aschultz's Wizard's Crown review

This review is teeming with lively examples from the game that keeps the reader engaged. I particularly enjoyed reading about the final little twist after finishing off the final boss. Also like how you casually sprinkle in some wit and sarcasm throughout the review. Overall, this is an enjoyable and informational read that kept me engaged from start to finish. It looks like you didn't force anything and just let the review more or less write itself.

However, I had a small problem with the following sentence - "To wit, rescue a crown that has protected the land of Arghan for 500 years--you're stuck in the main city." It sounds like you are describing the plot here, and then out of the blue you throw in something about being stuck in the main city. So when are you allowed to leave the main city? Does that have to do with clearing away all the thugs you describe below? What happens when you try to leave beforehand? I think what you're trying to say is you're supposed to go on a quest to find this crown, yet the game confines you to the city limits. Just the way it's presented here reads a bit awkwardly.

Otherwise, I enjoyed reading this from start to finish. This definitely rivals some of your best works from the TT.

Thanks for that catch and for the nice words. This was a review that sat on the shelf, of a game I've played several times since I found it on emulation. I had trouble making this one sentence succinct, but in my defense, the first draft was REALLY all over the place. So here goes:

"You need to rescue a crown to save the land of Arghan, which apparently extends outside the nameless city the game traps you in."

Finding this helped me locate a few other things to tune up, so I really appreciate it.

Nice job also working through so many critiques for your RotW stand-in.

Really good review. Becasue I really had fun with the game I would have rated it higher but that's all presonal opinion anyway. Did you play Eternal Dagger?

Thanks for the nice words. I definitely played Eternal Dagger. I don't think I'm going to write a review, because there's little more to say than that ED is the game WC could be, and a 7/8, so I guessed WC is a bit below that. I try to put my own biases aside and maybe I twisted myself around too much.

My basic opinion:
Eternal Dagger = Wizard's Crown + multi-colors + better dungeons (Avlis's tower was funny) + more interesting story with the different races (greedy dwarves are funny) + more skills are useful, especially for rangers. It also had some cool combinations of beatable monsters or territory that'd sap your morale, then bam, tough monsters would swoop in later.

The end was dramatic, but different from WC, with your party giving up all their weapons to enter the Demon World, a fun maze.

But it doesn't seem like I can extend that to a review, quite...yet.

I agree ED was a better game. I also liked you could transfer your characters from the first game. Did you ever realize it had a finite number of monsters in each area? I think it was the first game I ever ran out of monsters to kill.

I wasn't aware there were -finite- monsters! I just thought they got less populous. I'd be curious if there was text that said "oops, the monsters are gone" or if it was more that you just mucked around and didn't find anyone.

Sadly, the dungeons didn't have enough fights for a party to really build up.

Oh, I almost forgot, the caves with treasure were cool too. Guess that falls under rangers and tracking.

Sorry I did not get back to you on this, but yes there is a notice that no more monsters exist in a given area. That is how I found out. I don't rememeber exactly how that came up I believe I was using some kind of search and there was the message, something like "there are no more monsters to be found in this area" and sure enough there were none.

No problem--this is tough to find. I looked through the bytes and didn't find anything with the words you had, but I'm inclined to believe you. I know several areas dried up. I suppose practically the effect is the same. I'll search more tonight.

Might not be those exact words. I was a long time ago I played it.

Edit:

Guess I should mention I played the original version on the Commodore 64 back when the game first came out.