MYSTERIOUS SONG Reviewed by Graham Raven Mysterious Song is a Japanese 'look-alike' style RPG created in QB4.5 by DarkDread. It is not a state of the art game, but it never pretends to be so. I set out disliking the game initially for several reasons. It is a Japanese style RPG for a start and does have a slightly foreign look to it (to my eye anyway; didn't get this sort of thing in the days of the empire you know!). Also as a QB game there was always a possibility that it would look a tad unpolished and unfashionable on screen, and so it does. However, it's an easy game to get into, even if like me, you rarely look at the instructions. Mysterious Song isn't going to tax your brain power, I made several levels advancement in an odd half hours play and not a single puzzle rose up before me. Occasionally I thought "Oh, I should have made a note of that really", and yet I carried on regardless and nothing untoward ever happened. 'Following your nose' perhaps isn't the ideal way to make progress, but it seemed fairly effective in this game. Some people will see this lack of puzzles as a minus, and for some it will be a plus! Whatever my initial feelings, I soon found myself becoming drawn into the game, forgetting the slightly tacky graphics and as becomes an avid RPG man, I lay awake at night pondering just how best to tackle the next objective. I must say that I liked the tunnels. Tunnels are supposed to be dim and dank, and these were just that. I also liked the dragons, not for their appearance, but for their awesomeness. Dragons are supposed to be 'dead hard' after all, and these were very much so, casting fire spells of the order of 800 - 1000 hit points of damage to your comparatively frail 200 point characters. As it says in the general notes, even a level 50 party can be wiped out by a dragon if they are unlucky, and there is an element of luck involved every time you do battle with a dragon. If you're unlucky, you're dead, no matter how powerful your characters are. As I've already said, the graphics could well do with an upgrade, but they work perfectly well, and the storyline is far from the worst I've come across in an RPG, even if I'd swear that I've come across snippets of it previously in other games (can't think just where offhand!). Conversations with NPCs is always a bug bear of mine and once again, too many chats were merely mindless repetition. I'd score both the characterisation and conversations about average. Advice. Before venturing out for the first time, go talk to the king. He will give you enough gold to buy a weapon and some herbs from the store. (herbs restore hit points!) Enemies will be tough to defeat at first, but you will find that you will advance pretty quickly. Until you are a level 3 or 4, stay close to the castle and fight enemies to gain strength. After that make a dash for the next village and team up with Tiger - two swords are always better than one! When you finally reach a level of ability where you can take on dragons and win, you'll have a source of rapid advancement - a dragon is worth 999 experience points and an equal amount of gold! For Mysterious Song to run, you don't need more than a 386. Having said that, the author recommends a 486 in order to get the game to run at a playable speed, and ideally a Pentium running at 100 MHz or faster. Playing for around half an hour to an hour per day, the game will take you about a week to finish. This game is free for download including the source code from - darkdread@hotmail.com http://welcome.to/DarknessEthereal I have just one small criticism finally. You can soon get bored killing dragons over and over again, but at virtually a thousand points per kill, you've just got to keep doing this until you feel your able to take on the final big guy! Keep trying by all means, but you'll probably need to be level 50 before you can finally get the better of him. By that time you'll have explored everywhere, talked to everyone and have virtually enough gold to pave the streets almost. Ie the run up to the final climax of the game drags a little. Sure you'll get there in the end if you stick at it, but I feel that you've probably done all the fun stuff long before you get to this point. Nice ending though, should you eventually defeat the Grim one! Rating: Considering it's a short game - Faintly Biscuit! (and Chocolate at that!) - o -