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Fantasy Scenario Reviews

SYNOPSIS: This innovative and original scenario offers a rich atmosphere and storyline. However, it is likely to be frustrating even for fans of the book and anime on which it is based. Flaws in the design make winning with the main civilization dependent on luck before your first turn even begins (be prepared to restart often!). For the other 'playable' civilizations, important victory conditions are impossible to achieve. With revision, this could be a short but fun scenario; and there are enough new units and nifty innovations (slain heroes become prisoners and can be rescued!) to suggest that Part 2 could be truly great.

MAP: 150 x 100

LENGTH: 80 Turns

NEAT IDEAS: Slain heroes become prisoners and can be rescued. Concept of HTML documentation and scoring is excellent.

Playability Rating

4 / 10

COMMENTS: The strongest asset of "Mysterious Cities of Gold" is its wealth of atmosphere, drawn from a 1983 Franco-Japanese animated TV series of the same name. The introductory text and the colorful graphics of the cities and units (especially the unique heroes) quickly convey the flavor of the adventure. Different civilizations have different units and technologies, from the cannon of the Spanish to the mysterious science of the Olmecs. I began the scenario with high hopes.

My initial interest was quickly replaced by frustration caused by serious (but easily remedied) flaws in the game balance and design. When I played the main civilization (Friends of Esteban), my fate was largely decided by luck before my first turn ever began. In the initial Olmec attack, my strongest unit, Mendoza, was killed outright almost a third of the time, or else left so damaged as to be useless. As Mendoza is crucial to all but one of the objectives, I found myself restarting over and over again, trying to get a playable first turn. Once I cheated and increased Mendoza's defense from 5 to 6, the scenario was more fun.

The author has gone to some effort to describe victory conditions for other 'playable' civilizations. For example, the Olmecs and Spanish are supposed to ransack the City of Gold, and the Mayans and the Friends of Esteban must protect it. However, it is impossible for the first two civs to approach the city, making it no challenge at all for the other two to protect it. The gate to the City of Gold can only be attacked by an air-to-air unit, and Esteban is the only such unit in the game. The idea is that Esteban has a medallion which opens the gate. A good way to make it possible for the Olmecs or Spanish to enter the City of Gold would have been to use an event triggered by Esteban's death (or capture) to make a separate Medallion unit, with the air-to-air attribute, belonging to the attacking civilization. Bringing this medallion to the gate of the City of Gold would allow that civilization to win, and attemptimg to stop them would thus be meaningful for the others!

Another way to increase the playability of the other civs in the scenario would be to allow development of science. As it stands, only the Olmec have scientific progress, often event-driven - taking captives brings them closer to being able to build new units and conquer the world. This is clever, but the herald screen that announces their advances came up blank when I played Esteban against them, so there was no sense of approaching doom (only confusion). When playing the Mayans or the Spanish, you can build all the units and improvements available to you at the start, and can research only Future Technology. It would be more fun if, as the Mayans, you had to play defensively until you developed the tech to build better offensive units. And it would make sense for the invading Spaniards to have a few elite units (such as cannon) brought with you from overseas, but only be able to build weak new ones until your local cities slowly develop trained craftsmen. The Spaniards would then be forced to strike quickly with their elite units to capture native cities and slow the advancement of the Mayan resistance. As it stands, the situation is static, and the Mayan tribes do not offer any threat to the Spanish.

Level of General Care

6 / 10

COMMENTS: The author provides superb HTML documentation as part of the .zip package. This includes instructions on how to play, a description of the game concepts, a custom scoring system adapted to each civilization's objectives, and a glossary of terms from the anime series (if you read French). Links to web pages maintained by other fans of the series are provided if you want to learn more. The in-game documentation is not nearly as impressive; for example, most units do not appear in the civilopedia.

The map strikes me as poorly designed. In a quest scenario lacking many of the usual pleasures of the game, such as diplomacy and empire building, the thrill of exploration and the solving of puzzles should be paramount. However, there is not much exploration to be done. The stronghold of the Olmecs is almost entirely revealed at the start, while the other objective (the City of Gold) is hidden but virtually next door, leaving most of the map devoid of interest! Making the City of Gold harder to find would add appeal, as would hiding the Olmec mountain fortress and expanding it to be more maze-like (and more dangerous to be inside).

The puzzles could also be more sophisticated. For whatever reason, setting the submarine flag on the traps failed to hide their shield, making it easy to avoid setting them off. And when I did choose to trigger the trap, I found it made sense to entirely ignore the unit that was created - since it was an air unit, it would not conquer any cities, and none of my units could attack it except Esteban, who was too weak! Entering the stronghold is also too easy. Having units who ignore ZOC be able to slip past the gates is a nice idea; but since it is also relatively easy to destroy the gates directly, there's no point in being stealthy.

There are a few other areas that could use more care. On the first turn, three or four city-capture windows pop up, devoid of text, for no apparent reason; and the English in events.txt would benefit from editing.

Art and Originality

8 / 10

ARTWORK: The artwork is consistently excellent. There are many new unit graphics, apparently taken from the anime, from dashing Spaniards to cringing Olmec servitors. The author has taken good advantage of the .gif files to create impassable 'cliffs' (ocean squares with well-designed coastlines for the cliff faces) and two beautiful Olmec city appearances at different sizes.

ORIGINALITY: The most innovative concept in the scenario is that some units can be 'captured' by the Olmecs; a prisoner unit appears in their fortress when the original is killed. Rescuing this prisoner re-creates the original unit, which makes for a nice quest element.

And, overall, too few scenarios are written that feature this kind of heroic adventure. If you are a fan of Blackclove's classic Dungeon, or of Franco-Japanese animation, or just enjoy something different - you should by all means encourage Mr. Baire to fix the problems with Part 1 of his series, and encourage him to come out with Part 2 as soon as possible!