"Improves on Wizard's Crown's inaccuracies, but many dungeons are either too simple or drab"

Eternal Dagger is an example of a fine if unspectacular sequel, capitalizing on Wizard's Crown's basic strengths and liquidating many unnecessary weaknesses. The story has a mercenary feel to it as your party is zapped from Arghan to the Wizard's Isle, where the goal is to build up your eight-member party and to find and destroy the Wizard's Lair. Given that your party had little left to do in Arghan, we'll allow this jump in plot. After the island is restored to normal, you can travel to the Elven and then the Dwarven Isle in your quest to find the Eternal Dagger, which is rumored to be the only weapon that can defeat Anawt, who is leading demons in from another dimension to take this world over. Dungeons to visit along the way include a mad wizard's tower, a ruined city, an aerie, a grove, and even a hut with turtles before finding the underwater portal, a one-way route to the demons' plain. Although there are many dungeons that are sparse once you visit them with only one fight or one conversation(''get me X,'') the whole story is very imaginative, with the greater detail in Eternal Dagger making up for its smaller size than Wizard's Crown, and puzzles, especially in the mad wizard's, are quite challenging. Basic characters and the strategy for building them are still the same; you can create combinations of fighter, sorcerer, priest, ranger and thief(gaining intelligence at the cost of strength, dexterity or life force) and endowing your players judiciously with different skills can help your party improve more quickly. The skills, restricted by class, don't overlap, so you can't have a jack-of-all-trades; one fighter might use swords(1- or 2-handed,) the other maces, and separate priests should learn cure poison and cure disease. Thieves can learn bargaining/searching, while Rangers need tracking/hunting. Only sorcerers, with magic, have a clear course. Of course you can use experience from fights for attributes as well as skills, but that can require a huge delay.

Although Eternal Dagger gives a huge advantage to players transferred from Wizard's Crown, it affords more possibilities to people creating their characters in the new world. There's only one safe base at the beginning(the tower) but on the outside you have options to follow tracks, frequently leading to treasure or dungeons after a few fights, and even talk during encounters--later on, reckless fighting will get you in trouble. The encounters also subtly reflect the terrain, i.e. foxes may be everywhere but turtles are only near Waddling Turtle's hut. The much-appreciated option for quick combat is still there, and you can now improve attributes to 500 as you deem necessary(it was 250 before, and priests having the extra karma for healing/prayer is useful) use the cute ''Tell the Minstrel of Your Deeds'' option to save, your party still loses morale which drags their skills down, and you can still reset dungeons in case you've goofed. You also don't have to take care of as many details as before; you no longer have to set the point man every time you break camp(i.e. after every combat and then some) but still have to heal all bleeding and poison, as death is forever. The only useful added detail is a backpack, which is very useful as it can carry valuables or food rations, another detail as hunting is more valuable outdoors. Armor and weapons are still the same, with cut, thrust and bash values and special properties(ability improvement, spellcasting, and inherent magic: cold, holy, fire, storm, etc.,) although prices for enchanting them double with each ''plus'' up to +6, which is more realistic but worse to save for. Towns are presented as text menus much like marketplaces in Wizard's Crown. The time of year also affects the hours in a day, and monsters tend to thin out if you hang around an area. Of course, bizarre stuff has been carried over--the 12345678 which doesn't match a number pad(which weren't invented anyway back then) moves your party around, but I've developed an odd affection for it.

Dungeons start out rather dumb, and then the wizard's tower drops on you. How to describe it? There are insane puzzles. There are puzzles you don't have to solve, but you can guess if you don't mind praying later to heal the damage from the rocks meant to discourage further wrong answers. There are bizarre cryptograms and anagrams that you can skip but may bug you once you've solved the game. Then there is The Puzzle, as I think of it. It got a friend. A booming voice counts down from twenty with your every move, but you have a lever that resets that number, and there are several other levers on the wall. The solution is rather cruel. Then later on the demon plain there's a clever maze where the walls shift when you step on a rubbish pile. After the tower, it's a nice mapping puzzle--mapping isn't necessary elsewhere as you can see the entire dungeon around you, making potential secret doors obvious.

Graphics maintain the cool icons for your characters you won't see much of because tactical combat takes too long, but one look at the outside world gives variety missing so much in Wizard's Crown. Why, I do believe that's the color blue! And there's purple! My goodness! Then when you get down to the other continents, their makeup is different. The Wizard's Isle is divided in two by mountains, but the Elven Isle has a lot of every terrain, and the Dwarven Isle has forbidding mountains. No dull city ruins here. The dungeons aren't quite up to the same level, though, although some look a bit swampy. You're still stuck with orange walls and white doors.

Eternal Dagger has its share of imperfections, but they're rather forgivable; for instance, Sri's layer claims to have three levels, but the third is actually in the same area as the first; it's just walled off, and you must go through the second level and back. There's also a bug at the end which makes the demon world easier to solve but drains much of the tension. Still, the story also has more twists and turns thanks to the dungeons, and given the amount of friendly encounters you have, especially with animals, the realm is worth saving--even the grouchy dwarves, who in a Tolkeinesque twist like the elves even less than everyone else. At the end, of course, the wizard's tower followed by the underwater dungeon and demon world work well. It's too bad that the sequel the ending seemed to promise never materialized.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/00, Updated 11/02/01