Aethra Chronicles - Review

Game reviewed: Aethra Chronicles

Version: 1.0b
Created by: Michael W. Lawrence
Released: 1994

Formats: Pc

Difficulty: 6/10

Est. Playing time: 15-20 hours
Shareware

My interest in this game got colder for each new week passing this autumn. The last hours put into the game has only been to play it in order to finish it, not for its own enjoyment. The feeling of repetetive combat has drained me and even though I hate to leave games unfinished I must abide to the limited time I have available. The few hours I have for myself every week must be spent very carefully on something that gives me great pleasure all the time. 

Aethra of Chronicles is not a bad game. Not at all. And under other circumstance I would probably try to finish it. But I have left great games behind like Dark hearts of Uukrul and Swords and Sorcery Underworld so it would be unfair to them if I spent more hours into this game. I have played the game enough to give it a fair review to readers out there that wonders if this game is worth playing and that is enough for me. My goal of having revisited an old CRPG to present to todays readers have been fulfilled.

Gameworld & Story

The games background is shortly that your father has been blamed for the kidnapping of the new kings child. The reason is that your father and his ancestors has been the kings main paladin for generations and therefore are seen as partly responsible for the security breach. The only way to let your father out of prison is to find the truth about the kidnapping. You cannot save him unless you can find proof of his innocence. With two trusted friends you set out to follow the few clues you can about the kidnapping. Apparantly some rumour goes about a cult and a great evil that is beyond all this, but without proof you cannot do anything.  It shortly turns into a hunt for the book of prophecies that is said to contain valuable information.

The story is ok and the hunt for the book and its understanding seems to be the main objective of the game. The game builds on the story with rumours and main quest leads but otherwhise don´t add much sidequests. Until you come to the point where you actually know how the book can be translated, each step in the mainquest is linear. After that you will have more freedom of where to go next.

The gameworld seems to be of moderate size with a few dozen fullscreen maps that connects to each other through forests, mountains, rivers, swamps and deserts. Scattered about are a dozen or more cities of varied sizes filled with shops, inns, temples and guilds. Here and there are caves not easily seen but you are directed to search in specific directions when you are given quests.
Rating: 2.5

Economy
The shops are filled with many different weapons and armours and have specialised shops for magic, ranged weapons and so on. The problem is that you can never see how much damage a weapon does. Not in the shop, in your inventory and not even when hitting the enemy. The only way to guide you is the price of the item. I hate that system but it is unfortunately not unique. Games like Dungeon Master II, Dark hearts of Uukrul and Dragon Wars all employs the same system in this respect even though some of them actually displays the damage when an enemy is hit to give you a small hint of its powers.

I have circumvented this limitation by using an items list from the Aethras unofficial page (listed below) that lists every item and its properties. Only those that I have found tough.

You start out with quite some gold and you could outfit your starting party of three quite well with these coins but if you start hiring people to fill out your party to the maximum six at the beginning you will see that the money will quickly drain away. Also when levelling you have to pay higher and higher prices.

When I opted to stop playing the game, I had around 13.000 gold and was not worried about it. Even though there are magical shops it is not easy to come by magical weapons other than finding them during your adventure. Most magical shops sell scrolls or wands preloaded with certain spells but I never bought them since you will find quite a lot of potions and some wands during your adventure.

One way to boost economy is to sell all the gems you find. I have not found any other use for them than to bring in more money. I am not sure if prices differs between different cities. That would be a nice feature. What is clear though is that it is well worth investing a lot in the skill trading and do all tradings through that character.

Most items must be identified when you find them because you never know if they are ordinary, mundane items or if they are of exceptional quality (+ or ++ suffixed). They will then be both more valuable and add bonuses. If you fail your identification you run the risk of destroying the item in the process. Nice!

In general I find the economy quite balanced but lacks more variety between cities, stocks and prices. What I lack is the ability to spend the money on magical weapons and armours. There are none as far as I remember.
Rating: 2.5

NPC & Interactions
There are no NPCs in the game other than those that are part of the mainquest or the few sidequests.

You have no dynamic dialogues to use at all. The answers are fixed and if you are to proceed in any way you have to take them one at a time. Actually, there are no dialogues just information coming from the NPC. That is unfortunate but I am not at all surprised. Even in 1994 this was beginning to change with games like Legends of Valour, Blade of Destiny and a long range of other games. So this was old-school gaming when it was released.

To the games defense I have to say that there are nothing wrong with the dialogues that do exists. They fill their function well and this is a shareware game after all.

The interactions you have with the environment is limited to lighting dark places by lanterns or found torches on the walls, opening locked chests and search for traps etc. There are no other interactions worth mentioning.

I have yet to figure out how to camp in the wilderness.

Rating: 1.5

Monster, tactics & combat system
The combat system is quite peculiar in this game. There are no visible hexes or squares so you cannot be sure if you can form a solid defense line or not to protect your weak mages. There is no information whatsoever in combat regarding damage dealt or received. The same goes for magical spells. You are informed what type of spell are being cast by the enemy but it is not obvious what effects they have unless it is a direct-damage spell.

The good thing is that combat takes place on a tactical zoomed in view of your surroundings which allows at least some perceived tactics to be used by blocking doorways or standing behind tables. But most often, combat is done in dungeons that looks very much alike without any furniture at all. Combat at least implements line of sight. So you have to position your characters for ranged weapons.

The enemies are so small and the graphical resolution so low that you hardly can distinguish humanoids from eachother except their colors. The only way for you to stay informed of the enemies status is to use the skill monster info to try to discover information about them like hitpoints, damage dealt, special abilities and so on. Good idea, but I found it too cumbersome to use during fights except for very tough opponents.

Each character have a limited number of movement points based on their attribute scores. At the beginning they could only attack or cast spells once a round but certain classes gets more attacks at higher levels, allowing you to use your group much more effective. Especially together with the group hasting spell. Slow characters (like my mages) have low movement points and could not retreat as fast as I would to the back. It is hard to protect them because it is not clear if you could block enemies which also most of the time have ranged capabilities and could attack your mages from distance which is very common.

Monsters could also retreat when their losses has been substantial. But other than that I don´t see any tactics used by the A.I. Most enemies just rush forward to enter melee with you. But they do tend to strike my weak mages if they can so I guess that gives it some credit.

The combat system could have been better implemented. The basic foundations are in place but the major drawback now is that you cannot use any tactical disposition to your advantage.
Rating: 2.5

Magic System

The magic system is based on mana that drains when you cast spells. Just like in almost any other game. You could restore mana by resting at an inn or drinking potions. There are at least half a dozen spell schools and you spend points into a skill called spell list to increase you chances of learning a new spell school at every level raise. This means you are not guaranteed to get to a certain spell school at a certain level but eventually - if you invest into the skill - your chances to succeed will be close to 100 %.

There are many different types of spells from protection, boosting, summoning, teleporting and direct attacking spells. Unfortunately I seldom saw the need to explore these more. Probably because my basic tactics of hasting the group was enough for most combats. I do think however, that there are good potential here.

Almost all spells are only valuable in combat.
Rating: 3

Character generation & development
Characters level up when they have gained enough experience points and you pay for their training into the next level at the right place depending on the class. You are then randomly given a number of skill points that you could put freely into any skill. Certain races have different innate bonuses. These are not listed in the standard manual but I found other resources on the internet that have this information.

When you put skillpoints into fortitude you raise your hitpoints by a random number. You also raise your spellpoints in the same way but at a fixed value that probably are based on your basic attributes. Certain attributes gives skill bonuses. The higher the more. The system works pretty well and it is fun to level up. An important thing to remember is to specialise your group so you don´t have to have several characters investing into trading, mountaineering etc.
Rating: 3

Map design

I like the overland map which is shown when you travel between the cities. It is varied and interestingly laid out. You don´t know how large the world is beforehand until you discover you cannot exit from the edge into the next.

Map design of caves and dungeons are very similar to each other and frankly, quite boring. There are furniture, paintings, tables and such things in noncave complexes but the caves only contains irregular corridors that connects to each other or ends up in a larger room, often with an encounter waiting for you.
Rating: 2

Manual

The manual consists of a textfile and is accessible from within the game. It provides you with basic information of how to create the characters and how the user interface works but  no details of how the game mechanics works, if there are any race/class modifiers and so on and no description of any spells. Fortunately complete spell lists could be found online and I have referenced them in the end of this review.
Rating: 1.5

Graphics, sound and interface
I found the interface rather clumsy and slow in this game. The fastest way is to learn shortcut commands on the keyboard but you don´t know which they are unless you bring out the ingame help manual. Everything reacts pretty slowly so I cranked up the cycles in dosbox to at least 12.000 when I played.

To navigate through your party members is also more clumsy that needs to be. Few things could easily be done with the mouse. Often you spend considerable time trading items between your party members and trying to get enough space in the inventory as well as trying to see whoever is best in certain skills etc. The interface feels very old fashioned to be released in 1994.

The graphics is standard VGA with very low resolution. In combats, each combatant is very small and it doesn´t take long until everyone clashes together and you can´t make out the slain enemies from the living ones. The towns consists of many small buildings but you never know which are actually shops or not unless you try to bump into them. To make that part less cumbersome I have used the city maps I have found online to quickly find the shops - At least in cities I have already visited before.

Sound is scarce in the game. The introduction music sounds worse than from a Spectrum 48 game and the sound effects are nothing to take note on. Fortunately a game like this can get away with both good graphics and sound.
Rating: 2

Gameplay

Despite the poor interface, graphics and sound, the game is actually quite ok. It takes some time to get used to the controls but they work.. I was quite enthusiastic about the game in my first hours as I explored the different game mechanics and explored the first dungeon and the world around. But after some hours into the game you notice that the cities don´t differ much between themselves. You need to keep track of where the guilds and temples are so you can train your characters at their correct places and you have to know where you could sell off all types of items. But apart from shops there is only a very few places that is quest related. Either you are given a sidequest or you follow on the mainquest to look for certain persons to give you hints on where to go next.

The combat system leaves much to be desired in terms of allowing you to use any form of tactics. I liked the system used in Dark heart of Uukrul much more. The more experienced you get the more flexibility could be used in the combat through spells and magic items and that makes it a little bit more interesting.

The combats are pretty well balanced and quite hard in the beginning. When I stopped playing I felt I could win almost any fight as long as I was rested and had full stocks of mana. You could wander into places that are way too hard for your group and that is good.

Raising in levels both gives you more hitpoints and attacks per round as well as better spells. The spells are crucial in order to win. I would not have been as lucky without the group haste spell for example. Unfortunately that was almost the only spell I used and the game has quite a number of different spells I haven´t felt the need to try out yet.

Overall, I found the game quite pleasant but after the first initial 10 hours it feels like it repeats itself and it stopped surprise me. If you have the time and are looking for something different this might be worth taking a look into.
Rating: 3

Section	Rating
Gameworld & Story	2
Economy	2.5
NPC & Interactions	1.5
Monsters, tactics & combat system	2.5
Magic system	3
Character generation & development	3
Map design	2
Manual	1.5
Graphics, Sound and Interface	2
Summary CRPG value	20
Gameplay	3

Resources:

• The unofficial Aethra Pages Contains complete list of items, races, maps etc.

Aethra Chronicles - Reaching the critical phase

I left the capital Stormhaven in an attempt to search for a mean to translate the book of prophecies I had found. My only clue was that an oracle might know how to translate it and that I should search for the oracle in the desert and ask about it in the town of Naedarn.

I had no idea where the desert might since I haven´t any worldmap of the game but I decided to go west from the capital and follow the coastline. There I found a bandit cave in the mountains that I cleared before moving on.

The overland map is quite nicely drawn and I found smaller towns along my way before coming to a huge marsh. At a certain spot in the marsh I was attacked by a huge monster which I had no means of defeating at this stage so I reloaded and passed this place, trying to memorise the location. My exploration took time and time means money to pay for the upkeep of the mage and fighter in my group. I think the ask for at least 500 gold per week and my starting gold when leaving the capital was around 3.000 gold. 

At certain places your assistance will be sought

After some exploration I came to a small village in which I met a woman that said she had dreamt of my coming. The village was in dire need of help. The village had been attacked by evil creatures led by some sort of intelligence directing the attacks. Only if the source was destroyed the woman believed it would be possible for the village to manage on their own and fend off the lesser evils. They had located the creatures lair to the mountains in the north and also said that they would be willing to send their warrior Timmar to assist me.

Pretty well equipped in my eyes

I offered our help and looked for Timmar. When I found him I accepted him without being able to look at his character sheet. He turned out to be a strong warrior at level 10, fully equipped with his own inventory. However, I did not intend to undertake this mission just yet. I preferred to look up the book of prophecies instead. I took Timmar with me and continued my exploration. 

Selling equpment at a general store

I eventually reached the boundaries to how far west I could go and begun to travel south. There I came across the small village Naedarn in which I rested before exploring the nearby mountains. There was nothing in the city itself that helped me in my quest for the oracle - or anything other for that matter.

In the near mountains just southeast of the village I found an entrance leading me to a three level underground complex filled with undead. For the first time my priest was in the center and he used the spell Exorcism  with success against the undead. The spell affects all creatures and more heavily the weaker they are.

I didn´t know what I was here for except for plundering this place. I found a lot of good items, amongst them a bow of truth which gave +3 shots and +25 in perception and + 25 in detect traps. Quite handy to be carried around by one of my front fighters. It also inflicts 15-25 damage compared with an elven longbow that "only" inflicts 8-14, so it is a very heavy upgrade in my ranged capability.

I have found that chests generally have random equipment and if you are lucky you could get some magical rings from them. Otherwise they often contains scrolls, potions or valuable stones except for mundane weapons and armours. The latter part has already become quite obsolete for me unless I find a ++ item. That gives either improved chances in your weapon skill or armour bonus.

The first level of three filled with undead

Anyway, after a few hours and several trips back to the closest town for resting, I cleared the dungeon. It was just a distraction but gave me valuable experience points and new good equipment. I begun to explore the area just south of there which led me to the desert. To make a long story short this is what happened:

• I found some sort of fire elemental in the desert. He said he could give me more information about the book of prophecies but to do that he required that I gave him a desert rose. That was quite easy since they grew just northeast of him a short walk away. He then told me that the only one able to translate the book was the oracle (which I already knew) but the new information was that the oracle could be found in the swamp region in the north. 

• I located the swamps to the north and soon found a deserted villaged in which I found the oracle. He could help to interpret it but - of course - not without a favour. He has been trapped in this world for a long time and he wants to get home. The only way to leave requires that I collect four gems of power for him. I have already found two such missions but decieded to save them to later. A wise decision it seems, now that I know why I would like the gems of power.

In the middle of this swamp is an overgrown village

Nothing is for free, not even from the oracle

• He could also give me some information about the future as a fortune teller. I learned that demonic creatures walk the land and the only way to battle these is to find three grey swords. He also told me to find the seals of earth and water. They represent some sort of keys.

So now I had some huge quests ahead of me which will take a lot of time to complete. I still don´t know how the book of prophecies is tied to my mission but I am sure I will find out eventually. I returned back to the regions around the capital Stormhaven and increased my levels to 6 or 7. Timmar was a pretty good fighter addition to my group (even though he seems to be a ranger) so I have no need to switch him right now.

The training gets more and more expensive the higher levels you attain so I spent a few thousand gold to raise levels but fortunately I could afford it. My pool of gold is over 10.000 right now so I will be able to pay for the wages without problems. I now returned back to the northwest in which I picked up Timmar. Now it was time to help the village fend off the evil creatures and try to gain my first gem of power.

The cave lied in the mountains just north of the village and spans at least 6 different screens. I have tried to clear this place at three separate times. I can manage around three combats before I feel I have to return to rest and regain my spell points and hitpoints.

Just north of the village lies the caves

I must admit I am getting quite tired of the combat in the game. It is quite repetitive and the tactical maps are almost the same in the caves all the time. So far my only tactics is to retreat with the two mages and let them cast the group haste spell. If the battle is a tougher one I also cast Tower of Might on my warriors or fling away some mage bolts or pyrotechnics although I don´t think they are any good. 

I am not sure if I will continue to play this game to the bitter end or not. I could barely put one hour a day into it so it will take quite some time before I will make major progress. This point exists in all games I play. When the excitement of everything new about the game has settled and you stop being surprised by the game you find that you must have the patience to keep going.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for patch 6 to Rome 2 Total War. I have told myself to buy the game after that patch since I loved Rome 1 but it is sad that Rome 2 was so incomplete when it was released. Anyway, that is another chapter and we´ll see what happens. Either the review comes up next or I continue with the game. 

Aethra Chronicles - In search of the mainquest

I cleared out the small underground base inhabited by orcs that haunted the small village. It consisted of only one screen so it went quickly fast with perhaps 3 or 4 fights. The good thing is that so far there are a fixed number of encounters that seems to occupy certain rooms or parts of a dungeon. When you have cleared them you won´t get into any other fight in that area. I like this system because it allows you to retreat back to safety without being harassed on the way. Combined with the fact that you can always run from combat this is a little bit too good to be true. 

Anyway, even though the fights in the cave hardly gave me more than 1.000 xp or even less, I was rewarded not only by an amulet given to me but also 1.000 xp each. They where very welcome I can tell you. I decided to leave this area in the northwest and go back to recruit a good thief. I want to try out the deadly strike skill and also let the preassure of my mage Rainwill to be the groups thief.

Farley, the groups tank

I went to several towns in hunt for thieves to recruit but it was only in the capital Stormhaven where I found some. I wasn´t that impressed by them at their level 4. They where only slightly better than my mage and did have a pretty low skill score in deadly strike. I decieded to go for a new mage instead. One that had magic schools I did not possess and that also had the spell that hastes a party member. I finally found him.

Fighting orcs

My priest Aurora

The mage I found was a level 5 spellcaster called Suela. She mastered spell schools my other mage didn´t possess. I was now ready to look for the monastery somewhere in the north. I did have some rude maps but didn´t take much notice on them until I stumbled upon a man who said the monastery had been overrun and that he was the only one to survive. I could ask about the book of Doom but the man didn´t know where it was. I had no option but to enter the monastery in search of it amongst the evil that had taken over.

The monastery took me some time to clear since I had to return back to an inn to rest. It is not possible to rest in order to gain hitpoints or spellpoints. I also avoided the harde fights until at the last minute. The monastery contained some fine items and a scroll that said that the book had been delivered to the guardian for safe keeping. So now I understand why the red dragon had it. Anyway, after I was finished in the monastery my group was ready to gain  a level. My next task was to return to the guardian and try to clear out the caves. This was the most challenging task so far. The caves was filled with orcs and bandits but the most difficult fight was against the dark elves. I took me several hours to clear this place.

The most dangerous part in the fights at this stage is that the enemy melee fighters could reach my weak mages in just two turns. I always try to let my fighters kill enemy spellcasters as fast as possible using ranged weapons together with the spell Aynstyne's Accelerated Action which doubles the attacks and movements. However, enemies often comes in sheer numbers and many of the have ranged attacks. I have yet to see anyone striking down my dwarven fighter with over 200 hitpoints, but easily enough one or two of my mages. I haven´t found any good offensive spells for them yet, except magebow which hardly seems worth the effort. Things are not easier with a system that don´t show enemies hitpoints or status in any other way than that you have to use the skill monster lore, something I am quite lazy to use except against single, strong creatures.

The monster lore skill gives you valuable information about your enemies

The red dragon is just north of my group

It took me at least three sessions to clear out the caves for the guarding. During that time I had to travel back and forth to the nearest town to heal and also loose a lot of time which meant I had to pay the wage for my two new companions. They cost around 350 - 400 gold/week.  I only have 3.000 gold left and I begin to see the need for constant supply of loot and gold in order to keep up. One way is to run from combats until I have found more gold or items to sell. I have begun to sell scrolls which give me some valuable gold as well. 

The guardian rewarded me with the book Prophecy of doom, and I returned it to the man requesting it, now living in the city north of the capital. He told me he had no means to translate the text but that he had heard rumours of an oracle that might. It is said this oracle lives in the desert somewhere and he suggested I should look for more information in the village Naedarn. I have no idea where that village could be and now begin to worry how much gold I will loose before I have found my next source of goldincome. Nevertheless, before leaving my mage Rainwill and pries Aurora increased their levels so now we all are at level 5.

I have to correct myself in my former post. The skill points you earn while increasing level is random, also the amount of hitpoints you get when spending them on the skill fortitude. The rest of the skills increases at fixed amounts based on your attributes.

Before leaving for my unknown destiny I had to sell some stuff and reorganise my items a little. I am still looking for a good thiev but haven´t found any I like yet. I am also not sure I can affor one more right now. Regarding my group I can say the following so far:

• The priest performs pretty bad in combat. He have no offensive spells and his only strength so far is that he can heal others and have pretty high defense and could soak up attacks.

• My two mages are mainly used to haste my warriors. Nothing more since I want to save my spellpoints.

• The two fighters is the ones the whole group relies on. Equipped with elven longbows, power rings and hasted, they normally take out two opponents each every turn. But only lowlevel enemies. Now I have met tougher opponents so I am glad they could take out one enemy. They both have different magical swords but nothing that is overly powerful. 

My plans are to go west from the capital and see what I will find....

Aethra Chronicles - Building up

One of the first things I did when leaving the crypt in my last session was to recruit my first npc hireling, a level 4 fighter. I let him take parts of my loot to equip himself and then bought some more. I have to pay him around 100 gold/week but I haven´t found an easy way to keep track of the days or time yet. It seems night and day cycles only occur on the overland map. I don´t wan´t to risk loosing most of my money to pay up for my hirelings this early in the game before I know how hard it will be to get more money.

Eventually the last city screen will take you to the overland map

I returned to the burned out houses in the south of the city which was obviously a thieves den. This part was quite hard and just after two combats I had to retreat in order to rest at an inn. I haven´t found a way to camp underground yet and I am not sure that is possible either. What I did find out though was that if you are using a light source of some sort, not only does the explored parts of the map stay that way when you reenter the complex, but it also radiates several hexes in each direction. This was a much improved experience of how I perceived this in my first post.

My first mission was to recover a stolen painting

This game is pretty strange because you could run from combat and you will almost always succeed in doing that (just like in Legend of Faerghail). Each of your character has the option to run and if one succeeds, all retreat from combat. If all fails that means the enemies get one round to close in but that happens very seldom and the worst case scenario is that enemies might shoot at you with ranged weapons or magic in the first round. A cheap cost to pay in order for a retreat. I haven´t found any mandatory combats so even if the encounter suggests it is a boss or leader you can flee and they will never leave any items. I don´t like that design decision but let´s see if there are any mitigating circumstances for later on.

I used this system to my advantage to only take fights that I knew I would win or that I felt would give me much needed experience points. Or I would put myself in a position where the tactical map would be used to my advantage. But they where pretty far from each other and instead I used this opportunity to look for treasure in hope of getting more powerful weapons and armours.

The den was pretty large. Stretching several screens in every direction and with two levels. It is pretty hard to see items laying around except for chests so it is easy to miss out things unless they are on a table to begin with. Your first three characters are also checked for perception now and then in order to discover secret doors or find traps.

After struggling through this den for an hour and plundnering it for all valuables in chests while trying to find secret doors and avoid any traps, I finally found a room containing the painting I was looking for. It wasn´t easy to see. Many rooms have furniture but it is hard to see if there are items on them.

Anyway, I next had to backtrack my way to the exit. This time I could afford to get into one or two fights and the help of my second warrior Farimar did much to improve my combat skill. I have equipped both my fighters with improved long bows and they are quite adept with those. At least they get a chance to strike one time before the enemies have reached melee and they are perfect to take out mages lurking behind the enemies.

The town north of Stormhaven i Drensea

Anyway, when gave back the painting the man told me that he did not have the book of prophecy but knew that monks in a monastery far to the north would have it in their possession. So much for my hopes of progress in this town. I reequipped myself for venturing overlands and carefully outfitted my group. I had enough experience to gain one level each. At this point you are taken to the character screen where you could spend a fixed amount of skill points on skills of your choosing. I continued to spread the skills so that my priest would be the best trader, my mage the best reader of scrolls, pick locks and disarm traps and my fighters to travel through mountains and fighting. You are not given more hitpoints. You have to spend skillpoints into fortitude to gain any and these are totally random which makes reloading quite attractive.

I had found a lot of gems of different sorts (sapphires, diamonds etc) which I belive is only used for selling since I haven´t found any use of them. They gave me much needed money to buy a power ring which gives a stunning +10 shots with the longbow amongst other boosts. This really helped up my coming combats.

What I soon discovered was that I had totally underestimated my mage. I hadn´t notice he could choose from different spellbooks when his casting sheet is on display. Now I let him get a spell school where the first spell is like a haste in AD&D. It will double up my melee attacks and movement points for the character who receives the spell. This has greatly improved my combat abilities.

I went to the north and soon entered the mountains. After some explorations I came across a red dragon. He said he was a guardian of this place and was in possession of the the book prophecies of doom and also revealed that it could be mine if I did a favour for him. Clearing out the nearby caves. Hmm...I wonder if he actually have the book or not. Someone must have been lying to me unless it is supposed I am to get to the monastery first only to find out it has been stolen by the dragon or whatever.

I just make a short visit to the caverns to find out about the opposition. I had no intention to undertake this mission right now and so instead opted to clear out some bandits hiding in the northwest. That would yield me 1.000 gold in reward. The cave wasn´t that hard to find but it was full of traps which made it hard to navigate. I carefully choose to battle a few of the bandits in favourable positions but otherwhise elected to explore the whole cave first and gathered some good armour to improve my armour ratings.

I had run from several fights and in the end when I had finished exploring the caves they where suddenly gone. I suspected I must have wiped them out but when I returned to the village from where I got the mission he said that there where still some bandits living. I thought this might have been a bug so I reloaded my game from the cave and also restarted the whole game but still no encounters anywhere in the cave. I don´t know if I am supposed to find more caves or bandits outside of the cave to finish the mission. I left it as it where and travelled westward.

There I came upon a small village that where troubled at night by creatures coming from the woods. I explored the wooden region with a small cemetary and found a way down. There is where I am right now. I was startled to get into a fight with the first encounter of a Minotaur. He took tremendous amount of damage before he died and failed to injure me. Now my explorations will continue from here.

I have taken a close look at the XP gained from combats. It is not very much. Perhaps you get 200-300 xp per fight at this stage and you need at least 5.000 xp to reach a new level for the time being. That means I have to do a lot more fighting in the game.

Aethra Chronicles - Revisited

While browsing the internet I came across an old RPG called Aethra Chronicles. A few screenshots and a short introduction revealed it was released in 1994 as a shareware game. Later it seems it was released as freeware although I haven´t found any official site for this old game. Nevertheless, this game seems to be an old lost gem. So I decided to try it out and give a small report about it.

This game has to be run under Dosbox. It was no problem in getting it to work. It was thought this game was to be the first in a trilogy, but I have not found the other ones. After a short animation during the intro you are taken to the main menu where you can create a new game. The manual is very short and brief. It only briefly discuss the game mechanics but not much more. 

Introduction

The background is that your father was the kings main paladin\champion. A title inherited many years back. But events led to the kidnapping of the new kings child and blame was set on your father for the security breach and so he was imprisoned. No one knows where the kings child is or whom is responsible but unless you can find the child you will never be able to recuperate your fathers position and in that lies your legacy as well. So with your two best friends you decide to do something about this.

You start with three characters, wheras one is yourself. You have to roll-up each and every one and pick a race, class and distribute skills points. You start at level 3 while your comrades only start at level 2. It is said this game relies on the Runequest game mechanics but since I have never played the tabletop Runequest RPG, I have no clue.

The lovely re-rolling manouver that could take forever

I didn´t want to spend too much time on creating my first party to try this game out so I only spent a few minutes re-rolling each one. You have the usual attributes like strength, agility, constitution, intelligence and wisdom. Then there are the more unusual ones like Presence which is how you interact with others and influence the skill trading. And then there is Memory which affects mythic lore (the knowledge of monsters) and Read Runes. Last but not least, there is Reasoning, the ability to solve problems that affect woods lore and mountaineering (decides the speed you travel through  mountains).

Here you spend your skill points during character generation

I had to roll up all three at once without the ability to save in between each character which is common. That means I certainly made some mistakes along the way. For example, it usually isn´t good that two characters are very good in the same lore or non-combat skill. Anyway, there are quite some skills in the game which makes it more interesting so far. You have pick locks, disarm traps, item identify, spell list, spell points and detect traps just to mention a few of them. Since we started out beyond level 1, I had the chance to select first the skills for level 1 then for level 2 etc. 

But skills and attributes are also decided by which race you choose - but in what way the manual give no information. You can choose between human, dwarf, elf, half-elf and hobbit and then you have eleven character classes from the traditional fighter, rogue , cleric, and sorcerer to the more special ones like ashikari (warrior mage) and mentalist (spellcaster who manipulates the mind). I decided to go for a dwarf fighter as my main person and then one half-elf cleric and one elven conjurer. I have no idea which composition will be the best but I am sure I will have some second thoughts about this in just a few hours of gaming.

The old Vizier, my only friend

Right at the start, I am told by the old Vizier that there probably was dark magic involved in the kidnapping and that my father had even mentioned something about an evil cult. As a first step he wants me to get a book called "Prophecies of Doom" from a merchant in order to learn more.

 So I set out to explore the city. Travelling takes places on an overland map with small buildings and with your party even smaller. You cannot se on the building which kind of building it is so you have to try to bump into them to see if it is a shop, guild or - as is most common - nothing of interest. The city - which happens to be the capital - spans several screens in every directions. There is a castle, a cemetary and several districts. You could always choose to speak with the shopkeeper, innkeeper or whoever you find in the houses. Most of them have some rumours to tell you and I found out that a priest seems to have dissappeared in the cemetary and that there are bandits north of the city. 

Rumours worth investigating

The overland map with the city in the south

We don´t start with any weapons or armours at all but have a few thousand in gold so my first task was to get some basic weapons and armours. I had to save before buying anything since you don´t get any information about class restrictions. The only way is to try. After half an hour I had let my own character - the dwarven fighter Farley - get a Flail with a shield and some basic armour. My half-elven Cleric got a morningstar and some armour and ended up having far better armour rating than my fighter. My conjurer - the elf Rainwill - couldn´t wear any armour at all. 

My father speaks to me from his cell

 I also find my father imprisoned in the castles own prison. He wanted to talk to me and said he had found out from his own sources that someone or something had managed to open a gateway into the dimensions of demons. A human sacrifice is one way of opening the gateway even though my father didn´t think the kings child would be needed for that. Nevertheless he urged me to investigate this.

The castle, the king has no time to meet me

After awhile I found the merchant that had the book the vizier told me to get in the very beginning. He wanted me to do a favour first which was to recover a painting of this wife that had been stolen by thieves supposedly hiding in some ruins in the south of the city.  At this stage I had two concrete options to explore. I had found a house to enter in the south part of the city which leads me to believe this might be the house I am looking for in order to get the stolen painting. But I had also found an entrance that leads below the cemetary. The latter part sounded more like a thrill so we went down there. 

The cemetary with the entrance down in the SW corner

 When entering dungeons the perspetive stays in a topdown view of your group. Everything is dark but gradually the map is discovered for every step you take. Unfortunately the map returns to black if I save and restore a game. I lack torches and lanterns. Perhaps that will have an effect ? I only managed to explore a few steps before I was assaulted by skeletons. The view shifts to a top down tactical battle field which takes into account the exact locations of where you stood. That could give you some slight tactical advantages since you might be able to block door entrances. That remains to be tested.

Combat gives you a new set of icons to choose from. Every character has a move scoore and it seems at least one remaining is required in order to make a melee attack. You could choose to attack with a hand-to-hand weapon, unarmed, with ranged weapons, casting spells, parry or retreat. If you retreat it seems you end up randomly a few squares from the hex in which the combat begun but other than that I haven´t seen any drawbacks. When attacking your eligible targets are highlighted and you have to  select them in order to place an attack. I let my conjurer Rainwill use his spell magebow in my first combat just to try it out. It was pretty effective but cost 3 or 4 spellpoints and I only have 12 so after that he was literally useless in all other combats. 

My cleric is my melee fighter because of his high armour rating, while my figher fires his longbow until the enemy gets close. The actual damage dealt or received is never displayed. Instead you are given a short description of the attack which after a while lets you understand how successful and hard it was. You could also use mythic lore to get detailed information about your foe, including its special attacks, hit points, defense rating etc. We´ll see if that will be useful later on in the game.

After combat you don´t get any information about XP received and so far no foes have left any equipment. I did find a chest though which I looted for a good shield and a weapon together with some gold. While I explored the dungeon I got information that I discovered a secret door. This is based on the Perception attribute and checked automatically. It is too early to know wether there are a fixed amount of combats or if they are random. There have so far not been any context based texts associated with them.

This underground complex turned out to be larger than what I had thought. It spans several screens and combats now involve zombies, skeletons and even a ghost. But the latter was too hard for me to tackle. After exploring the first screen fully I tried to camp to regain lost spell points. It didn´t work and I figured it might be because I lack light or any other sort of equipment. I left this place for later and returned to the city. My plan now is to return later on to this place but first I want to search for the thieves.

My first impressions so far is good, as they always are in the beginning of a new game. The interface is a bit clumsy and not very intuitive so it gets me frustrated. For example, you cannot go through each and everyone of your partymembers easily. You have to exit the screens and select another member manually. So a bit of struggling with the interface is required. It is also not very responsive. I have no idea when I will gain a level since the manual does not hold that information but I believe I have to find the proper guild to train. 

One last thing. You could recruit other members at different guilds. I don´t know the costs or drawbacks with that. I can think of two. You either have to share the XP points between all your members or they require a continously amount of gold to stay. I think I would do well with another fighter right now. But let´s see what happens later on for right now I just want to return to the game....