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I came really close to finishing U5 without any outside help whatsoever, but I didn't even realize there was a harp puzzle. :/
by danielweber 12y ago
I came really close to finishing U5 without any outside help whatsoever, but I didn't even realize there was a harp puzzle. :/
- djur 12y agoThe 'bad ending' to U5 is probably the cruelest in video game history, considering how hard Dungeon Doom is, and how you have exactly one chance to learn about the very existence of the sandalwood box from a single character that you're not supposed to trust and who will only talk to you if you tell them a password you get by doing something extremely unvirtuous... I'm pretty sure that you were intended to get through the entire game without finding the sandalwood box, get the bad ending, and go back and replay the whole thing the right way. That's how you got value for your dollar in those days. The sandalwood box in U5 is right up there in the pantheon of obscure paths to victory in games, along with the numerous unwinnable states in King's Quest V (eating the pie, not saving the mouse) and the legendary Grandmaster Ending in Wizardry IV (itself arguably the hardest RPG in gaming history).
- danielweber 12y agoAt least in U5, if you clear a dungeon room it stays cleared, so the next time through Dungeon Doom is lot easier. U4 really kicked us in the crotch, though, with its "INFINITY" riddle ending. There was only an extremely vague way of figuring it out: each time you would get an eighth, a runic letter would be put on the screen. But reading runes wasn't really required for U4, so at the time I didn't even recognize them as runes. Entirely by coincidence, I had a card where I had all the virtues listed horizontally, and I manually drew the "weird symbols" I saw at the bottom. When you play U5 you get good enough to read runes by heart, and I glanced at that card once and immediately saw the answer leaping out at me.