So are Demon winter and Shard of Spring any good?

[Argosy]

I have them on my hard drive, but it's too much effort to load up DOS Box to play them without getting an opinion on them first.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

I tried Shard of Spring once, but I found a bit too simplistic.

I played quite a bit of Demon's Winter a while back. I liked it, but I have a feeling its not for everyone. The classes and skill systems are decent, and the world is a good size. Its mostly a dungeon crawler, with tactical combat similar to the Gold Box games (they're all by SSI).

 

[Argosy]

Sweet. I like dungeon crawlers.
I even liked the much-maligned Pools of Radiance remake.

 

[DarkenRahl]

pools of radiance: theres only so much dungeon crawling one can take

good memories though staying up all night on it though some beers some metal

some ridiculously unlucky moments

good fun

but have only played demon winter of the ones above pretty sweet

 

[Argosy]

Just learned something kind of vicious about Shard of Spring. Apparently if your whole party is wiped out, you can't load the save for that party or start over with those party members. Basically, if your whole party dies you have to start over. :shock:

 

[DarkenRahl]

Just learned something kind of vicious about Shard of Spring. Apparently if your whole party is wiped out, you can't load the save for that party or start over with those party members. Basically, if your whole party dies you have to start over. :shock:

Hardcore.

 

[newtmonkey]

Shard of Spring (Apple II)
I've been playing this recently, and overall I'd rank it as an enjoyable trifle. It's a nice game to play in between meatier games.

Combat is alright, but AI is really retarded and it's easy to trick enemies into walking into spaces surrounded by 3 of your characters. The game actually has a "tactics" skill that outright tells you which of your characters each enemy is likely to target, so setting up these kinds of "traps" might be how the game was meant to be played. The combat engine is clearly the predecessor to the Gold Box series, though much much simpler (no ranged combat outside of spells). Still, it seems that you can distract enemy spellcasters by engaging them in melee, and like with Gold Box you learn quickly to take out enemy spellcasters ASAP.

It's extremely linear so far, and sometimes feels like playing a JRPG at times as each dungeon has a "boss" enemy you need to kill, often to get some item to make progress in the next dungeon. Even so, the world map is generally wide open and you can escape from battle simply by running to the edge, so you are free to explore.

One really unique thing about this game is that you need to level at class-specific guilds, but the guilds are located far away from the starting area. I explored the entire western half of the island, and found three towns and a dungeon, cleared that dungeon, and only after exploring more did I finally find the guild to level up my warriors; I had earned enough experience to immediately jump from level 1 to 4! That is some weird pacing, but it was pretty satisfying to suddenly become so much more powerful.

 

[Owl]

Released on GOG:

Demon's Winter

Shard of Spring

 

[octavius]

I recall liking Demon's Winter.
Nice combat system and quite good encounter design. When I finished there were some enemies in random encounter I had only faced once, so it never got stale.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Generally, for spellcasters stick to one school. The binding enemies are the worse. It has been a while since I looked at the spell system. I want to say it has: Fire, Ice, metal, Spirit, and uh... i forget. Isn't it a 5 man party? I ended up with so much damn food via hunting. And that last battle was kind of a bitch if the proceedjng battles went shitty.

Demon's Winter really opened up the classes and I have to admit I got lost right off the bat wondering what the hell I should do. Never finished it but I never finished Eternal Dagger either and none of the phantasies though I got close to 1.

Xyphus (distracted me for a long while from SSI and I did finish that). I have the dos versions on disk and from HOTU/Abandonware. Did GOG add anything to this? Any QOL?

 

[newtmonkey]

Shard of Spring (Apple II)

I have won!

The highlight here is the combat. It uses an "action point" type system where moving, turning, attacking, using items, and casting spells use a certain number of points. Characters can continue attacking as long as they have enough points left, so by the end of the game I was getting 4-5 attacks per round from each character; very satisfying. Magic is interesting in that you have access to all spells in whatever schools a character knows, with each spell having a minimum number of spell points to cast... however, you can spend more SPs to get better results (more damage, etc.).

The dungeons were also fun to explore. They are pretty small, but I did end up mapping a few on graph paper. There's a good mix of random and fixed encounters, and some light inventory-based puzzles. Each dungeon has a "boss." I normally don't care for this, as it feels very artificial (and is often used by developers as a "level check" to prevent low-level parties from getting through) but the bosses here were not really any more difficult that the regular enemies guarding them.

The final dungeon was great, with lots of difficult encounters and a great final battle where you encounter the last boss along with two powerful dragons. I was able to kill the boss with a single spell (using all SPs at once), but the dragons were quite difficult. They ended up binding my two best fighters, and I had no SPs left to free them... it was up to my mediocre last fighter to take both dragons down on his own, and careful use of magic items made it possible. A very satisfying finish!

I went with three fighters and two wizards, and I don't think you'd want to stray from this party. Resting only recovers 5 SPs (!), and you can only rest once per day, so you really cannot rely on magic. This means wizards are very situational and otherwise useless in battle, and you need the three fighters to distract enemies from hunting down your weak wizards. On the other hand, I definitely think you need at least two wizards, as it becomes crucial during the second half of the game to disable enemy spellcasters as quickly as possible.

Like most older CRPGs I've played through, there was no need whatsoever to artificially grind experience or gold. I ended up finishing the game at level 8, while the maximum level is 20. I think the realistic maximum level here would be 9 or perhaps 10, as anything above that would require hours and hours of grinding.

---

So, is it good? Overall, I had a good time with this one. It was simple but fun, and I'm glad I gave it a chance past it's somewhat underwhelming first hour or so. You can save anywhere, which made the final castle not as nightmarish as it could have been. Next is to tackle it's superior sequel, Demon's Winter!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I hadn't thought of tackling the appleII version.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Another series I played on DOS reminded me of SOS and wizardry; the Dark Design Series. @WeekenedWastemonster

it looks like the last one didn't make appleiiGS. I might have to try the apple versions. Still, I do recall that I kept thinking it was pretty cool.

 

[octavius]

Simple, but quite fun games.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Demon's Winter

PetrusOctavianusSeptember 1, 2011 at 9:52 AM
Heh, after posting my comment above I found out that you can see the proper name of a magical items by viewing it in the characters' possessions from the Camp menu. So now my wizard has a Crystal Dagger +1. But what is the property of "Crystal" (or "well made" for that matter)? The manual doesn't tell, but I suspect that "well made" just makes it more valuable.

Does anyone know it? What is this "well made" chain mail? The armor value looks the same as ordinary chain mail.

 

[octavius]

That PetrusOctavianus sounds like a monocled gentleman.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

I have bought a ring from a wandering merchant.
I cannot equip and cannot identify it at the marketplace.
What is that for?

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Demons Winter like an adventure game with filler combat.
I have a Wizard but no need to use any combat magic.
Only exception when I met Xeres. Column of fire spell, sp:30, Xeres dead.
Waste of time.
Only challenge in the game is identifying the lots of crap items.

Grafix is good. Only problem that my paladin and ranger and barbarian has the same icon.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Welcome to the old games combat icon issues. Ultima 3 had a lot of that too.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Anyone find and document the rumored MAC version of Shard of Spring & Demon's winter? I'm talking the old black and white display. Perhaps it doesn't exist.