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The caged beast (and the Dervish' answers about it) are activated on day 12 and not sooner. Just like in the original game. (contrary to your claim) The reason for this is the fact that until day 12, there is no way you can solve the beast puzzle and you'd be forced to visit it each day afterwards in order to prevent it from dying while you wait for the missing item to become available.

As for the debug mode, you can only unlock it by completing the game with max points and a certain hidden item in your inventory.  Afterwards, you'll be able to cheat to your heart's content. BTW, for all the noise, the debug codes were taken out of QFG1 as well when that game was remade (naughty, naughty Sierra) and QFG3, QFG4 and QFG5 didn't have any debug modes at all. (bad, naughty, evil Sierra)

And yes, there IS another cheat mode referred to as "battle mode" that has some combat-specific features that cannot be used through the ordinary debug mode. Unfortunately, this one must be unlocked by finishing the game with perfect score and a certain secret item in your inventory as well. So no cheats for you during the first playthrough. Boy, does life suck or what?

You can increase pressure by either quickly tapping or holding the left arrow. You don't have to hold space to slam, just tapping it once is enough, as it takes some cycles. Holding your position is basically trying to defend against Issur's slams (which he effectively pulls off non-stop) and letting him wear his stamina down. There's no real in-game purpose of decreasing pressure, since Issur won't ever decrease his own either.

In addition, Cyricz has created a very comprehensive FAQ/walkthrough for the game that's available on www.gamefaqs.com

It contains just about everything there is to know about the game, including some of the hidden stuff.

A couple of things:

- If I had had nothing to do with the game, it wouldn't have been a great game. It wouldn't have been completed. I did close to 50% of the scripting, if not more.

- We didn't take out the cheat codes. The debug options in the remake allow for even more messing around than the original game. But they must be unlocked, which involves completing the game under certain (secret) circumstances. The reason the debug modes are not accessable from the get-go is simple...debug modes allow people to break the game and ignore the usual checks. We wanted people to play the game the way it was meant to be played first, so all the bugs reported would be genuine bugs and not stuff that popped up because people messed with the game using debug options.

- In order to beat Issur: Make sure your strength is between 140 and 150 or so. Make sure your stamina is filled to the max because it'll be draining during the course of the match and if it's too low, you automatically lose. Keep increasing the pressure and hold back his slams so he wastes his own stamina. (you can tell you're holding him back because the arms aren't trembling)

- If your strength is too low, practice it. Throwing rocks or daggers is a good way to get it up. Alternatively, you can practice combat and focus on attacking. Dodging a lot in battle increases agility, which ups your stamina maximum.

- Save before challenging him and restore if you lose. No reason to waste obscene amounts of money on him.

- If you're not a fighter class, there are other ways to obtain the bellows.

- Practice your communication. Not your in-game skill, the real-life version. Calling people names is bad for your honor.

Yeah, when QFG2VGA was released, we took the other two games down until the updated versions are available. We wanted to avoid straining the mirrors with downloads that would be outdated in a few months. Just check the site from time to time and eventually they'll be back.

There are two different menu's for interacting with other characters. The first one is the "ask about"-menu, which lets your hero ask the character for information about subjects and is accessed by clicking the mouth on the character. The other one is the "tell about"-menu, which lets your hero give answers and tell NPC's about certain subjects. This one is accessed by clicking the mouth cursor on the hero. You need the second one in order to tell Aziza that you'd like to drink tea with her.

Is it possible you're in the combat tutorial? (it gets offered the first time you challenge her and you might have clicked the top choice instinctively) In the battle tutorial, only the moves you're supposed to do at that point actually do something. Other than that, I have no clue. If a button works for one fight, it should work for all of them.

Yeah, parser can be used as a shortcut to bring up topics that have to be found in the dialogue tree otherwise, but the relevant topics are in there nevertheless.

Incense appears in a subbranch of the fire elemental topic.

The elementals are a branch of the daily news topic, but only after they actually show up. Likewise, Julanar appears in Aziza's daily news topic, as well as her desert topic, after you've been told about the fruit of compassion or after you've seen the tree in the desert yourself.

You have enough honor points to become a paladin, but you must refrain from doing anything that would disqualify you. (finish off helpless opponents, steal stuff, peep on ladies)

As for the fire elemental, talk to Harik about it. (it's in his daily news section) Or ask him about it straight out through the parser.

To get over the calmed earth wall, just click the hand on it.

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.

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.

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.

And thanks for the assistence back in the day, Cornjob. I've been happy to see several former contributors coming out of the shadows to say hello and celebrate the game's release.

I realize what you're saying here, and if you read my post then you already understand that I trained with Uhura until I could literally beat her effortlessly.

That doesn't always say much. Uhura has 3 sub-difficulties, based on your combat-relevant stats. At the beginning she goes easy on you so you have the opportunity to practice various skills without being immediately beaten into submission. If you can beat her variation where she blocks, counterattacks, strings attacks together, knocks you down if you're standing over her while she's getting up and uses her whirling spear attack, THEN you're ahead of a good deal of enemies.

And on the lowest setting, I'm not sure about the daggers not being thrown in that mode, Erpy, because at the very bottom setting I had a brigand approach me at night in the Shapeir maze and repeat dagger me to death (throwing one about every second until it was obvious I had no chance).

Ah, that's actually a hidden enemy who's meant to be more challenging than the brigands in the desert. He's part of a sidequest and a good deal more agressive and skilled than the normal enemies. Don't confuse him with an ordinary brigand.

I understand that escape lets you run away, but honestly, I'm telling you as a player that I do not find it satisfying to have to run from everything until my skill is very high, particularly not after importing a character who beat goblins, ghosts and all sorts of things in the previous game.

True, it's a big switchover between the maxed out hero in Spielburg, but as I said before with your current skillset, especially on easy, you should be able to handle normal brigands and jackalmen (lone or in sets of 2) just fine. The other monsters are probably a different story, but they'll get easier as you learn new techniques and get higher stats. If, with the stats you have, you were able to take on ghouls, terrorsauri or scorpions in the original game, then that was in my opinion the original game making it too easy to kill monsters.

I don't honestly think the combat is well-balanced at this stage.  At the bottom setting, for instance, I should be able to make short work of brigands and other initial enemies without much effort at all, and certainly without running away or gobbling multiple health pills.  Ease of combat is the point of an easy setting, or should be.  The long, drawn out fights due to an uneven enemy health bar is one of the problems I see with the current design (or perhaps the relative combat damage), and I think reducing enemy health based on the difficulty slider setting (highest difficulty could remain at the current health level) would go a long way to making the combat more satisfying.  Like I said, I enjoy challenging games and would like to say I can enjoy your game on any of the difficulty settings.[/quote]

The 3 difficulty levels in QFG2VGA already have different max hp values for each enemy. May I ask if you tried battling ordinary brigands and jackals in the desert with your current skills, on the lowest difficulty setting and with the co-pilot set to the configuration I suggested? If you merely based your conclusion on an encounter with a secret enemy meant to be tougher than the starting baddies, I wouldn't fault you, but it would make your statement inaccurate.

I'm afraid you'll have to redefine the keys yourself.

You can challenge him on any day, but before you can challenge him, he'll have to tell you that he likes to arm wrestle and that you're welcome to try and take him on.

The installer is 85 MB, but the installed game is about 200 MB.

Then how large is it in file size? The original version is about 4,5 MB in size. The remake is about 200 MB.

Also, if you're playing on easy difficulty, brigands won't toss daggers at all. (nor will any monster use its advanced moves) Monster HP will be lower too.

And on easy, I found that if you set the co-pilot all the way to defense/dodge/misc, you can approach a brigand and casually swing or stab once every 1.5 seconds or so. The copilot will duck/jump away from 80% of the enemy's hits. I found that this way, I could even beat a brigand with a newly created fighter.

As AGD2 said, 80 dodge is pretty low. A lot of your sidesteps will still fail, that's why a dagger barrage could own you. 109 strength and (most likely) a broadsword don't do that much damage yet, but with practice and better equipment you'll eventually become a lot better.

Yeah, that's a bug. For some reason the label's text doesn't get set properly. The answers to the WIT questions are your name, "magic"/"to be a wizard"/"to learn magic" that sort of thing. Then you just click your sponsor.