Crystal Dragon - Review

I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I am stuck in the end at level 9. I am in a treausure room with around 10 niches. In some of them I need to put various amounts of silver and gold coins. Since my cleric has too low wisdom to read the parchment on this level, I fear I am missing vital clues. The only walkthrough on the internet is a poorly translated one from german and is not reliable. Even when doing as told nothing happens. I have put out the problem on a forum and to a member that got stuck at exactly the same point some year ago. If I am lucky perhaps I could get help from there.

Meanwhile, I think I will give my final rating. I have approximately played for around 20 hours which should be enough for a fair rating.

Gameworld & Story
This must be one of Crystal Dragons weakest points. Except for the background in the introduction of the game there is almost none reference whatsoever in the game of the actual story except a few parchments to guards that say they should lookout for intruders and that reinforcements are on the way etc. No other walltexts, books or dialogues bring any other light to this subject.
Rating: 1

Economy
There are nothing to buy and no money to gain. After awhile you will have trouble carrying all items you´ve found and have to leave some.
Rating: 1

NPC & Interactions
I haven´t met a single NPC yet so there are no RPG interactions.
Rating: 1

Monsters and Tactics
There are very few different monsters. A new sort is introduced every second level or so. There are the guards, zombies, undead guards, flying skulls, hell hounds and beholders. They behave differently though. The hell hounds are very fast and attack at first sight and the zombies are much slower. Almost all monsters attack at first sight but guards and skeletons make morality checks from time to time and might try to flee the combat for a while. That is quite uncommon in this sort of game. Other than that, there are no tactics used by them whatsoever. They just head straight on. You use tactics like moving around them, hit them, move around, hit them etc and except for the very fast creatures, they are unable to counter that.

Some of them like the flying skulls shoots lightning bolts at you and the beholders can confuse you so you loose your orientation which makes you almost like a sitting duck. In that respect they are quite varied. You cannot use doors or pits against the monsters. Doors could not be closed on them and they will never step on pits unless they are flying creatures. Monsters could drop loot from time to time but it is either keys, food or parchments. I have never seen a weapon from a guard I believe.
Rating: 3

Map Design
The different levels are of different sizes. Corridors connects to rooms. Some rooms have labels that indicate if they are guard rooms, store rooms or whatever but other than that the map design feels more like built on puzzles and not on logic. I mean, what is the reason of several moving pits in a dungeon guarded by guards in the first place ? There is no realistic logic behind that. Each level is like a new puzzle that must be solved in order to progress. The automap feature is nice but it lacks indicators of where you have found buttons or illusionary walls. That would be very helpful.
Rating: 2

Graphics, sound and interface
The graphics in the game is quite ok. It is solid and functional. It lacks smoother animation on monsters and it does not use the AGA-chipsets of the Amiga which is too bad. For a game in 1994 it should have been able to muster better graphics or at least higher resolution. Black Crypt and Eye of the Beholder has better or more varied graphics.

The title music and character generation music is very very good. So good in fact that I´ve been listening to it for the past 10 years without even playing the game. In the game there is no music whatsoever and very sparse sound effects. You can hear doors, clicks, weapon slashes and magic but there are no environmental sound at all.

Interface is clean and functional. Items are stored in bags or chests. It is too bad you don´t have hotkeys for certain spells. To switch spells during combat is not recommended.
Rating: 3

Gameplay
I had a lot of fun with Crystal Dragon in the beginning but just after a few levels I was tired of the huge amount of puzzles that kept you from progressing. There is always a key hidden somewhere that has to be found, there are always a few buttons and illusionary walls that must be found to be able to progress on each level. The game is too hard. Even though I had the help of a translated german walkthrough when I got really stuck.

It would be better if they reduced the amount of obstacles and made a few ones tougher. Now you never feel you progress into the game in a satisfactory way. There are never alternative ways to solve anything. You must do it right or get stuck. You cannot win by just combat the monsters.

The combat is ok, the magic system works well, as well as the inventory. You find a few items along the way. Not as much as in Eye of the Beholder series but enough to keep you looking for more. When you progress it feels very good but too soon you are stuck again. Food and water is a constant problem and you could easily starve to death if you are not cautious. You have to survive of hunting rats in the later stages.

This game could have been done better. As pure entertainment it is worse than Black Crypt and Eye of the Beholder. Still, if you haven´t played this game and played all the others and you think they were too easy, this will really be a challenge. Just make sure you have a lot of sparetime.

It is however more entertaining than Dragon Wars and Bard´s Tale III. Perhaps the major problem with this title is the lack of help on the internet when getting stuck. With more than one walkthrough I would surely continue with this game.
Rating: 3

If I ever found the solution to my puzzle on level 9 I might very well continue I just don´t think that will happen.

Recommended links
Walkthrough to level 7
Complete walkthrough translated from german
[Added 2012-07-07] Complete walkthrough with maps. Translate to english.

[Updated 22 october]
I actually managed to solve the puzzle by looking for the original german walkthrough and do a retranslate of it. Now I am down two levels further at level 11 but am stuck again trying to defeat the evil sorceress Elitia which seems invulnerable to all my weapons and spells. After possibly having inflicted over 5.000 points of damage on her I fear she is regenerating herself every 20 seconds or so.

Crystal Dragon - Almost half through the game

Just when I thought I would dry out of thirst I found a small stream of water streaming out of a wall that helped me tremendously and gave me much needed strength to both fill my waterskins and move on in the game.

A small pouring stream of water

Door like these requires special keys which you almost always have to look for on each level to continue further.

door entrance to level 6 with a dead rat in front

At level 7 it was time to be introduced to yet another evil beast. Some sort of hell hounds attacks me. They are extremely fast and manages to get around the double or triple amount of attacks for each one I can deliver. My only protection against them is to hurl magic missiles at them since they are pretty weak but like pirayas will eat you whole if you are not fast enough.

New spells and quite ample amount of food has kept the spirit going for my heroes. The puzzles continues but so do we. I get stuck every 10 minutes but somehow I manage to continue. There are no maps to be found anywhere on internet and my only help is a poor translation from german to help me out when stuck.

Teleporters could appear after pressing a button

Some doors could be bashed open

There is supposedly around 21 levels or so of this game and I am right now at level 9. The guards have been replaced by skeleton guards that are much tougher to defeat since spells that affects the mind like confusion doesn´t work anymore.

I have only two save slots to alter between

While going down to level 9 I was ambushed by a beholder that quite fast killed off my Paladin. It seems the beholder cast´s the confusion spell that makes my orientation impossible.

Probably the best looking monster so far

My tactics to kill the beholders is to be the first of us who casts confusion. Then I run up in melee against him, making one or two party swings and then cast confusion again and repeat the procedure. It works best when the beholder is cornered otherwise it might try to get away when confused and it is very fast so it is hard to pin it down. If there are several beholders you have to lure them away to be able to defeat them one at a time.
There is still no NPC:s or other texts that tells more about the history of this place. I have found a couple of scrolls which my cleric is unable to read, despite casting Read Runes. I think my wisdom is too low and fear there are important clues in those scrolls.

Mana regeneration is quite quick and there are no problems to find peaceful places to rest in. In that respect there is a good balance in the game. Food is also becoming more abundant due to the fact that there are a lot of rats running around and those could be eaten after you have throwed them to the wall a few times. You have to be careful though, since some of them could get you diseased.

I recently found out you can attack with two weapons at once. I threw off my shield for the Paladin and now equip a short sword + 2 in my left hand. It works very well.

A very useful hint from the game is this. When pausing the game you have some runes on the screen.  Clicking them reveals hints about the current levels like "Some pits are illusions" or "There is a mighty sword in the south". You really, really need them.

Another recommendation to potential players. The spell True Sight reveals illusion walls. That is if the player with the spell cast is the active player then the walls just dissappear. The problem is that you won´t see any difference to ordinary walls so you will never actually know if you see through illusionary walls or not. Since they often hide hidden buttons or useful items it is very important to be aware of where on the map those walls exists. To solve this problem, I always explore the full map first. Then switch on True Sight and change player to go around finding mismatches in the walls.

I am very eager to start with Dungeon Master 2 but feel I have not the time to play both games at once. Too bad it takes around 2 hours to complete each single dungeon level. I will continue on however.