Dungeon Master Forum

And how about Ishar? For me it was a masterpiece. Has anyone finished all 3 parts of the game?

nope, i played 3 of them but finished only the 1st story ! i really enjoyed awesome graphics with light depending on hour of the day (in 2nd and 3rd episodes only), collecting ingredients to make potions, schools to make your heroes stronger in some disciplines, enrolling , firing or murdering team members, ... it was definitely better than DM2 or EOB imho.

We had the first two Ishars on the Atari - can't remember a great deal about either but I remember more about the second one than the first. They were cool .

In first part i specially enjoyed open areas. You didn't have to move along walls. It was possible to just wander through forests and grasslands in almost any direction. Graphics was awesome. In the second part this freedom could be felt only on the first island (Irvan's i belive) but the rest of isles differ from each other instead. In scenery I mean. For example Jon's Island with mountains covered with snow. If you add light changes this becomes really beautiful. Also music was quite cool. I have never finished only the third part.

By the way: I forgot to mention about Crystal of Arborea which i considered sometimes as Ishar 0. It was a nice game but I haven't played a lot.

Yes, I only played the second part and did enjoy the touches like the time of day (which meant something ,like shops being shut, or charatcers only meeting you at certain times

The city was cool to walk around, the the free first I sland was good too

The only niggle I had were the two dimensional monsters (though fun to sidestep passed them) and the fact that you had to eat in order to recover your ...whatever stamina equivalent stopped you from hitting

The other thing implemented in Ishar was, I belive, quite a big innovation for that time in games such as these. There could be noticed some 'inter-action' between members of your party. For example a party o good elves did not agree to expand their ranks with an evil orc. Once happened to me even such a thing: I had party of 2 elves(female and male) and a human. I ordered the human to kill the elvish woman. He did it and after that he was immediately murdered by the elf (revenge?). There was no gamer influence on the second murder. Also my good cleric once denied to cure my evil black knight. If you took to your party some thieves, they could even steal all the gold you had and dissappear during the night in inn. :> I think even today's cRPG's lack of such features. Or am I wrong?

I must admit wanting to use DSAs to do some of these features in CSBwin

That would be great! :>

Szopen wrote:And how about Ishar? For me it was a masterpiece. Has anyone finished all 3 parts of the game?

I finish all trilogy, but with solution. Thrid part has some nice graphics but mostly it look like Ishar2 mod, because some connections. Story is very strange, you travel back time and when you return world has changes little. From all serie i like Ishar2, it was great adventure. Uh and to kill I3 boss i must return to city many times for restore HP it was pain. I found some trick that i could buy best armors for fev coins but i got troubles anyway. It would be better if have better story and more new graphics.