Towers II

Atari Jaguar

by Clay Halliwell
(courtesy Jaguar Explorer Online)

After years of waiting, false starts, canceled agreements, and last-minute deals, the Jaguar finally has its first (and only) true RPG... Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer.

//// Enter the Daggan

Like the original Towers (released for the Falcon), Towers II is set on the island of Lamini, where your merry band of adventurers is still shipwrecked after an unfortunate run-in with some pointy rocks. As the nicely presented intro relates, the titular stargazer is a wizard by the name of Daggan. Seems he's been acting strangely of late... ranting and raving, blowing things up at his castle, and exhuming the corpses of dead mystics. Everyone who goes to find out what's up never returns, up to and including all of Lamini's knights and high council members. Oh my.

It's at this point that the sheriff resorts to you. In exchange for entering Daggan's towers and apprehending him, he offers you a keep of your very own (a keep to keep?) and as much treasure as you can grab inside the tower. Being poor and bored, you of course accept.

//// Tower Power

Towers II is a single-player, single-character, first-person RPG. The game environment is very Alien vs Predator-ish (but with lower ceilings). The entire game takes place within Daggan's tower. There are 11 floors, which you can move between freely via stairs, teleporters, and the occasional hole in the floor. There are two types of game saves you can perform-- a complete save to RAM (unfortunately lost when you power down your Jag), and a partial save to the cartridge. This partial save includes only the bare essentials... your inventory, stats, position, groups of monsters killed, and major objectives completed.

Before you start, you select and roll your character. There are four characters to choose between:

• Merton, the wizard. Physically weak, but a magical powerhouse.
• Tasler, the boy. Reasonably strong, the decent magic.
• Andros, the circus performer. Similar to Tasler.
• Gerand, the fighter. Strong as a blue ox, but little magical talent.

The character selection you make determines the range of the stats you roll for that character. The stats are:

• STR - Strength
• INT - Intelligence
• WIS - Wisdom
• DEX - Dexterity
• CON - Constitution

Fortunately, you can immediately re-roll a character if you don't like the numbers that come up. The character selection you make has a real outcome on how you play the game. For instance, Gerand can only cast a handful of the available spells, and Merton is too frail to wear any armor.

Once you've created a character, you're placed on the ground floor of Daggan's tower with only the clothes on your back (why do videogame adventurers never bring weapons with them?).

The user interface is relatively simple. Pressing the joypad moves and turns you in the usual way. Your character has rather a lot of inertia... if you've stopped and press forward, it takes a full second to start moving. This can be extremely annoying (and fatal) when trying to weave around monsters in combat. The game uses every available button but one on the joypad. You can't change button assignments, but the layout is optimized for use with a ProController. Pressing the shoulder buttons lets you sidestep, and the most commonly used keypad functions are mapped to the X/Y/Z buttons. Unfortunately there is no keypad overlay included.

The game runs full-screen, with health and mana bars at the top and a compass in the upper-right. Your currently-selected weapon bobs, Doom-style, at the bottom of the screen. A press of a button bring up additional overlays-- a spell canvas on the right, which gradually fills with icons as you find spell scrolls, an inventory on the left, and miscellaneous text displays in the lower center. The drag-and-drop inventory management system clearly shows its roots in the Falcon... to pick up items you go into inventory mode, click on an onscreen object, and drop it into any available inventory slot. You start with only four inventory slots (forget about collecting every bit of treasure you find), but this can be increased by finding bags and backpacks. Equipping is done by moving inventory items into boxes overlaid on a small human figure.

The mouse-based functions of Towers II can be somewhat of a hassle. Your cursor moves much too rapidly, forcing you to tap-tap-tap the d-pad to position the cursor where you want it. You even have to go into inventory mode to open doors (yep... stop and click on the door).

Your health is whittled away by enemy attacks, and can be regained only by sleeping or drinking a healing potion. Sleeping is implemented rather oddly in Towers II. To go to sleep, just punch the Sleep button... anytime... even in the middle of a fight. Weird. Health is regained at a fixed rate, so the more powerful you become, the longer you have to sleep to fully heal. You can only sleep when you're not hungry, so be sure to carry some food with you at all times. Happily, "summon food" is one of the first spells you find.

There is an excellent automap feature, which maintains a full map of every level as you explore, and you can view the map of any level at any time. Naturally there's no way to fit these maps on the cart EEPROM during game saves, but the game makes a valiant effort to reconstruct your map by looking at the monsters you've killed and the goals you've achieved.

//// All Out of Bubble Gum

• There's a satisfying variety of destructive implements in Towers II. Attack from afar with arrows, wands, and spells, or get in your opponents' face with swords, clubs, maces... even a broom! You also have the ability to throw knives (or apples, very small rocks, whatever...) but the mode-switching required to do this makes it practically useless in a fight.
• To select a weapon, you go into inventory mode and drop the weapon on the character's right hand. If you've found a shield, you can drop that on the left hand. After attacking, if you continue to hold the button down your character will raise his shield, blocking or reducing damage from enemy counterattacks. There's a minor bug in this system, as you have to actually fire before raising your shield, so if you're out of arrows or wand charges, you can't raise your shield. D'oh!
• The magic system is based on mana. There is no cumbersome "learning" of a spell before you can cast it. Simply select a spell off the spell canvas, and press the Cast button. If you have enough mana, the spell will be cast (with the occasional failure due to low stats). As with your health, mana can only be regained by sleeping.
• Enemies can hurt each other with projectile attacks, but they won't fight each other. Also, don't be surprised if a wounded enemy turns tail and runs in the middle of a fight!

//// Head Games

• When you're not killing things, the overall goal of Towers II is simple: work your way to the top. On the way, expect to fall down holes (or levitate up them), jump through teleporting mirrors, pull chains, trip switches, and chat with the locals. Conversation is very limited. Either a character says nothing (hostile), "Hello." (neutral), gives you some kind of hint, or asks for something. Strangely, characters continue to wander around randomly even while you're talking to them.
• There are no shops, bars, or inns in Towers II. This is somebody's home, not a mini-mall!
• As you progress through the levels, various mini-quests present themselves... charging an artifact, forging a sword, and so on. Thankfully there are almost no dead ends. Most puzzles have been designed so they can be solved two different ways.

//// Graphics

• If you stick Towers II in the slot expecting the rock-solid graphics of AvP or Wolfenstein, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Instead of a ray- casting engine, Towers II builds its dungeon walls and floors out of texture- mapped polygons, resulting in a rather herky-jerky appearance as you move through the maze. Furthermore, the clipping horizon is only about four squares in front of you, and bitmap objects near this horizon distort strangely.
• There are holes in the ceilings and floors in some parts of the tower, and instead of simply texture-mapping a "hole" graphic, they're rendered as actual 3D holes (albeit square holes). It's pretty neat-looking.
• Enemies are a bit lo-rez, but there are 20 of them, they're animated, and you can view them from any angle... not too shabby for a 2meg cart!

//// Sound

• The music in Towers II is excellent... very moody and medieval, with lots of deep gonging bells and whistling wind sounds. There are three songs total... one for the title sequence, one for the endgame, and one that plays during the game. The ingame song takes a long time to repeat, which is good because you'll be listening to it for literally hours on end.
• The sound effects are decent... not particularly engaging, but sufficient... a generic collections of oofs and thuds. You can hear your footsteps as you walk around, and the footsteps of approaching enemies as well. Since the sound effects are in stereo, this is very nice.

//// Overall

• Essentially, Towers II tries to merge the Doom style of gameplay with a role- playing game, all within the limits of a 2meg cart. The result is a game that doesn't especially excel at either genre. Also the ending is on the disappointing side, and the spelling of some of the game text leaves much to be desired ("aloud" for "allowed", "stock" for "stalk", etc...). Don't get me wrong though... Towers II is a fun game; an enjoyable - if lightweight - RPG that will definitely give you your money's worth.

//// Final Ratings

• Title: Towers II
• JagNet: No
• Design: JV Games
• Players: 1
• Published by: Telegames
• Media: 2 megabyte cart
• Retail: $59.95
• Availability: Now

A Summary of Ratings: "*" is a whole "+" is a half 5 stars Maximum

--reviewed by Clay Halliwell for Jaguar Explorer Online

• <halliwee@ts436.dyess.af.mil>

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