Dear Readers,
There's more to life than Final Fantasy, so let's talk about the very first RPG I ever played! Before Final Fantasy, Pokémon or Zelda, I played this. I decided to have another go at it recently.
This is a roguelike I played when I was very young and had no idea what was going on. Back then I just liked playing as the wizard and zapping things with wands and reading scrolls, hoping they were maps or wishing scrolls. Somehow, back then, I did make it to the final floor once.
For this recent session I played as a fighter. I hung around on the earlier floors to grind levels a bit to see if it was possible. I made slow progress to the fifth floor and got quite confident in combat. Having things like healing potions really helped though at times.
While grinding, I mapped out entire floors by traversing every tile. That means I don't really need a map scroll any more, though I would need food. I found that some enemies dropped food on defeat, which was pretty cool to see. Maybe this would help solve food scarcity.
Being on the Macintosh, the graphics were black and white and at a lovely high resolution. This always gave the games a very distinct atmosphere that couldn't be replicated well enough on other computers at the time. The sound effects are good but very startling! They make play sessions even more tense than normal for some reason. The big RIP grave screen on game over always left an impact too.
Anyway, I got as far as the 5th level before ending the session. I'll have to give this game a proper go someday to see if I can complete it!
I came up with another strategy and that was to walk in a circle around the entrance to a floor, so that it would appear distinctly on the map. It may help in future.
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