I had to start over with The Ormus Saga II because I had been relying on save states rather than saving my character to the disk, and I accidentally overwrote all the save state slots trying to get Ring of Elanor to work. There's no particular reason to use save states for Ormus, as you can save from anywhere and saving and reloading both seem to work okay. But I have a long track record of C64 games, particularly those on tape, for which I can never get saving to work, and adopted the convention a long time ago of hitting ALT-S frequently as I play. That very muscle memory got me in trouble here.
It wasn't so bad, though, because ever since I learned that every town, keep, and dungeon has exactly eight treasures, and that the character gets an experience bonus after finding the eighth, I felt the need to start tracking how many I found. Unfortunately, I've rarely been able to get to eight. Ormus's locations often have areas blocked by locked doors, magically-locked doors, force fields, water, mountains, other pieces of furniture, and lava, each of which requires a different item or spell to bypass, none of which the starting character has. Many of the treasures are on the other sides of those obstacles.
 |
| Something needs to get me either past that chair or through that wall. |
The joystick-only interface is so annoying that I was frankly considering bailing on the game, but I forced myself to slow down and keep notes. This is a paradox that I've repeatedly discovered while writing this blog: If I find myself impatient with a game, sometimes the solution is not to play faster, but to slow down and document everything. In a first-person game, this often means making maps, if I'm not already making them. For this kind of game, it means creating the sort of workbook that I've used for many Ultima clones, with tabs for locations, NPCs, equipment, monsters, and open tasks. (I'm keeping it in Google Sheets, so you're welcome to take a look.) Either way, completing the documentation becomes a goal in itself and increases my enjoyment even as it increases the amount of time I'm destined to spend on the game.
