the face.

But I have to admit, I think the second video showcases the game a bit better. Interestingly, it seems like the game has some primitive AI! Enemies go after where they think you went rather than actually going after you. That's fairly impressive.
After taking out Veste's final form a cutscene starts. I checked the original words before, but it seems like the two aren't exactly the same. I could be wrong, but I'm reading it as, "you're not more of a man than I." and "you don't know about the truth about your power." Then a friendly figure, not Kirt's grandfather shows up and says he's a hero, he'll lead his (remaining) people and be the founder of a new linage. 

Then we're returned to Kirt and the People. He's great, he's a hero. And then Kirt's grandfather's hand is a demon. Did he get killed and replaced at the start of the game? Come to think of it, Veste's final form is the same as the gargoyle from the beginning. We'll never know. Really. Its been 30 years and even back when Raven wasn't a shadow of itself they didn't care for continuing the concept of Shadowcaster.

Total Time: 7 hours 40 minutes

Shadowcaster (PC-98): Plumbing the Depths of the Monster Manual

You again?

The Opsis is a beholder-like creature. It flies, it has two tentacles, and a wide variety of spells and abilities. The first two abilities are a triple fireball and a single iceball. Why that way? Dunno. With the iceball, I can take out a protective fire, along with another Maorin skeleton and snake thing. The problem is...I have now run entirely out of power. All 175 points. I check how fast the regeneration rate is. By my crappy estimation, about 5 seconds a point. Or 15 minutes.

This thing has a lot of special abilities, most of which are of limited utility. The first two attacks are the most cost efficient, and thus the ones you would want to use the most. Because the key thing about the Opsis is, that levelling up with it doesn't actually improve it beyond increasing health. It doesn't do more damage or improve beyond that, to my knowledge. Only improving Kirt's base power does that. So while the Opsis has attacks that offer the ability to slow down enemies, make them afraid or instantly die, these are tied into resistances which soon enough get too high for these attacks to have any purpose. Well, outside of the attack which can kill enemies, which is too inefficent for my tastes to begin with.

It also has a spell which increases map distance, essentially useless since you only need the map to find out where you've been. For hands, the it has tentacles, which deal basically no damage, and while it flies, it does so slowly.

Its just those three that take up the path before the next area. A mine, full of Caun slaves and wereboars or "slave drivers". Imagine my surprise when I find out that the boars fall quite easily to ice attacks. And thanks to some red, blue and green bombs lying around, in general they're a joke. Unfortunately, so are the Cauns, and its very easy to accidentally hit these guys as they wander around. Which makes the Opsis not the most ideal at all times. Doesn't help that the boars run around like crazy.

Its actually kind of weird, because I remember last time not having so much trouble with these guys, even though I was probably using Kirt all the time, and he can kill just about one. Whereas the Opsis can consistently get a couple. Either way the length of time it takes to get through here has skyrocketed hard. I'm starting to mind it a lot more than I did before. I even fight with some dude who seems to just eat up damage. It drops an amulet of protection. Was that the boss? Huh.

There's a single tree in one corner of the area, next to a lever I can activate. This creates some restorative fruit, along with another message telling me to continue downwards and to be tenacious. This actually leads to the next floor, but I hold off for now to explore the rest of this one.

Ah, mushrooms. I remember these. They more or less just stand in place and shoot poison at you. In comparison to the wereboars, they're a joke. Kirt can usually take out two before needing to rest. There are just a few of them here, before I end up with an absolute wealth of items. Huh.

They're very hard to see even if they're this close, which is why you want to be on the alert for them at all times

It turns out that was very much needed, because the next floor starts off with an absolute ton of spiders. Betting I didn't like it the last time around either. So these guys hug either the ceiling (cool) or the floor. Because of their size, its easy to not hit them, and guess what's on the floor? Another shuriken. So you might accidentally pick up that with that while trying to kill a very tiny creature, possibly in the dark. Despite this, the situation feels oddly easy. The game is becoming generous to a fault with items so I can basically breeze past most of this. Its not like I'm going to be using any of this in the very late stages of the game.

Complete with creepy webbed up Caun

The bigger spiders aren't that special, they're slow, but otherwise they behave much like the slave drivers did, Kirt has enough health to take out one, and with a full power bar the Opsis can take out 2/3. Otherwise there are a lot of mysterious crystals on the ground which can't be used. This level is mostly fairly simple for a long while. The mushrooms return, and I try to stay in Kirt's form as much as possible so he can build up his power.

Gotta love a mine with a skull on it

The game gets a bit weird when these guys show up. These are mines, they're stationary and shoot fireballs at you, but what's curious is what's going on in this section around them. Fireballs keep shooting out from a set distance, causing the game to constantly switch from the generic level music to the combat music, then sometimes the victory music. Its strange.

This leads to an acid pit with a switch in the middle. Which I guess opened a door. There's another spider and then the next obelisk tip. Picking it up opens another door and...the obelisk. That's this section? Really? Right, the message. Now Kirt has the use of the aquatic Kappa, which can do things underwater. What I got was considerably more...simpler than I would have expected. Next time, the underwater areas...

Why the short length for this one? Well, outside of keeping a pretty tight ship this week on not counting time spent waiting, I don't count time I spend with it in the background, this was a pretty short section. Two levels, one of which was pretty tiny. I also hope I don't need those crystals later...

This Session: 0 hours 40 minutes

Total Time: 5 hours

Shadowcaster (PC-98): Castle Master

Upon entering the temple, I find myself surrounded by these imp things, along with a few bats. The bats aren't that annoying, but interestingly, I get pretty well ganged up on by the imps. That's a surprise. This is some temple or another, you'd have to look up the official guide to figure out who's. Probably Veste or Melkor. Its very blue, but I wouldn't necessarily describe it as bad-looking. Hard to see at times. I think their static sprites and textures have aged pretty well, but the animation depends. Enemies don't seem to bad from what I can see, but that intro cutscene was kind of awkwardly animated.

Honestly, these imps are so slow that outside of situations where they're forced up against you they haven't a chance. Just stand a little outside their reach and use the shuriken against them. It feels like the developers knew how pathetic these guys are, which is why they're standing right behind every door for a while. But because of this section's layout, you might sometimes end up sneaking up on them.

Eventually, this comes to a medallion moving over an acid river. Its this trick. While the common train of thought is that this game is a FPS/RPG hybrid, with less credence given to whichever genre the writer usually prefers, I notice that in many ways, this game's design anticipates action-adventure games of the PS2 generation. Just minus the platforming that was common in those generations. At least I think. Its after this that the game remembers it should be trying to kill me. Meet the Maorin skeleton or Zardaz Guardian. Its the boss. Its tough, hits like a truck and throws fireballs. Somehow I managed to kill it without using any of my items. I wrongly assumed the boss was later. Huh. Guess that's a difference between versions...?

Kirt, the gods have given you the form of the great doctor Caun. On the other side of the north door is a temple. The way leads to a castle.

He's guarding the second obelisk allowing me access to the form of the Caun. The Caun is the seemingly most utilitarian form, yet in practice one of the most useless. Its not a very good fighter, but they have a special healing spell. This is the most useful feature of them. They can cast a light spell, which does work across forms, but doesn't last very long. Then we have a grab move which is useful maybe once or twice. Then defensive and offensive moves, a shield that reduces damage taken by 2 points, a move that reduces enemy visibility, and an attack that shoots out 6 or so bugs at 1-2 damage a pop. These abilities are useless, of course, because fighting with the Caun is suicide, they have 20 base health and 10 points per level increase. None of the combat spells increase in usefulness, ever.

This leads me to what I've always assumed is a castle. This serves as a sort of hub for the rest of the game, you come back here every few levels, and while the area isn't restored of its enemies, you do fight some new ones every time. First up, these serpent things, something I suspect was an inspiration for some Heretic creature, is tougher than the previous monsters but doesn't seem overpowered. I took out two (with the shuriken) so that the Caun's light spell could last for 80 seconds instead of 40. The cluebook says it only lasts as long as the Caun shape is selected, but it does last outside of it. Not 80 seconds though. Duration stacks between spell uses, but having decent length in general helps.

Next, magic drainers. Not on this level, health drainers. They're robes who shoot an attack that drains power or health depending on which one they are. I think in the latter case it restores their own health, making those things some of the more annoying enemies around. These guys are annoying but not that annoying. Power just means you have to wait around more.

The gist of this level the first time through is you have to destroy four coins to open up a path, guarded by another Zardaz Guardian. This time I make short work of him thanks to the wands I've been saving. I haven't done a good job of explaining how these work. Each wand has its own damage type and how much damage it deals, along with an ammo count. Each wand's damage and ammo is unique, so its not the wisest idea to save a wand from the beginning to use at the end game. Once activated, just use it until what you hate is dead or its out of ammo. There is no recharging.
This leads to an area with four obelisks and I think five teleports out. Each teleport out leads to a new area. First stop...castle.

...and werewolves. As far as melee enemies go, these guys are good/annoying. Fast, hit hard and generally ruin your day if you aren't prepared. Like, say, when you teleport somewhere and get one right on top of you. While the animation isn't amazing, they do a pretty good job creating their enemies, they guys look pretty nice. There are quite a few here, in this area, some sort of prison. There are a bunch of locked doors in which one contains a person. None of the others do for some strange reason.

I am your grandfather's friend. I have a message for you. In the tower the lord of the castle hanged himself, cursing the place, take the obelisk there.

Half very confident on the meaning of this, half not great. The first sentence I know, and the last very roughly.

To open these, you have pull another chain, hopefully by this time you have that all figured out, then return. There seems to be nothing in any of the other cells except this dude. After that the door out leads to a barrel blocking your path. I kind of like this, because typically in games of this time, such an obstacle is insurmountable and the path forward lies elsewhere. Because Shadowcaster doesn't do secret doors, that's not the answer. Instead, you turn into the Caun and jump over it. Better be careful or you'll get ambushed by a werewolf. Curiously, despite this area looking like a warehouse and having crates, there's nothing here. Is this supposed to be a subtle joke?

Next up are...these. I wasn't expecting them nor was I expecting them to be so difficult to kill. These guys take a proper amount of damage to kill, it took me multiple walks back and forth to take them out. Doesn't help there's a werewolf here too. There's not a lot here, despite all the skeletons in those hanging cages. The one thing here is hidden via a clever single chain, over a pool of damaging liquid. This is the one point in the game that the Caun's grab move is useful...for a suit of armor for the Caun. For the one time you accidentally get caught in that form.

Cutting through all these guys is a long process. Slowly advance, take out one or two, retreat, hoping you don't get followed, then use magic if you can, wait if you can't, and repeat. At the end, I get a silver sword, which, naturally, does more damage against werewolves. I also find stairs down and stairs up. Huh, I forgot about that, guess I don't quite remember everything. Well, down first.

This I do remember, but until I see these guys I wasn't quite sure what. These are, of course, the health draining versions of those blue cloak enemies from earlier. Fighting them is quite cleverly set up, you approach in complete darkness, at least if you haven't cast light, before seeing an alternating series of niches, designed to protect you from these guys, two of them. They're guarding a chest containing a book. Sigh...

Diary, several weeks have passed. Werewolves have come, Opsis (?) escaped from the castle. I shut myself in the wine cellar, as long as my sanity can be protected, I'm not confident. Ah, I hear distant howling. The diary crumbles to dust.

You must forgive me, but I've actually been translating these after the fact rather than in the middle of the game. And this particular screenshot only shows the middle lines of text, not the first and last. Not confident of the first line, but I'm mostly sure on the second two. Except "opushisu". So Japanese fact for those of you who don't know the language. Japanese is a bit like English in that just because you know what all the syllables mean doesn't mean you can say a random word. There's another system that screws with this, but practical here is the process of dropping some letters, usually vowels in spoken words/names. For example, semi-famous musician Stomu Yamash'ta for shi, and basically any borrowed English word that ends in a "s" is going to use the su character, they just drop the u. Its a bit more complex than that, but I've made a long enough tangent.

All this explanation for some neat mood building.

The upstairs path leads to a twisty castle interior. In theory, I suspect the Caun's stealth was to help you get past here without much incident. But one of the big problems with that creatures abilities is that it works against a game where killing every creature counts. I'm running out of places to carry regular items. Its very rare for me to be in a situation where I need to use a health potion and obviously attack items are for bosses. No way in heck am I using any of those on regular enemies.

Then there's this crap. More of these flying dudes, but you know something? Doors are like every other object in the game, something that can be flown over, which is what these guys are supposed to be able to do. In practice they're more annoying since I have to hit them dozens of times with the shuriken. Heretic wasn't the beginning of Raven's problem with having too many hit points. It also exposes how annoying it can be to hit something above you when you can't look up and down. The closest this game gets is later when you can fly.

Despite this issue, this section encapsulates why Shadowcaster works despites its flaws. Its easy to criticize the game for not having great controls or for having a short view distance, but here, in this hall, in an area full of monsters that are as fast as you. Its pretty tense even a few playthroughs in. To say nothing of wondering when a boss is going to appear.

Great hall number two, and now crap's getting real. Yeah, flying enemy plus annoying enemy. What's worse is that with this guy I'm actually dealing just under his damage threshold, nice. What prevents this fight from feeling damage spongey is that it requires acting as quickly as possible to survive/kill this thing. This turns into one of the most intense fights this game has, with multiple trips back and forth restoring health, throwing the shuriken from safety...and finally winning. Right, let's take out that flying enemy...and there's more of all of them. Ah...

Right, well, there's a different path, one I'm sure is full of the easier werewolves. And its one werewolf before I have to fight red and blue cloaks again. Honestly, this seems to be the only area giving me trouble by not taking advantage of the Maorin's higher health and damage. Still, these aren't as difficult as the batch that gave me trouble. Its all smooth sailing for the rest of the floor. All I'm left with is one path down and a portal. Ah...crap, the portal.

There's a portal in that first big area, where I dealt with the flying dudes. This leads to a library full of the cloak enemies. Seven red cloaks, one blue cloak. I use the dragon horn on some, exploit the terrain on others, and I've killed them all after a few short trips. For what? Another book. Funny thing is, they created this nice and fancy set for one room. I don't think any of these tiles appear again.

Did not read until later. Not that its very important since all it says is that there are magic power restoring pools around in the castle. Which I reached beforehand, and besides you're probably going to want to walk over any strange blue tile anyway.

Enemies get stuck on the scenery a lot, I believe this behavior is intended so the player isn't constantly in danger when fighting superior numbers

Finally, the stairs down. To another blue temple. With the usual werewolf surprise. I know I usually criticize games for this, but for Shadowcaster, the game started of doing this and by this point its less a surprise and more expected. It can stil be surprising, you never know what's behind a door, or if there are six (or so) werewolves. Considering how modern internet communities can be sometimes, it might not be a bad thing for Shadowcaster to be a hidden gem.. Fighting directly is too time consuming in terms of health, so I just mix picking them off with shurikens to fighting melee whenever they stop blocking each other from entering the hallway.

The werewolf lord isn't in this room, he's in the next room, with another number of werewolves. He's like the Zardaz Guardian, except he shoots lightning balls. He's not so tough, I still had the frost wand and while that didn't kill him, the strength potion along with the silver sword took out him and his remaining buddies. Off his corpse and loot in various nearby rooms, I get a staff of power (damage item), an obelisk tip, a Caun sword, a crystal of light, and a chalice of mana/power.

The obelisk tip allows me to use a nearby obelisk, granting me another form. Not translating the thing accurately, but basically: "Your duty is going well. Opsis is the next form, it has many abilities and magic. The cave is next." I'm just assuming something I don't quite understand clarifies that the next area is a mine. And I guess Opsis is correct.

This Session: 2 hours 50 minutes

Total Time: 4 hour 10 minutes

Shadowcaster (PC-98): Introduction

As I am often wont to do, I sometimes screw around with releases not on my immediate schedule. On this day, it was checking a few PC-98 games, you know, the Japanese computer. Back when I first started emulating the system, I didn't realize the hard drive files there were designed to make your life easier, and tried installing games on my own. I failed. Shadowcaster was the first game I was interested in trying out, because, hey, its something I know. Well, now I'm back at it. I've wanted to replay Shadowcaster for the blog, but was originally going to hold off until after playing Raven Software's previous title, Black Crypt.

It did take some wrangling to get it running, but less than you'd think. I just had to use the right emulator with both a HD image and a HD boot floppy. Lo and behold, Shadowcaster...with some good music? I'm familiar enough with the game's music, but usually just the basic flourishes the game has, not the general music. It works and its actually better than I remember.

I'm not going to translate the intro text as that takes too much work and I'm not entirely certain I'd get it right. I'll try to summarize.

Kirt and his grandfather are not of our world, and they're not human, they're the People. A race of shapeshifters, who, when granted a form by a non-People race, can shift into it and vice-versa. Not all members of the People could get the ability to shapeshift, so they turned to dark gods and became heretics. A great war happened, almost wiping out the People, but the People won.

Despite this, the heretics remained, and they and their leader Veste grew in power. The future looked bleak until the birth of Kirt. His birth caused a shadow across the future, for no one could see his. So Kirt was taken to our world, to grow in strength until the time was right to return.

Before Kirt's grandfather is carried off, he tells Kirt to find obelisks, to seize his destiny and to find a shrine. In that order.

Two notes before I actually talk about the game. We have a video of the original game's explanation:

Firstly, that is so much better than the CD version's even if the animated intro was the greatest looking thing ever. (Its not, to be clear, but if it was I'd take the one that explains the backstory) It just has so much more explaining what the game is that its honestly sad.

Now, differences between the original and the Japanese version. There is going to be a certain degree of me screwing up the translation, however, regardless of this, the dialog is different. Kirt's Grandfather places a lot of emphasis words in there and speaks quite formally. In short, his character is grand and formal. A definite difference, but one I'm not sure I care about. Also, there are indeed references to heretics/heresy here. I just felt that was amusing. I also got the impression from the text that Veste was an evil god and not the leader of the heretics. (rather than the opposite it was in the original game) I don't know if that was me, or if that was the translator.

Unlike a lot of these ports, Shadowcaster only has music over its original counterpart. Even if I did get the music running on DOS, this just sounds better. There are better CRPG ports, especially debut entries in series like Wizardry and Might and Magic, but I have a good memory of this game. This will be the fourth time I've played it over the years. I think this combination is one that works well in terms of being able to understand what I'm looking at and being able to finish the game.

I wonder how many people wandered into this game only to get slaughtered by this guy

You start off straight in the action, about to get hit by this thing. But first the GUI. We have the menu, which allows you to save and load, along with changing the difficulty setting, new and quit game. Map, which isn't great, but hey, few games had them yet. Most of the following actions are performed by selecting them and then clicking on something. Left hand and right hand, which when selected use whatever it is in that hand. By default you punch. The last two are special actions. For Kirt's default form, he can jump and kick. The kick does more damage than Kirt's fists. You can use those options in addition to one hand by pressing J or K. You can also use things if you click on something whenever you don't have something selected. That last part is very important.

This thing is an enemy, and while I have to admit this part is annoying, its not the worst thing you could deal with. He has slightly longer melee range than you do, so if you don't know what you're doing, you will die. But once you get the trick, its not that hard to win. At least at this stage. He said, having won this game three times before. Even on the hardest difficulty you have enough health to win this fight. I've gone through this fight a lot more times than I have beaten this game, so I know.

Guess I should go over that difficulty setting. Difficulty in RPGs is weird, because they're the easiest genre to screw up difficulty with. Done badly, and instead of making it a challenging game, you've made it a boring game where you whack some dude for hours on end. Stats in this game don't really get high enough for that to be an issue, even on the highest difficulty. Helped by how the game gives you more experience points on higher difficulties. More points means Kirt levels up quicker, which means more health and power/mana. This is the only thing leveling up gives you, although there's slightly more to it than that. You get better at combat through a mix of player skill and items found in the game world.

"Inside yourself you hear your grandfather's voice: 'The form of the cat tribe warrior Maorin is given. Pass by the temple and the graveyard guards, the four-handed monster arrives.'"

Touching this obelisk gives Kirt his first shape to shift to, the Maorin, a four-armed cat warrior. I'm surprised the Maorin's name managed to transfer untouched. I'm definitely going to have to check the names of some of these things later. This brings us into the real overarching RPG aspect of the game. Each form of Kirt's, including human/People form, has its own experience meter. For Kirt, this handles health and mana. For the others, this increases health. Everything you kill increases score, if you're in a non-human form, its divided between that form and Kirt's base form*. Changing into a form and staying in that form drains mana, as do most special abilities in those forces. Jumping doesn't cost anything and neither does a base attack. Succeeding in this game is all about successfully managing how stats increase in these forms.

I'll get to what's special about the Maorin in a bit, but for now, items. Around the obelisk are a fire wand and a health potion. "Fiayaa Undo" as its called here. (a phonetic spelling of fire wand) Its shoots little fireballs. The health potion heals. Items are used by placing them in a hand, either by moving them over or left clicking on an item from the inventory. Each form has its own inventory, something that's only useful at this moment.

The attack motion depends on where your hand is on the screen, lower right gives you an attack that looks like Kirt is reaching out, but I guess its a palm strike

I'm going to be repeating a lot of this when the summary comes, aren't I? Oh, well. The first real monster you encounter are these fire plant things. As long as you're looking at them, they don't move. If you look away, they slowly sneak up on you. Hurt them enough, and they'll run away. A few run after you no matter what. The interesting bit is that they react somewhat intelligently to you, if you're very powerful they'll run away, if you're hurt they'll just rush after you. They're not very troublesome even on this difficulty. They drop flower seeds. Uh, guess that is the kanji for flower seed. These will come in handy in a little bit.

Then we have these things. These are quite possibly the nastiest enemy in the game, if only because they attack you at a weak point. They only appear on this level, but their impact is keenly felt. They're your basic enemy that shoots projectiles, but it hits pretty hard at this stage and I actually died underestimating him. More or less works like the fire plants, hurt him enough and he'll try to run away.

So, basic attacks. I said that Kirt's kick was more powerful than his fist, which is true. I think it does more damage via numbers, this is a RPG, but it hits twice whereas the fist hits once. Kirt can also do a jump kick, jump then kick, which I think does a lot more damage, it certainly killed things faster. The Maorin just has its claws, and can jump, but no combo. These claws do about as much damage as the kick I think, but attack faster. However, the Maorin has slightly more health, which makes it a better choice at first. Thing is, there's no reason to use him after a few level ups with Kirt, and unless you're missing the manual, you know this because there's a rock golem later.

Kirt is such a sharp shot with a fire wand he can aim perfectly with his eyes closed

Next on our little tour of the opening level is a floating chest next to a pillar that obviously needs some kind of item. I usually use the fire wand on this guy, but now that I think of it, there's no real reason to. This guy gives you another flower seed and the key that pillar needs. By this point even if you've been stuffing your character with these, you can't pick up any more of them. The key area isn't somewhere you want to enter yet.

At this point, you get two options for advancing, north and south. This is where things can get very dangerous if you aren't careful. And more realistically by this point, you will be in bad shape. How do you heal? You wait. Bring a book or something else you can do in-between battles. You're going to need it. This crap takes a while. A long time. Based on my experiences last time, I assumed the game would be fine so long as I was writing, but I guess that's a positive change the CD version gave. Its the game's big weakness and I don't think the game offers any way of speeding this up. At least right now, and later options then make you wait for mana to recover.

Different forms have different max healths, but I tried using the Maorin form for a while and nothing changed. It even has a lower max health now, 35 compared to the base form's 75.

So there are two things I really like about this stage. The first is how the various enemy types take advantage of their abilities against the player. There are two closed doors, each leading to a room with melee enemies. You look around, there's nothing there. You enter, and while you're attacking the melee enemies, you get sneak attacked by one of the ranged enemies. Its just out of range from when you're standing at those doors. Its a subtle thing, but it makes this stage that much more memorable.

The second bit is the game's first real puzzle, one involving the flower seeds you've been picking up. Depending on where you go, you'll find one of these flowers on top of muddy water. Attack it, and after it dies, the item you would have been able to pick up turns into a piece of ground. Walking or swimming on this water hurts you, so this is obviously the method across it. Its a simple puzzle, but it sets itself up beautifully.

That does not look great in screenshot form

In contrast, afterward we get what I think is the only use of the Maorin's special ability, a special sight power. You can really get past this without using it by running through the center or right side, if you don't mind waiting to heal. This for a shuriken, which is indeed what it was called originally. It functions more like a boomerang though. The game gives you a series of floating medallions to test it out against, before pitting you against three of the ranged enemies. The fun thing about the shuriken is that you can attack after it leaves your hand, thus allowing you to quite rapidly attack something.

This gets me a giant stone head, which will come in handy later. And this more or less marks the end of the level, because I picked up another fire wand from a side area earlier, and found the exit to the next proper level. But first, a level you have to work to uncover. Remember the stone triangle and the statue? That opens a gate to another level.

A watery dungeon. This is a tricky level to just walk into. You get these bats on the ceiling. Not too difficult of themselves, you can't hurt them unless they attack, run away when they're close to dying. What is annoying is that because Kirt starts this level swimming, you can't punch or kick them. So you have to either use the limited charges of your fire wands, or the shuriken. Hence why I waited. Its also annoying dealing with them running away. Now, despite this being a water level, Kirt is in no danger of dying from just swimming, you have to go underwater. Kirt cannot hold his breath for anything.

He's guarding some very important treasure. A magic sword, another stone head, some Maorin armor and a mana potion. Or power potion. Armor works weird in this game, as long as you have it in a character's inventory, it should work. I've never been too sure its actually effective, but part of this is down to how I rarely use the Maorin for long enough to figure out if that's a good choice. The sword generally proves to be effective though, although the strategy guide suggests the Maorin gets more damage out of it.

With that done, its time for the graveyard...or at least what the game seems to be calling a graveyard. Various skeletons with spears stuck through them lie around. Approach them, and another skeleton warrior activates. Its at this point that my previous knowledge fails me. Wait a minute, why is it taking so long to cut up this guy? Does the magic sword not work against them? Using the shuriken or the jump kick does much more damage. Does the Maorin really get that much of a boost with the sword? Well, it seems like they cut things down about twice as fast as Kirt does. Huh.

This area also has these guys, imps, though they probably have a fancier name. They're not very interesting. The main section of this level are winding paths. Follow those paths and you'll eventually reach where you want to go. Don't follow those paths, and you'll probably reach there much quicker.

The first area these lead to is a pool surrounding a pillar containing many statues. Some of the statues of missing heads, four. One is here, two I already picked up, and there's another one on this level. This is where this whole section ends, because up until the point you enter there, you can return to almost any part of the previous levels. This is about as non-linear as the game gets, unfortunately.

The second is an obvious trap. A key, which when you pick up is revealed to be broken. Not before you're surrounded by spikes and a horde of the imps come out. I forgot it was imps. Its not much of a trap, because unless you really screw up your positioning, you can easily defeat these guys one at a time and they're not terribly deadly. After this its smooth sailing through another series of skeletons and the final stone head. This raises the central pillar back at the lake. Next time, the temple it leads to.

Before I end this, a few things. I picked up an acid wand and an ice wand. Interestingly, they're printed in a way that actually uses the English word as opposed to the Japanese one. The potions don't. I wonder why? Despite the music, I'm not sure this is strictly better than the DOS CD version, because I'm assuming there were changes there that this version didn't inherit outside of the bleh final levels. Regeneration in here is SLOW. I was very wrong to assume I would get through this game quickly. Because I know this game, this feels less like the usual let's plays I do and more like a guide that just so happens to be in a version I've never played before.

This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes