Menzoberranzanothanks

I only caught Strategic Simulations during its years of decline in the late '90s. In the early '90s my attention was mostly captured by my Sega Genesis, with few PC forays into Prince of Persia, The Oregon Trail, Doom, Dune (yes, the original and not the sequel) or later on MW2: Mercs, C&C: RA or Warcraft 2. So SSI's repertoire of D&D games was not, strictly speaking, before my time, but it would also have counted beneath my twelve-year-old self's contempt. I, good sirs, was a super-soldier or generalissimo, not some frou-frou "adventurer" in Errol Flynn tights. Quite.

 

Nevertheless, after my drowid playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, I fancied a stroll through drow-ville, and Menzoberranzan has already sat unplayed in my collection for eight years now. So let's roll up a couple of standard iterations of me and my shadow, with somewhat inflated stats to make this less painful.

Let us boldly go. Queue up a couple of walkthroughs in case I get lost: brief and detailed versions.

 

1) Aaarrgh! Oh sweet holy hell, this character creation intro's painfully bad! The state-of-the-art 3FPS polygon transformations, ye merrie olde 1990s English, the delays before every action so you can marvel at pixels in motion!

 

2) I really, really hope this thing's turn-based, 'cause if this turns into a repeat of Arena, it's gonna be a very shallow dive from me. Oh shit it's not, it's not turn based, horrendous '90s real-time twitchiness incoming!

 

3) Alright, alright, after some fumbling I finally managed to cast armor on myself and click to death a bunch of blobby spastic brown things that might've been either drow swordselves or the cast of Stomp. I've got three hit points left and finally realized I need to put my bracers and ring onto my paper doll even though it lacks slots, and more painstakingly discovered I need to place buckets in my characters' hands to activate them like weapons... and the town is saved! I DID A THING! Guess I need a fighter so I'll recruit Baldassar L. Jackson.

 

4) Aaah, bugbears! Honestly, this wouldn't be nearly as bad in higher resolution. I had a devil of a time finding the well just because it didn't look like anything in particular until you're on top of it, and even inventory items are hard to discern. Moreover, nobody back then knew how to design a game interface. Not only do all interactions take an extra click, but it's confusingly unresponsive. I didn't even realize my character had died until I looked down a fight later. *Sigh* reload.

 

5) I've played plenty of games with bad pathing, but it's been decades since I've played one with zero pathing. Getting a mob stuck behind any object lets you just kill it effortlessly, since shortswords apparently have three-meter reach. I'm gradually learning the fine art of spamming-clicks-then-backing-a-step-away. I try to talk to a gnoll but it attacks anyway, same with a bugbear... so what was the point of that? Find the wounded drow. More gnolls. More bugbears. Random magic scrolls lying in random spots on the ground. Graphics and interface aside, this actually plays remarkably like grindy "action RPG" dross from 10-15yrs later. Took a loooong time for cRPGs to outgrow Gauntlet, didn't it? On the other hand it already featured some mainstays like combat music, the map is quite useful for its day, and my elf had a race-specific dialogue with the drow. Talk to Mr. Wizard aaand apparently the whole campaign's gonna be about Drizzt. Just flippin' wonderful.

 

6) Oh hey I can scribe my scroll collection. Gave Shadow a bow but the clunky lack of inventory automation (arrows don't get automatically re-added to her quiver when I pick them off the ground) makes an otherwise good resource-conscious system a chore. More gnolls... and more gnolls... and even more gnolls... and now verbeeg damage sponges. I'm just getting one-shotted at random intervals and sick of reloading, but damnit, I paid a whole dollar for this entertainment product and I'll at least make it to the Underdark even if it kills me (a hundred more times than it already has.) Hilariously though, even one of my own Stinking Clouds counts as an obstacle completely freezing enemy movement.

7) Drizzt's hideout: pixel-hunting for random beige buttons on random beige walls. Blech... but at least they're relatively easy to see compared to some contemporary examples. (Also, how many damn cooking pots does this guy need?) Apparently I can just rest infinitely like in the NWN games, so I just start spamming fireballs. Leucrotta caves: giant stinkin' pile of dead ends. Also apparently exactly one of each monster type is going to talk to me, for the sole purpose of telling me it'll kill me, including the giant cat-monster thing with hooves. Sure, why the hell not. Also, the automap is detailed for its time, except for one crucial detail: not marking zone transitions!

 

8) Alright, got all four macguffins. Nuke verbeeg, rest, nuke verbeeg, rest, nuke verbeeg, rest, nuk- ah, shit, it's Drizzt, and his cheesy Harlequin Romance origin story... which he'll apparently start spinning to any passer-by who'll sit still long enough to get ear-fucked.  Am I supposed to take this idiot along? I suppose for another chapter or two until I hit the Underdark, I can suffer him. I must admit though that despite the horrendous intro and generally sparse plot, the little writing I do see in this game is actually less annoying than some later cRPGs, which strained too hard at comic relief (e.g. NWN:SOU) or really ladled on the thees and thous (e.g. V:tM-Redemption) etc. Anyway, Mr. Wizard gives me my field trip passes and offers me the scrolls he has lying around... like I wasn't supposed to have already robbed him blind? What kind of n00b crusading hero do you take me for?!

 

9) Check the walkthrough because I have no freakin' clue where to go next, and the next zone is full of goddamn bats. Of course. No cRPG would be complete without. And the Random Ground Scroll Fairy's been busy here too. Also, I've been collecting trash loot all this time but have not run across a single merchant, and just now I realize I don't see any kind of currency. Soooo... yeah? No? No buying or selling whatsoever. A short dive down a mine cart later, I've finally reached the... not the Underdark, just the descent into same, which is yet another nonsensical maze of dead ends filled with swarms of trash mobs, in this case some kind of little demon pigs. Osquips. Yes, fine, whatever, sure, fascinating. Not like they do anything different from bugbears or gnolls or verbeeg or leucrottas or bats or cats or slats (I dare you to prove that's not a D&D monster) except for having different sprites.

Okay, I think we're done here. I apparently leveled a couple of times, not that it mattered. Let's call that "close enough" and say I've gotten my one dollah's worth of sucky-sucky.

 

Conclusions?

To be fair, not as sucky as it could've been. Pretty standard early-'90s point-and-click routine, with the added bonus that your characters have stats and they exposit a few sentences here and there. The monotonous maps and scarce decorations were just standard for the time (and would be reiterated ten years later when the Aurora Engine strained for three-dimensionality at the expense of detail) as were the target practice mobs with no special abilities and random placement in bland mazes. In '94 you were still supposed to revel in the act of playing something electronic in an electronic fashion, in being on the cutting edge of entertainment, in the sheer thrill of *clicking* itself. The simple fact that arrows landed on the ground to be picked up for further use and a quiver went on my character's shoulder would've blown my mind back then.