DAGGERFALL (Elder Scrolls 2) - Bethesda Softworks
                        (RPG on CD)

                  A review by Brian Burke

I caught Daggerfallitis after paying Arena throughout the summer.
I confess that I initially agreed with James and Alex that, whilst
it's a huge game, that it's repetitive.  Nonetheless once I
started achieving promotions and moving up the Levels I was
hooked, and despite my initial judgement I completed the game,
including all but one Artifact quest, after around 5 months,
say..100+ hours of gameplay. With glee I surveyed my Level 24
character and read previews of The Elder Scrolls thinking of how
I'd `kick ass' with my beefy stats in Daggerfall.

Well think again, if you've an Arena final game save send it to
the Recycle Bin, it ain't any good to you in Daggerfall! You can
see why when you read the manual. This is a must read.  For the
independent amongst you the time spent reading about how to create
your own character is time well spent.  Even if you select a
default character from the extensive list it's still worth
learning about the many different attributes. This is an RPG
worthy of the name. Easily as complex as the `Realms of Arkania'
series, if not more so, it's splendidly detailed.

You can go absolutely bananas with statistical recording. For
example our playing group, three fanatics, have Excel charts
showing each of our character stats at each level progression, the
spell casting cost per spell (which varies for each character),
the skills that each Temple or Guild teach, who teaches them and
where, which town, they may be found. Our anoraks are laundered
fresh and clean! Seriously it's useful stuff and fun to create and
discuss. We haven't drilled down to the "which shop is
cheapest/best/most expensive" yet. But there's time!

OK - so you spend at least an hour familiarising yourself with the
character options, THIS IS IMPORTANT, and you're ready to install.
The size of your free Hard Disk space is now of great interest.
The full install eats up 450Mb, erm..that's not a misprint, Four
Hundred and Fifty Megabytes. There are three smaller installs of
about 50, 100 and 208Mb, greater use of the CD, which must be
present in your disk drive, is employed at the lower install
levels.  Another few minutes later you're ready to roll. Game
installed, character created. Points allocated. Oh - best to play
from DOS, although I do have a friend who swears by the WIN95
method.

After a piece of acceptable FMV footage you arrive in the opening
Dungeon. There's a mini walkthrough for the initial dungeon
included in the game box for the wimps and novices, otherwise it's
onwards and upwards for the rest.  Spend a moment equipping your
character and invoke the tutorial. If nothing else this prompts
you to familiarise yourself with the game controls. This you
should do before exiting the first room. Insert and delete keys
allow you to look up and down etc.  It's all in the manual. I
further created a list of keyboard short-cuts until I used `em so
often I've learnt them.

The action takes place on a full screen display, very refreshing
after playing some other games recently. F10 toggles a Control
Panel on/off although there are keyboard routes to all. I must say
I find it annoying not having an on-screen spell-action icon in
view when fighting as in say, Anvil of Dawn. So far, this is my
only real gripe apart from memory crashes when an awful lot is
going on onscreen.

The game must be played in a two handed mode. One hand for
movement via the arrow keys, the second lingering over the
keyboard, the third on the mouse - whoops, one hand too many
there!  The manual says you can customise keys and achieve
movement via the mouse. I prefer to leave things as the manual
describes them for obvious reasons. Once a menu is invoked the
action stops as you need to use the mouse to select the require
option.

Spells can be cast by double clicking from the spell list. This
displays the number of points each costs to cast. These are much
more expensive in use of spell points than Arena.  Indeed I'm not
sure I'll ever be able to cast some of them at all.  Time will
tell.  Bottom line here is that if you want to major in spell
casting you need to select the appropriate default character or
assign this as an advantage when creating a customised character.

As in Arena fighting is a case of holding down the right mouse
button and moving the mouse, across, up & down or horizontally.
Each direction governs how effective your strike rate is.

Picking items up off the floor or from defeated foes involves
first looking down (delete key), centering the screen manually or
via the spacebar, and clicking the cursor on the loot. This brings
up an Inventory screen where, unless you do want to directly
`Equip' what you find, you select `Remove' to transfer things to
your Inventory. This is arranged in four categories - Weapons &
Armour, Magic Items, Clothing & Miscellaneous, and finally
Ingredients. You're told the weight and characteristics of each
item when using the `Info' mode.  A nice touch that overcomes the
problems encountered in Inventory management in Arena, is that you
are permitted to buy a Wagon to hold all your gear. If you're a
horder this is terrific. You can keep piling up the treasure
without exiting a Dungeon. In Arena you had to go back to town to
sell all your stuff. Then, when you returned, all the monsters,
and treasures, had regenerated! This is still true of Daggerfall
if you do exit the Dungeon, but with the Wagon option, you don't
need to.

Dialogue is a key element to the game. There are three methods of
addressing people.  Politely (which affects your `Etiquette'
skills), Normal, or Bluntly (affects your `Streetwise' skill.
Overuse of the `Blunt' option could have a negative effect on your
reputation.  You can transfer the last remark a character has made
to a permanent log file. This is in addition to the major items
affecting the overall game quest.  So suppose you've asked for
`Work' and the guy says `Meet Sid at Joe's Cafe', you can transfer
it to this file.  Major towns have Guilds, you can join as many as
you like (but not with the 1.04.191 patch disk you can't). The
advantage is that you then can take quests, which when
successfully completed enhance your reputation and provide access
to vital stuff like buying and mixing Potions, buying and selling
Magic Items, making Magic Items, and, most important, summoning
Daedra to obtain those desirable Artifact quests. Also you can
train, at a cost which rises by 100 gold per level increase, to
develop those skills that you don't enhance during normal baddie
bashing.

There are also many shops & taverns. Pawnbrokers, Alchemists,
Armourers, Bookshops and General Stores. The quality of each
varies. You see this as you enter each one.  You can mark your
preferred shops on the map. Some are best to sell at, and others
better to buy from.

There are game bugs that aren't bugs. Uh! Well, memory drop outs
are one thing where the game sometimes hangs.  One of the bugs
(that aren't) I've come across is that you can Levitate outside a
building or through the edges of walls/ceilings. This puts you
outside the game world and if your spell runs out - the game
hangs, or rather you're stuck in the Black Void, and it's reboot
time. If you've cast an `Anchor' from the Recall spell then you
can Teleport back in again. Some folks use `The Void' to search
dungeons from the outside. Personally I don't like it much. One
man's meat....etc.

A game feature that a friend has experienced is Lycanthropy.  Yes
you get hit by a Werewolf which turns YOU into one (this may be a
Wereboar rather than a Werewolf but the outcome is the same),
forcing you to kill innocent people. Failure to satisfy your
newfound lust for blood means you lose all but 4 of your lifepoints
- aaargh. So you must find the werewolf hunter and carry out his
quest in order to restore your character. The problem is that
earlier game releases (1.02.175) crash at the point of acceptance.
The bug fix build level is now at 1.04.191.  I've only just
obtained this (2nd Dec) off the Bethsada site and it seems OK so
far.  Personally I just chicken out and restore an earlier game!
There's yet a further problem if you catch Vampirism but I don't
know anyone personally whose experienced this yet.

Playing from WIN95 and disabling reference to Windows gives you a
much quicker Save Game load time. I found that once I'd started
playing from DOS though, and then converted back to WIN95, that
all the place names disappeared. You can replace them easily
enough though by talking to the local populace.

Those looking for puzzles should look elsewhere, although it has
plenty of `pull lever, turn wheel' to move doors, open trapdoor
instances.  An adventure it's not. But as an RPG it's got
everything you could ask for. Movement is fluid as per Ultima
Underworld and Doom. You can create your own Potions and Spells.
There are thousands of NPCs to talk to and places to visit. You
can ride your horse, sit in your wagon or run like Linford
Christie. You can buy a house and a ship.  There are many
different climatic conditions and geographical terrains to enjoy.
The dogs bark, the cows moo etc, etc. It makes Stonekeep look like
an Arcade game. I could (and probably have) waffle on for ages
about the game......  In brief - it's big, very big, it's
character complex, it's frustrating, it'll take ages and ages to
explore and complete....what are you waiting for?...buy it (making
sure that Virgin supply the latest patch disk) and marvel.

@~The patch disk is in the library on Disk 1097 for œ1.00.

                              - o -