Yendorian Tales Book I: Chapter 2 is a role-playing video game written for MS-DOS in 1996.
It is a significant departure from Yendorian Tales Book I in terms of gameplay. It abandons the overhead view of its predecessor in favor of a first-person one, and plays very similar to Might and Magic IV & V, having a focus on combat and puzzles; dialogue is generally kept to a minimum and the plot is almost entirely linear.
The player generates a party of four human characters (no other races are available), assigning each to one of nine available Fantasy Character Classes and using random rolls to determine their stats. The game areas consist of flat tiles and movement is only possible in the four cardinal directions. The game makes heavy use of several movement spells, such as Jump Over, which allows your party to "jump" over a tile of water or a dangerous object such a slime pool, etc. Transportation in the form of flying creatures such as Pegasi is also available, and can take you to any previously-explored square within range (based on your Navigation skill). Making good use of these abilities is necessary for solving some puzzles. Other puzzles take the form of riddles, deciphering coded messages, asking the right people for help, inventory management, and similar. There is a day/night cycle, and the player needs to use light sources to be able to see in dark places.
Enemies and objects are represented using sprites (enemy sprites are animated). Rather unusually, friendly non-player characters do not have sprites and are represented by tables and beds, and they cannot be distinguished from normal furniture until you interact with them. The player can open doors, chests, barrels and other containers, which may be locked and/or trapped. Combat is turn-based and includes melee and ranged weapons and spells. Many enemies are resistant or immune to certain types of attack, which the player can learn mostly through trial-and-error.
Sound consists of simple effects for weapon attacks, spells and some object interactions (such as opening doors) as well as an impressive repertoire of tunes — each environment (e.g. dungeon, outdoors, mine) has a couple of related tunes, and each major town has a distinct theme.
In terms of plot, the game picks up a few months after the end of the first game. You have thwarted Paltivar, the evil wizard that threatened the land of Yendor, but due to an ancient agreement among the Society of Wizards, he could not legally be killed. Therefore, they banished him into a single instant of time itself. Your party are now honored guests of the governor of Port Hope, a town on the southeast peninsula of Yendor. One night you sleep and dream of your recent adventure, but are suddenly awakened by one of the governor's men. He has need of your assistance immediately. Little do you know that this seemingly insignificant quest will lead you on an epic chase across the mysterious Lost Isles of Yendor. You will follow the trail of a trio of evil mages who, having been contacted by a mysterious voice while travelling through magical portals, are planning to use a huge quantity of seemingly-useless used quartz to summon a powerful being into this world.
And so the story continues...
A sequel using the same game engine, Yendorian Tales: The Tyrants of Thaine was published in 1997.
This Video Game contains examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Port Hope has an enormous sewer system that's twice the size of the town itself! It even contains a training facility and supply shop.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The game introduces three new races: Gnomes, Elves, and Halflings. Their most prominent differences from humans are their skin colors — orange, green, and greyish-green, respectively.
- And the Adventure Continues: That's how the game ends.
- An Economy Is You: Practically all the shops seem to cater only to your needs. Even the jewelry shop only buys your items; it doesn't sell anything to you.
- Artificial Stupidity: Enemies are often too dumb to walk around a simple tile of water in order to reach you. This allows you to shoot any non-flying and non-ranged enemies to death while they just stand there stupidly.
- Bag of Holding: Downplayed. While each character has a limited amount of weight they can carry, there are also six extra, shared equipment slots, and any items put there do not count towards anyone's weight.
- Bag of Sharing: Also downplayed — each character has his/her own inventory, but you also get six extra slots that are available to anyone.
- Bag of Spilling: Although your party is supposedly the same one that completed Chapter 1, they all begin the game at Level 1 and just a few pieces of cheap equipment.
- Bandit Mook: Thieves can sometimes steal a bit of your gold instead of making a normal attack.
- Beef Gate: The game often blocks you from going places out of sequence by putting very tough monsters in the way — for example the Carnivorous Spiders in the 2nd level of the Port Hope sewers are far too tough to beat until you've spent some time levelling up by killing the monsters outside the town.
- Character Level: The game uses a mostly standard level-up system. Gaining a level will increase all the character's stats, make new spells available (some are gained automatically, others have to be learned from scrolls), and also give the character a number of "bonus" stat points (dependent on their Charisma) that the player can distribute as they see fit.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: The "Thin Skin" spell lowers the target's Absorption value, making it more susceptible to damage.
- Dump Stat: Most classes get no use out of certain stats. For example, Fighters have no use for Intelligence or Wisdom. Howver, there is one exception: somewhere in the game, there is a "challenge hut" for each stat. These allow each of your characters to win a certain amount of money if they have enough points in the relevant stat.
- Dungeon Town: Most towns seem completely infested by monsters, and some of these even have normally functioning shops despite, say, being overrun by giant insects. Sometimes it is justified - e.g. one town has been taken over by hostile mercenaries, but at other times no explanation is given.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: There are nine character classes. The four basic archetypes are: Fighter, Rogue, Mage and Cleric. The remaining classes are a combination of those: Druids are 75% Mage, 25% Cleric; Alchemists are 75% Cleric, 25% Mage; Paladins are half-Fighter half-Cleric; Rangers are half-Fighter, half-Mage; Merchants are half-Fighter, half-Rogue.
- First Town: Port Hope, the town you begin the game in. And yes, you'll be returning there every so often throughout the game.
- Flat World: The inhabitants of the game world once believed this, as their land was surrounded by an impenetrable mist — it was believed that attempting to sail through it meant falling off the world's edge.
- Get on the Boat: Played straight. The game mostly involves clearing out an area, doing all available quests, and then moving on. There are several "hubs" (Yendor, the isles of the Gnomes, Elves, and Halflings, respectively, and finally Thaine), and you move between them by using teleportation (portals and magical keys) or, in one case, by ship. You occasionally do have to backtrack to a previous "hub" to complete a quest, however.
- Healing Potion: Three types: Black Potions restore 25% of your HP, Grey Potions 50%, and White Potions 100%.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Resting four hours and consuming one unit of food per character will fully heal your party. Food can also be eaten to recover Health immediately, but this is generally inefficient.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: You can loot any and all containers you may find, including those in people's homes. At worst they'll be trapped, but nobody will ever mind you taking their stuff.
- The Legend of Chekhov: Each time you hear or read about a rumor or legend, chances are it will become relevant later in the game.
- Mana Potion: There are two types: Pink Potions restore 50% of your Mana, while Purple Potions restore 100%. Both have two uses each, but the game doesn't tell you how many uses a particular potion has left.
- Money Spider: All monsters carry money, even wolves and giant insects.
- Palette Swap: It's common for at least two enemies to use the same graphics, except for different colors. For example, Rogues, Thieves, and Harriers all look the same except for their different-colored cloaks (blue, red, and grey, respectively).
- Puzzle Boss: The Red Dragons near the end of the game are completely invulnerable to all your weapons except the Quartz Sphere (which has only three uses). The trick is to go down a long, seemingly empty corridor with the best, fully-improved two-handed weapons equipped until you reach a dead end, where said weapons will be magically transformed into absurdly powerful quartz weapons, allowing you to kill the Dragons with ease. The problem is, the game does not give even the slightest hint that you're supposed to do this — most likely, the only way you're going to figure this out is by looking it up in the in-game walkthrough.
- Rat Stomp: Rats, and Scavengers, their weaker Palette Swap enemies, are among the first enemies you face, though not the weakest — that would be the giant ants and spiders in Port Hope.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Paltivar was supposed to be stuck in an eternal prison. Unfortunately, it looks like he'll escape.
- Sequel Hook: It looks like you'll get to fight Paltivar after all.
- Shop Fodder: Jewelry and some other items have no practical value and exist only to be sold.
- Starter Equipment: When creating your characters, you are given a choice of four items to take from the following list: dagger, staff, club, sling, cloth armor, cloth leggings, bag, meat.
- Thriving Ghost Town: Towns consist of a few shops and several tiny residential buildings. Each has only a handful of inhabitants, all of whom are shopkeepers or trainers, give you quests, and/or provide plot-relevant information.
- Troll Bridge: There is a Troll-infested bridge that links the lands of the Elves to that of the Halflings.
- Warmup Boss: The Opposition Leader serves as a sort of boss to the shareware part of the game (though it is possible to bypass him). Like all bosses, he has lots of hit points, attacks every member of your party at once, and is immune to all debuff spells.
