The Franco-Taiwanese Alliance

It’s a good thing I figured out how to use the “more” function in WordPress, or every single danged one of you would be forced to read through my adventures as Sareth, apprentice of Phenrig, on my journey to recover ancient artifacts and uncover my destiny.  Oh, and those of you who haven’t played the game would be exposed to SPOILERS, TERRIBLE SPOILERS!!!  AGGHGHGHRRRGHLE–Click here if you want to keep reading!

I reinstalled and restarted the game last night, since when I reformatted Pyrrhic’s main hard drive for the upgrade, I didn’t back up my saved games.  The upside is that it seems I’ve improved at negotiating the fighting system, although my main techniques are still throwing barrels and kicking people off ledges.  Hacking my way through Menelag’s manor was pretty much cake, and unlike the first time I went through the segment, chasing that gorramned ghoul across the rooftops did not lead to me wanting to punch the computer in the face.

I snuck my way into Arantir’s hideout, having a lovely time sniping guards with flaming arrows to the head all the way, and had a pretty uneventful run through the caves.  The only thing that tripped me up was the damned creepy spiders.  Ugh!  I also found a couple of secret areas that I hadn’t seen the first time through, as well as the not-so-secret forge, where I made a longsword.  I didn’t know smithery was so easy!  Said longsword hacked off limbs and heads as I crashed Arantir’s party, released his prisoners, stole the crystal, and ran off to the loving arms of…

…the sewer, and a cutscene.  Is it just me, or is Phenrig the most blatantly evil character ever?  Instead of his wizard outfit, he should just wear a barrel, with the letters E V I L painted on the front.  I guess that would count as not being cloth or leather armor though, and give him a penalty to his spellcasting rolls.

I slogged through Menelag’s ship, where I’d stopped playing before Pyrrhic got sick, with very few problems.  One thing I encountered was an interesting bug… there’s a room in which I entered on the bottom floor, and a ladder lead up to a catwalk where two soldiers were standing.  They started coming down the ladder, one by one.  Before, I knocked them each off the ladder and stabbed them in their faces, one, two, easy peasy.  This time… I batted the first one down and gave him a taste of cold pwnage, but when I knocked the second one off the ladder, he vanished through the floor of the ship, never to be seen again.  Worse yet, he was the one holding the key to the next room!  Several frustrating reloads later, I charged up the ladder and gave the two soldiers a kicking like they’d never had before, and took the key, triumphant.  The ensuing battle with two necromancers went much better than it had the last time, proving again that I’m improving!  The only other things of note were my accidentally knocking a crate onto one of my goblin allies in the ship’s brig, causing the whole bunch to turn on me in a flurry of spitting and clubbing, and my battle against the Blackguards on the docks, using nothing but my shield and my boot to kick every last soldier into the bay.

Then, after several scenes’ worth of noting that I could easily look up Leanna’s skirt, we arrived at the orc-overrun island temple.  Note to self: don’t be too effective at sneaking past bad guys, or they’ll just charge past you and attack the chick you’re supposed to be protecting.  Note to self 2: orcs will pick you up with one hand and throw you twenty feet away, just because they feel like it.  Note to self 3: you can see up Leanna’s skirt if you crouch.  I figured it was time to call it quits after slashing my way through a million orcs and entering the caves underneath the spider temple, where there are undoubtedly hundreds of creepy giant spiders, so that’s all for tonight!