Quest for Glory 2 VGA

[cornjob]

Esseb, I have bad news for you. Run Hot might be delayed. 

Erpy, what's up man? Congratulations on completing this epic game.

[rbaleksandar]

Man! I've waited for the VGA version of the 2nd part soooo many years : It is just great. Looks just like the remake of the first one! THANKS! 

[BlackDragon1200]

Really enjoying it so far (i'm about half way through Shapier) but i have found a bug. I'm running the game with 640x400 resolution in a window and sometimes while i am wondering the streets the GUI disappears. I did manage to find a way to get it back though by hitting F5 and then cancel a few times.

And as for combat i am really enjoying the level of strategy involved. If i were to suggest a flaw with it though it would be that it takes a while to gain the level of skill necessary to to roam the desert (I am playing a standard Magic User and had to practice 5 times a day for 8 days [In game] before my skill levels were high enough to fight a Briggand). While i don't have a problem with this (It fits with the original game perfectly) i fear that many people might not have the patience to spend 3 hours training before they can go out and fight.

[AGD2]

Hey, Cornjob! Good to hear from you again. Thanks for the comments, it's great to hear you found your way back for the release!  In case anyone's curious, Cornjob created most of the in-game inventory item graphics (he has a real knack for cramping a lot of fine detail into a small amount of space), as well as working on several screen touch-ups, detailing some dialogue portraits, and all the dialogue and GUI borders in the game. A very worthy contributor whose artistic skills benefited the game for the better, I must say.

BlackDragon1200: That icon-bar turning off bug, is a known issue which occurs when you leave Aziza's house in the alleys. You can work around it by pressing F7 to turn on the Restore GUI and then press Escape (or click the Cancel button) to turn it off again. That will fix things and you will only need to do it once.

As for combat, you have 16 days to kill, so there's really plenty of time to train your combat skills to perfection and still have days to spare.

On the other hand, if you choose to play as a thief, you need not ever have to fight a single monster for the entire game. Fighters really DO have to fight in the remake, while the other classes have alternate measures to bypass monsters or make dealing with them easier. There's more of a distinction between classes in that respect...

[Vel]

I think there's a small inconsistency - how come I am not able to take the daggers a brigand has thrown at me, or those he carries with him?

[Erpy]

Because that would basically allow you to get unlimited daggers (of 500 centimes a piece) for only 7 hitpoints per dagger. Besides, they're curved arabic daggers that the hero can't wield very well.

[Vel]

Surely, I gathered as much, but still, it doesn't make much sense.

Anyway, that's too small a nitpick to mar the overall impression of the game, which can't be anything but superb. I'll put down my thoughts once I finish the game with all possible character types.

[Erpy]

It makes as much sense as the hero continually needing food and water, but never needing an outhouse break. Sometimes you just have to stretch the suspense of disbelief a bit in order to keep things practical.

[Radiant]

Well done, very cool!

(and there goes my spare time for the weekend )

[IndieBoy]

Congratulations on completing this game, however I need to make this point. Just this is coming from someone who hasn't played the originals or the first remake.

I found the combat seriously difficult, having to restart my game a few times due not winning my first fight. I finally defeated my first bandit with the difficulty setting at the lowest, with 9 hit points remaining. And even still the rate of which my hit points were being lowered in this fight was unbelievable. I am unsure what the original was like combat wise but from my own experience of RPGs my first fight is usually very or reasonably easy, and I feel 9 hit points isn't either. I would be interested if anyone can defeat a bandit with the difficulty setting at Max with the starting out hit points.

Just thought I would let my feelings known when you have been discussing issues with the combat system. But to be honest this issue with the combat is rather off putting from me trying to complete the game.

[stacygibbs]

I was not at all happy with the difficulty of combat to start with either. But after enough practice with Uhura and becoming comfortable with the keys I chose to use I got to where I could beat her in about 30 seconds. Combat eventually becomes much much easier.

I finished the game last night and had a wonderful time playing it. Thank you all again for the wonderful job you did and for sharing this freely with all of us.

[Erpy]

Congratulations on completing this game, however I need to make this point. Just this is coming from someone who hasn't played the originals or the first remake.

I found the combat seriously difficult, having to restart my game a few times due not winning my first fight. I finally defeated my first bandit with the difficulty setting at the lowest, with 9 hit points remaining. And even still the rate of which my hit points were being lowered in this fight was unbelievable. I am unsure what the original was like combat wise but from my own experience of RPGs my first fight is usually very or reasonably easy, and I feel 9 hit points isn't either. I would be interested if anyone can defeat a bandit with the difficulty setting at Max with the starting out hit points.

Just thought I would let my feelings known when you have been discussing issues with the combat system. But to be honest this issue with the combat is rather off putting from me trying to complete the game.

Battle IS more difficult (but also a lot more involved) than in the original, where an imported hero could spam attacks and beat most monsters easily from the beginning. Using a fighter with starting stats (without using the additional 50 point pool) I was able to beat a brigand while losing like 20 to 30 hitpoints or so, using the right co-pilot settings and setting the difficulty to easy. My bare-stats mage was victorious too by taking advantage of his spells, although I suffered more punishment. My bare-stats thief didn't fare so well. I haven't tried it yet with normal or hard level. QFG2VGA, more than the original, forces the player to mind his defense rather than kill an enemy with rapid attacks before the enemy can inflict enough damage to kill the hero.

If you don't import your hero, you're at a disadvantage and you'll need to spend a little bit more time training your stats.

Finally, QFG2VGA makes bigger distinctions in character class than the original EGA game. Each class has its own unique way to deal with monsters and you can't just pretend a mage or a thief is a fighter without a sword/shield/chainmail. As he gains experience, the fighter gains additional combat techniques that allow him to gain the advantage in close range combat. The wizard or thief never gets really good in melee combat, even with high stats, but wizards gain upgradable spells that can do extreme damage with practice and thieves can go through a large part of the game without having to rely on monster loot for income and his skills allow him to avoid enemies or spot enemies before they spot him. Adapting one's playing style to the class is pretty important in the remake.

It's true that in many RPG's the first monster is easy, but most RPG's have whole hordes of different creatures while QFG2VGA only has 5 different random monsters. Being able to easily slay a brigand (who isn't even the weakest monster stat-wise, a jackalman is inferior to a brigand in just about every way) in a few shots with starting stats would only leave 60% of the creatures remaining as a challenge to trained players.

[Azure]

This will teach me not too check on the adventuring sites every day, I am so happy this is out! To the downloadatron.

[BlackDragon1200]

BlackDragon1200: That icon-bar turning off bug, is a known issue which occurs when you leave Aziza's house in the alleys. You can work around it by pressing F7 to turn on the Restore GUI and then press Escape (or click the Cancel button) to turn it off again. That will fix things and you will only need to do it once.

I believe it also once happened outside of WIT.

[TheJBurger]

Okay... I finished the game as a thief, and here are my final impressions:

• Unlike most others, I found the combat great, and consistently challenging and satisfying. I already mentioned my previous thoughts earlier about the combat, so I'll keep this short. It adds an extra layer of depth to the game, and a whole element of strategy instead of the battles just being 'spam until you win' fests. I know it's hard at first, but I'd rather be it initially challenging and getting easier, than easy at the beginning and sleep-walk easy towards the end. Thumbs up!
  
• I feel like what needs to be said about the visual side of the game has already been said. It looks great, plays great, and the attention to detail is superb. Little things like the player only wielding one dagger instead of two during the end fight--if he lost a dagger during the battle--really add a lot to the atmosphere.
  
• Now... I do have one main complaint with the game which is not exclusive to the VGA remake. There's simply not enough stuff to do, or side-quests to undertake. In QFG1, I'd say there are about 10-15 unique locations in the forest, apart from the town and the castle. With QFG2, Shapier just about matches the town and the castle in Speilberg, but there are only a total of 3 unique locations in the desert, 4 if you count the "beast" puzzle revealed later. Even with that, I found myself getting bored. By the time I got to about day 8, I had most of my combat skills approaching 200, I bought most everything in the shops (many of which is just for decroation anyway), and I completed all the side-quests available to me at the time. After that, it felt like I was just killing time with every passing day.
  
• Shortly after that there was no point in going out and fighting, because I either had all my vital skills maxed out, or I already bought everything and any extra money would just weigh me down. I really wish there was more stuff you could do in the desert, or more things that you could buy in the shops. If there is nothing for me to work forward for, either in stats or money, there's no point in me trying to improve my character and gain more gold. One thing that I think might be interesting is battles in the maze of the city at night. Perhaps you could walk down a dead-end alley and have to fight off several thieves who try to mug you or something. Just anything to add more variation and elements to the game would be nice.
  

It's a very impressive remake, but in my opinion it's not as accessible and satisfying as the KQ2 remake. It's still an amazing accomplishment, and it's very well done.

[AGD2]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure how thoroughly you played the remake, but if you went through it based only on your pre-existing knowledge of the original EGA version, chances are you probably missed quite a few side-quests which were added into the game.  Since they could be considered non-canonical events, however, we took measures to ensure that they wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb, meaning that you'll need to do a little exploring to uncover them. But rest assured, they're in there.

Perhaps you could walk down a dead-end alley and have to fight off several thieves who try to mug you or something.

Funny you should mention that actually... 

[TheJBurger]

Yep, I got kind of bored so I browsed the AGDI forums for some extra side-quest information (I don't think I would've found the new stuff otherwise. I'm not a very clever person).

Here are the side-quests I completed:

Spoiler

Dervish Beard + Potion Components -- if those even count as side-quests
Plant lady (far right desert)
Beast in Cage
3 Shapier Thieves Guild missions + Rasier Mission
WIT initiation
Diary of the warrior (or whatever it was called)
Pizza elemental - I found it, but after trying to beat it, I gave up deciding it wasn't worth the effort! 

[close]

I think that's all of the ones that I did. I probably missed at least a couple.

[SierraFan]

Any way you guys can add the hero costume from QFG1,3,4 (the white brown shirt, green pants and red cape
in your remake for version 2?

[AGD2]

SierraFan: Unfortunately not. This decision was voted on in a public poll very early in the pre-production stages. There are a crazy amount of Hero sprites in the game so making alternate versions of them all would be no small feat!  Plus, the winter attire and cape from QFG1 isn't well-suited to the hot desert setting of the second game.

At any rate, version 1.1 of the Quest for Glory II Remake has now been released and is available from www.AGDInteractive.com

In addition to many bug-fixes, the new build also makes monsters slightly slower to react on 'easy' difficulty level, as well as adding a random 1-point damage bonus to player attacks on 'easy'.  Additionally, the thief now has the ability to rapidly toss daggers during battle, like the Brigand can. (Note: This ability is thief-only.)

Finally, for anyone who's interested in participating, we currently have an art contest running. Feel free to enter. Prizes include copies of the original QFG2, QFG2 Anthology, limited edition QFG2 posters and prints, as well as a bunch of other stuff. Odds are pretty high that entrants will win something, so submit your entries today. You can read more about the Art Contest and the prizes here:

http://www.agdinteractive.com/fans/contest1/contest1.html

[blueskirt]

Who gave this game a 4 cups rating? :o Anyone in the Panel has an idea about the insane amount of work this game's backgrounds, animations, coding and testing required? On several Top X list of best adventure games ever, the original game often competed and managed to beat some of the best games LucasArts made, the Panel says the remake is an improvement on the original game in many aspects and it only achieve a 4 cups score?! Man, I am seriously questionning the credibility and usefulness of the Panel rating.