"Good text-based RPG but a bit slow"

Fancy that! A Zork game that's mostly above ground! That's even greater sacrilege than having a Zork RPG. Beyond Zork, while continuing Zork III's ban on anachronisms(save a gondola ride with beautiful sites and an unenthusiastic tour guide,) breaks both taboos and leaves no initial evidence of the famed brass lantern or elvish sword. To make up for that, it takes other concepts such as areas of eight locations linked randomly each game countered by a very short-ranging text auto-map(@'s and *'s.) Items can now be sold and bought, although there's a 100% markup, so buying something is a very serious matter as Zorkmids don't grow on trees and you don't know if you'll need an item for a future combat or puzzle. Combats aren't terribly sophisticated but they do allow you to establish experience(never revealed to the player) and levels(starting oddly at zero) for every entity you defeat. In keeping with Zork's nonviolence, no-one ever gets killed, they just flee endearingly. Given Beyond Zork's added demands on the system, it began to slow the Apple down seriously, and unfortunately my major recollection of this game is of re-trying a fight several times, re-loading, and having to retrace my steps frequently with a little too much time to plan what to do next. The disk drive took more time, proportionally, than Ultima IV or Bard's Tale, and without the relative fun of managing a group or graphical splendor, but the game is still engaging. It seems placid initially, but don't worry; you won't be meeting anyone normal.

From the start, when you create your own character with personalized statistics(strength, endurance, luck, dexterity, intelligence and compassion, which you know will be necessary when you don't want it) and send him out into the world clutching one shiny Zorkmid in his hand to when you see that item in the glass case that's just out of your price range(zorkmids don't grow on Evil Christmas Trees, you know) there will be a struggle to optimize money and to figure what order to defeat monsters in or to figure which magic combat items to use when, before they lose their charges. With every game, a specific enemy will appear in a certain part of the map(the Eldritch vapor in one of the swamp squares, for instance,) and magic items are more randomly placed--the same number in each area. However, the Rod of Eversion might be in the swamps one game, the Wand of Anesthesia the next, with the Stave having eversion powers. In replacement for the usual points, the game keeps track of your levels, abilities, and even gives you levels that increase your endurance.

Beyond Zork following the series's general plan of a weak, unknown peasant ascending to power(the first in the Zork series to follow such a time-worn plot,) your quest to return the peace-giving Coconut of Quendor back to Y'Gael will require hacking your way through many different monsters in addition to the usual cadre of riddles and puzzles. Many puzzles are optional as they may help you to beat a monster more easily. For instance, there's a slug in a lighthouse that's possible to beat with conventional weapons, but you can use a standard text-adventure item on it to win more quickly. The Annihilation items are also quite useful although they are best saved for the tough opponents. These include one of my favorite RPG monsters of all time, the Cruel Puppet. 'The Cruel Puppet reminds you how much weight you've gained lately, and where. Your endurance just went down,' and the organ grinder who grinds nightmares out of a valuable hurdy-gurdy. There are also more traditional bad guys, but with the Eldritch Vapor that tickles weak players to death, Zork gives a satisfying array of monsters, as you'd expect. However, the nonviolent ones you see are often compelling. You need to rescue three to improve your compassion, Cardinal Toolbox mourns the siege of his village, and there's a particularly funny Wizard of Oz-indebted scene where munchkin equivalents offer you one of the keys to the city and get snippy if you wait.

Although you can see most of Beyond Zork's locations without solving puzzles, your range of effective action is initially restricted, and you'll probably find the tavern and its town a good introduction--a cook offers you a giant onion if you are willing to brave the terrors in his cellar, which is a self-contained puzzle just tricky enough to stretch your brain, and there are seedy bandits by a fireplace. There's also a sailor who's rather more interesting than the fellow in Zork III. Later on you'll find three similar old women in the other three cities(four locations to a city,) and there are enough fixed incidents that you should be able to improve your cash flow, your statistics(the Zork field manual gives clues as to such useful scenic details) or your level, although if you are re-playing the game it will always seem as though the scroll you need for a certain puzzle is the last one you'll find. And then to top it off, becoming the ultimate player seems not worth it, as by the time you're able to buy everything, you will have to pinch centizorkmids to perfection to do so with any effect. In the final scenes, conventional weapons don't work on nasty monsters such as undead warriors, lucksuckers, and Ur-Grues(especially nasty since your lantern is not effective,) and it is time for text-adventure puzzle solving.

Beyond Zork does its best to reduce confusion with an innovative display; a status bar at the very top, the text-map in the upper right, the description box above, and the lower half dedicated to standard adventuring allow you to see more of your previous moves as well as your current surroundings without recoursing to 'verbose.' It also puts maybe a few too many hints in the entertaining guide to Quendor. The description of various special magical items and weird baddies is what I came to expect from most Infocom game literature. The game also allows you to nickname your weapons or animals you interact with, making typing more comfortable. On the sad side, how to write a new glyph drove me bananas(It took me a while to guess the right verb--INSCRIBE.)

Beyond Zork is not terribly successful as a text adventure, and its RPG system is hardly complex, but it manages to make all its interactions humorous(especially ways you permanently lose intelligence or humility) and even supplies a clunky text auto-map(the PC version is much nicer.) The game also provides plenty of opportunities for using alternate magic spells to solve a puzzle. Unfortunately, finding the very richest item presents a strange conflict(you treat one animal two different ways in quick succession,) and when I was much younger I missed solving this game with a hint book due to general impatience(more disk loading than usual for an Infocom game) and steadily more bizarre puzzles. I believe the majority are fair, and one puzzle is sophisticated enough to make up for the fact it uses time travel in the second game in a row in a series, but the game wasn't compelling enough to break free from the constant disk loading I had to sit through. I'd recommend the PC version, quicker and with an automap that even indicates when you can move up or down.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/00, Updated 03/19/02