Cav's Place

Started Jotun in the first hours of 2019, thinking it’ll be a game I should be able to finish quickly enough, to get a good start of the year from this point of view, and that proved to be the case. That second Jotun, which is in fact the only one that attacks simply because you’re there, the other battles starting after you strike first, made me think I had been wrong, killing me dozens of times and making it seem as if I couldn’t get past a certain point in the battle, but once I got past that it went quite smoothly. The handful of attempted “Valhalla Mode” battles against the two Jotun which had seemed easy only resulted in the same number of deaths without it even seeming that I had a chance against those more powerful versions and I didn’t care to struggle any more with that, so I’m just referring to the game itself, up to that point, which is actually pretty short, despite some issues that may make it artificially longer and also cause the player to reconsider a session if they’re not certain they’ll have the time to at least finish an entire area.

What does work well in Jotun is the art, and I’m not just referring to the style of the graphics. That is indeed excellent, and also does a good job of creating the sensation of scale and of how small Thora is compared to the challenges she’s facing, but the music isn’t bad either and the developers seem to have made pretty good use of the mythology, at least for the limitations of the game. The way the creation myth was used in the Ymir’s Blood area struck me as particularly notable, though I guess others may disagree, since this is very obvious while in other areas the mythology was perhaps more organically intertwined. How Thora presents a part of her story after each section also works out all right, despite probably not being something notable in itself. I’d say that the spoken language proved to be somewhat more notable, on the other hand. It had at first struck me as a gimmick which was likely to prove annoying, but once I actually played for a while and heard it a few times, I realized it really fit and enhanced the setting and the desired atmosphere.
So what I can say about Jotun is that it can be seen as a pretty good work of art, at least considering its limitations. Judged more by its artistic value and less by its gameplay, it would do quite well. It may be a fair example of games as art, but I don’t think playing it is required to properly appreciate its artistic value. There are games that make particularly good use of the medium in this manner and which need to be played in order to be understood, felt, appreciated at their real value, but in case of Jotun, watching it may be enough… Which I guess isn’t a good thing in itself, but may be if you don’t have the skills to finish it or just don’t care to.

However, it is a game and I did play it, and the first thing that bothered me was the camera. I’d even go as far as to call it awful, at least if you’re trying to actually play the game and not just watch it. Probably another element that works quite well if judged on its artistic value, but there’s no way to control it and the changes in zoom level and the way in which it follows Thora or the action can and will cause quite a number of issues. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of being too slow to reveal the larger area or follow when you move away from it, likely in an attempt to create a more powerful impact and pressure the player to stick around long enough for it to sink in, but other times it may actually cause some confusion or add to the difficulty of battles. And on that note, the fact that only Thora’s shadow is visible when she’s under or behind something else definitely doesn’t help either, though I must admit that, without being able to change the camera’s angle or rotation and without negatively affecting that sensation of scale, I don’t know what other solution the developers could have found.
Since I mentioned battles, one important reason why they are difficult is Thora’s particularly slow attack, which keeps leaving her exposed since it can’t even be stopped except by dodging. Yes, enemies tend to also be slow, usually even slower, but clicking and then needing to wait for two seconds before the strike comes doesn’t allow for any sort of flow, nor does it give you a feel of the battle, not even creating a sensation of weight. Yes, there is a quick attack, if you attack while dodging, making Thora end the roll offensively, but that attack is much weaker and also requires dodging straight towards the enemy, and there’s the time needed to roll to be taken into account as well, plus of course needing to be very much aware of the position at the end of the roll.
On top of that, you can’t save manually, the situation being automatically saved once you complete each area, so the areas that need to be explored, for the required runes, as well as the God Powers and additional health, need to be completed in one sitting, and if you die at one point, you’ll need to start over. You do keep what you gain, but still need to go through the whole thing all over again, until you can get to the end in one sitting and without dying. In addition, if you quit you’ll start back in Ginnungagap, needing to walk back to the area, and through that first part, before the actual “arena”, of those with the boss battles. There’s also the fact that, until you learn to make proper use of the fountains, restoring your health and powers only at the end, or when you find yourself unable to do so, it may be better to die early in a section’s second area, as in that case you’ll start it again fully restored, while otherwise you’ll only have what you had left when you completed the first area.
The area map isn’t exactly easy to use either, since it doesn’t indicate your position and is rough, possibly even including a few mistakes, so you’re expected to keep track of your position and figure out what those rough sketches actually represent. It’s a smaller problem than the rest, but it can nevertheless be frustrating… As was the fact that I couldn’t see the right part of the last constellation in the Northern Sky area, only sorting the matter out after starting over, since trying to complete it blindly eventually resulted in death, taking a screenshot of the image on the rock and using it to fill in the rest once I got back there. Perhaps it had to do with my resolution, 1280×1024, this possibly having something to do with some of the ways in which the camera annoyed me as well, but if a game supports a certain resolution, it should actually be playable in it. And since there’s nowhere else to put this, and it’s not like the scroll wheel is used for zooming or anything, I’d have liked to be able to use it to switch God Powers, but it’s not possible.

Overall, Jotun really is better if seen as a work of art than as a game, with an excellent graphic style, fitting atmosphere and a fair amount of attention paid to the mythology it’s based on. Judged on its merits as a game, on the other hand, it’s quite frustrating, in good part due to various design decisions, and while the camera may perhaps be partially justified by the desire to enhance the artistic value, it’s harder to find justifications for the lack of manual saving, the rough map that doesn’t even track your position, or Thora’s slow attack that doesn’t even create a feeling of weight… Except perhaps that the developers wanted to extend the game’s length to some extent, since it’s quite short otherwise, but this is most definitely not a good way to do so. As a result, I can recommend watching the game, if the one recording explored everything and did so properly, but actually playing it, perhaps not so much. Still, couldn’t possibly call it a bad game, so if you can deal with some frustration and a few tougher fights, you can play it too, even if just to list another game as finished in a relatively short amount of time.

At the start of a new year, I guess it’s time for another post like this, obviously just for my own use, likely including as a way to stay at least somewhat motivated. Again, didn’t include times for distances not covered since the previous post, so those are in that one and the one before it. Notes are in the same format, with the first value representing the distance and the second the lap on which that particular time was achieved. Do consider adding the dates as well, but whether I’ll edit this later to do that or just give up on the thought, I don’t know yet. And yes, this post again comes after the year’s first run, which was last Thursday, noticing I had a cold which seems to have turned out to be flu and knowing neither my condition nor that of the weather were going to get better too soon, but there were no relevant times then and they wouldn’t have been covered here even if there would have been.

10 km (through the park)
1. 46:39
2. 47:15
3-4. 47:22 (twice)
5. 47:26
6-7. 47:39 (twice)
8. 47:42
9. 47:43
10-11. 47:46 (twice)

16 km (through the park)
1. 1:16:54
2. 1:17:38
3. 1:18:24
4. 1:18:48
5. 1:19:26
6. 1:19:29
7. 1:19:45
8. 1:23:45
9. 1:23:51
10. 1:24:06

Half Marathon (21.1 km)
I. Bucharest Half Marathon real time
1. 1:51:54
2. 1:54:56
3. 2:02:38
II. Through the park
1. 1:48:20
2. 1:48:26
3. 1:53:11
4. 1:53:19
5. 1:56:41
6. 1:59:11

35.2 km (through the park)
1. 3:26:38

Marathon (42.2 km) – Bucharest Marathon real time
1. 4:19:40

Lap around the park lake (3.2 km)
1. 14:31 [10-1]
2. 14:50 [10-2]
3. 14:51 [10-1]
4. 14:57 [10-2]
5. 14:58 [10-1]
6. 14:59 [10-3]
7. 15:00 [10-3]
8. 15:02 [10-1]
9. 15:04 [10-2]
10. 15:05 [10-2]

Lap sector one [10-1 unless otherwise specified]
1. 4:07
2-5. 4:14 (and a second, third [10-2] and fourth time)
6-9. 4:15 (and a second, third and fourth time)
10-13. 4:16 (and a second, third and fourth time)

Lap sector two
1-2. 4:50 [10-1] (twice [10-2])
3. 4:51 [10-2]
4. 4:52 [10-1]
5-6. 4:53 [10-3] (twice [10-2])
7. 4:55 [10-1]
8. 4:56 [10-2]
9-12. 4:57 [10-2] (and a second [10-3], third [10-2] and fourth [10-2] time)

Lap sector three
1. 5:25 [10-1]
2. 5:40 [10-3]
3. 5:42 [10-1] (twice [10-1])
4-7. 5:43 [7-1] (and a second [10-1], third [10-1] and fourth [10-1] time)
8-9. 5:44 [10-3] (twice [16-5])
10-16. 5:45 [4.1] (and a second [10-1], third [10-3], fourth [10-2], fifth [16-5], sixth [16-5] and seventh [10-2] time)

Final sector on a 10 km run
1. 1:40
2-4. 1:42 (and a second and third time)
5-10. 1:43 (and a second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth time)

Final section of a Half Marathon (21.1 km) run (through the park)
1. 10:10
2. 10:31
3. 10:45
4. 10:53
5. 11:57
6. 12:07

2018’s last run was yesterday, the time being 48:23, with sector times of 4:15, 5:06, 5:54, 4:32, 5:05, 6:00, 4:37, 5:08, 5:59 and 1:47, making for lap times of 15:15, 15:37 and 15:44. Had set the alarm at noon, but woke up the second time just before 11 AM and decided to get up, eventually going out the door just after 12:45 PM. The weather was good, with a reported temperature of 5°C but quite sunny and with pretty much no wind, but there were a number of people to find my way around. Plenty of runners too, but those aren’t a problem, and one likely even helped, as he overtook me on sector three of lap two and ended up quite far ahead, but obviously couldn’t maintain the pace and I caught up to him and overtook him again on sector three of lap three, that little “race” likely making me be a little faster than I’d have been otherwise, though by then I was already pushing hard. Did feel rather out of breath most of the time, and that was the limiting factor starting even after the first lap, and definitely from sector two of lap three, when I started giving it everything, since I was in real danger of failing to stay under 48:30, so I breathed out through my mouth plenty of times and on parts of the final sector I breathed in like that too, though at the end I saw that I didn’t need to do that, since it likely helped me gain two or three seconds, not seven. The knee was really fine though, so that was nice, though another issue was that I felt like I needed to take a crap almost from the beginning, despite having managed to get rid of a bit before leaving.

After the run, since I had taken a bit of money with me, I went to the Carrefour from that area and got myself a couple of things, though it was awkward with the one I had to ask for, being sold by weight like that. I said 200 grams and the employee put 238, then seemed bothered when I said that’s too much, saying it’s hardly anything over what I had asked for, making a show of taking just a tiny bit away, asking quite angrily if that was how much it was over… Well, no, not just that much, since what she took away was just 12 grams, but it was good enough for the money I had left. Actually, even the initial quantity would have been good enough, since I found a coin at checkout and then the guy from the shop where I charged my phone card, with just 1 EUR, only to activate it again in case it’ll be needed these days, rounded down the amount he asked for, but I couldn’t have known that then and that initial amount would have put me over what I had by a tiny amount. Plus, it was 19% over what I had asked for, which is a large margin.
Either way, got back just in time for ski jumping, and to catch dad before he left, since he had said he’ll leave around 4 PM but apparently decided to go at 3 PM… And a few minutes later came back for something, and I reminded him of a couple of other things I noticed he had forgotten too. But after that, not counting the cats, I was alone for New Year’s, which is at least less bad than being alone with someone else around. And otherwise these days just mess up my routines, as I wouldn’t care for them one way or the other. The New Year is hard to ignore though, and it did bother me a bit that I didn’t have what I consider typical food for that night around, since he only brought some of those things, and quite little at that, when he came back today. But I still stuffed myself with a few things that were left and the usual stuff I make, even managing to do it all early, finishing eating just before midnight… And later I decided to start another game at the start of the year, installing Jotun and completing the first area before going to bed.

Since I’m on the topic of games, the day before I won Oblivion on another truly massive giveaway on the GOG.com forums, organized by the same guy who does these massive giveaways in which I had already won first The Witcher 3, back in spring, and then, in September, a free choice of a game, which I used for Lords of Xulima, plus that he also donated the copy of Divinity: Original Sin I requested and received from the Community Giveaway, in October. And this time he wanted to make sure that everyone who entered received something, at first adding more codes, including for Oblivion, which hadn’t been on the initial list, before the deadline and telling people to feel free to edit their requests to add anything new they want to enter for, which I did, then actually adding quite a number of additional codes at the time of the draw, for games requested by many, then asking for those who didn’t win anything to select something out of the codes that nobody, or not enough, had entered for, and then apparently offering something to those still left out, until he said that everyone who entered and whose chat settings didn’t block him from contacting them had received something, and there were messages from those who had mentioned not winning anything saying they had indeed been surprised to receive a code anyway. But I seem to have won the first code for Oblivion, not anything added at the time of the draw or later, so at least I don’t have even more reasons to feel guilty and embarrassed. Already do anyway, considering all I received from him in so short a time…

That evening was nice, but the first part of the day was rather annoying due to Micky. I had opened the window instead of turning on the exhaust hood while making tea, and despite closing the door she opened it, came into the kitchen and then jumped on the window, refusing to come down when I wanted to close it. It’s possible that she wanted to get on the cupboard, but that doesn’t go that far anymore, due to the new exhaust hood, and I was afraid she’ll fall since she was getting agitated if I tried to get her away from there, clung on to the window, harder when I tried to pick her up and get her down, which meant I couldn’t do so when I had to stretch so much to reach. So I eventually got on a chair to pick her up directly, but that allowed her to get on my shoulders, as she knows she can do with dad, having him carry her wherever she wants, and I couldn’t get her off, since when I got down and tried to pry her off she just clung on harder and sounded quite annoyed. Tried to avoid pulling her off directly, carefully pulling each claw out of my shirt until I could finally get her off, but that still left several holes in that shirt, which had been quite whole so far.
On the other hand, and back to games, Sunday I also managed to get myself to write the review for Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, submitting it on MobyGames too just before midnight, after going over it again and making a few changes. Still found one more word I had to add when I went over it one more time, that night, but I can edit things there, so just edited it in the queue, without pulling and resubmitting it. So I did manage to write it before the end of the year after all… And then even added one more post yesterday, albeit a quick one, getting the number of bands included in “New Finds” posts during one year to at least 15 for the first time.

And now I have to get to the issues mentioned at the start of the previous personal post, which started on the night of December 26 to 27, when I got back on the computer after eating, did a few things and then noticed that some things which should have been blocked by Emsisoft Anti-Malware (EAM), as privacy risks, were loading on sites, and this was how I was used to notice that the bug which caused its surf protection and behavior blocker modules to turn off invisibly had triggered again. It hadn’t happened in months, and while I had identified things which caused it to happen and really kept doing my best to avoid doing them, I doubted I had managed to completely avoid every single instance in so long, so even thought that they had fixed it at some point, even though the support guy I talk to had told me that they hadn’t worked on fixing anything about the old surf protection due to developing an entirely new surf protection module, which wasn’t included in the version I had, being on the “delayed” branch. But, of course, my first reaction at that moment was to assume I had indeed been wrong in thinking they had fixed it, that it simply happened again, and that I just had to fix it the same way I did before… Not that I really remembered how at first, so just shut it down and then started it again, before checking the post to see that the solution was to disable and then enable the protection.
Well, that’s where things got bad, because doing that completely froze my computer. Could still move the mouse, it seemed to react normally to hovering the cursor over something, the music was playing, but at first the EAM window was unresponsive, and then I noticed that I couldn’t actually do anything, couldn’t even start Task Manager, trying to close the browser made it appear to close but the music continued to play, trying to open a file from the desktop just froze the desktop as well, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing… So, after waiting for a bit, I was forced to press the reset button, at first restarting in Safe Mode and trying to run EAM from there, which at first resulted in a message stating that it’s running without active protection in Safe Mode, so to just scan and then reboot normally, but then it crashed, with a crash message that time. So rebooted normally, and EAM was disabled when I did. That was normal, I guess, so I tried to turn protection back on gradually, surf protection appearing to enable, but then when I enabled file guard as well it didn’t show up as enabled, and a bit later EAM just shut down. Rebooted again, it was still disabled, so I tried to enable all components again, and that led to another system freeze, though at the time I had Task Manager already open and could see some activity, just that at first I couldn’t start or stop anything, and eventually CPU use dropped to zero, so BOINC projects were unable to run anymore either. There was some occasional, slight, CPU use showing up, but I’m not sure if it was only from EAM processes or others as well. And I definitely couldn’t reboot normally.
One thing is that, since the bug which required disabling and enabling protection hadn’t triggered in months, I also hadn’t done so on that version, so had no way of knowing whether there was a bug in that version that prevented protection from being enabled again somehow. And, either way, if I’d have been certain that EAM was the only problem, I’d have uninstalled and reinstalled it, which I ended up forced to do later anyway, even if I kept trying to avoid that. But the thing is that I feared I had exposed myself to some malware around that time, possibly even just before noticing the problem, and that made me panic. The risk should have been very low, if it wouldn’t have been I wouldn’t have done it, but I had been aware of at least a theoretical possibility at the time and having security software disable itself and not allow protection to be enabled again right after that made me assume something bad had happened, which in turn led me to restore the system from a backup done a few days before. It’s the first time I do this and it’s a backup image made with Windows Backup, not some other software, but I didn’t sit to think too much about it. Did hope I’ll be able to restore it on another partition, in fact on another disk, but I didn’t remove the one the system was, and still is, on and it automatically restored itself there, so it overwrote everything and there’s no way to get back to what it was just then.
The system started fine after that, with EAM also enabled and appearing to update just fine, since the time of the last update was obviously before I had created that image. However, one thing I noticed right away was the fact that Windows Update forgot everything, at first noticing that it said it had never checked for or installed updates, and then that the update history was completely gone, though I still see everything if I check installed updates. Also, the search indexes were damaged or missing, so I got a bunch of errors from that in logs, but there were no more of those after that time. And between first posting this and going over it again I also noticed that the maximum disk space for system restore points was set to zero, so I wonder what else I still haven’t noticed. The loss of the update history does bother me though, since it was a simpler and much faster way to check that list, and I wonder if it’s not a sign of a more serious problem somewhere. Plus, other than the EAM crash dumps, since I have those enabled, there’s obviously no way to get logs or system information from before restoring it, and therefore no way to actually know for sure that there was no malware.
It’s extremely unlikely that there was any though, and that’s because the “problem” remained. When I checked again, it still appeared as if EAM’s surf protection didn’t work, which I couldn’t explain. I mean, I had restored a system image made days before the problem appeared, how could it still be there? And then I even switched to the “stable” branch, it seemed to update fine to the current version, yet the problem still didn’t go away… Or at least I thought it was a problem and that it wasn’t going away, because I kept checking the same way and it wasn’t blocking what it should have been, and I definitely didn’t expect a significant change introduced by a simple definitions update, around midnight on the night of December 26 to 27 in Europe, so at a time when I doubt anybody would expect important changes.

With the system at least seeming stable for the moment and no obvious signs of malware otherwise, I somehow managed to go to bed that morning, but just after 7:30 AM I had to wake up and take a shit. I had almost crapped myself due to panicking over what had happened, but decided to just try to go to sleep, and obviously my body decided that it wasn’t going to take that for long. So I sorted that matter out, then turned the monitor on just at 8 AM, saw no issues with the backup script, ran some of the things I was told to run after sending a support message before going to bed, then went back to bed and eventually got back up a bit after 1:30 PM. At that point, since I had a different EAM version and also knew that restoring from backup worked, so if all else failed I could just do that again, I risked disabling protection and enabling it again one more time, but then immediately pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del, waited some ten seconds and rebooted. If it would have wanted to freeze again, it would have likely done so, even more so since the desktop obviously showed up again for a moment before rebooting, so I took it as a good sign that I could reboot normally, though I definitely still wouldn’t care to try disabling and enabling protection again if I can help it in any way.
Well, the good signs only lasted until the system booted back up, since it again waited for a while before attempting to show the desktop and then I was greeted by the same black screen and conhost.exe crash that first happened in August. I still don’t know why it started happening then, but that assumption that it has something to do with .NET updates has since been proven wrong and the one that it has something to do with how the Intel video driver loads may be getting some evidence in its favor. Either way, while it had already been proven to happen every time if I tried to log off and back on, rebooting again after it happened once had always fixed it, so I took it as something relatively normal… Until it happened again after I rebooted one more time, and then several more times. There was just no way to see the desktop anymore, nothing worked, so I panicked all over again at first, but then realized that the only thing that had changed had been the version of EAM, so rebooted again in Safe Mode, which worked, uninstalled it, rebooted normally, no longer experiencing that issue, and then installed it again, which again seemed to work just fine… With the exception of the fact that it still wasn’t blocking what it should have blocked.

After exchanging a number of messages and sending all I could send to the support guy, I then just took it easy, trying to make sure I won’t do anything that risked triggering another problem… And then on December 29 I noticed that there hadn’t been a problem in the first place, not until I disabled protection thinking that there had been one at least! Noticed that because I checked the logs after waking up that day and saw that it had blocked a “privacy risk” the night before, so I started testing more thoroughly, and only then thought to actually check the surf protection list, finally noticing that the “privacy risk” category had been almost completely cleared, only 13 entries being left, including the test one. The support guy wasn’t aware of this having been done either, saying he’ll inquire about it and eventually revealing that the category had caused trouble and there had been talks to remove it for some time, and I’m supposedly the only user he knows of to use it in a proper way, but he definitely hadn’t been aware of any decision having been made, so it was either a mistake or somebody just deciding to do it without telling anyone, so something really troubling and which shouldn’t happen, especially in a security company, either way. He never did tell me which of the two it ended up being, just saying that he also doesn’t know why those few entries were left instead of all being removed.
So I at least knew that my security software did function as intended, and I had already confirmed before that point that the behavior blocker worked as well. However, further tests revealed that their new surf protection module doesn’t exactly work in Internet Explorer. It blocks the test entries if I try to go to them directly, but that’s about it. Tried something that’s listed as a phishing host but which I know is, in itself, safe, and it loaded just fine, and then made a few custom entries, telling it to block them, and it failed to do so every time, though they were blocked, at least under that initial scenario, in both Vivaldi and Firefox. However, while I guess I shouldn’t go into details just yet, under different testing conditions, and I’m talking of very simple and common scenarios, it completely failed to block anything, in any browser. I was also told that the new surf protection module won’t block a site if it has successfully loaded in the current session, so proper testing would require logging off and back on or rebooting, which for obvious reasons I wasn’t about to try, but it wasn’t necessary anyway, since the support guy was able to reproduce all I had reported and said he immediately passed on the information and they are looking into it, because it is indeed a huge vulnerability… Which I noticed right away but which their testers hadn’t picked up on in all this time. Not that it’d really matter to me even if it would be fixed, if it still won’t work in what remains my browser of choice, despite all the shit I get over that. Plus that their “privacy risks” category was a selling point from my point of view, considering how I made use of it, and that quite clearly won’t come back.

So, at this point, I’m pretty much waiting for results and hoping I’ll have solutions in time. There are those crash dumps made before restoring from backup, which should give them an idea about what happened that first time, but I got nothing back about them yet, nor about that conhost.exe crash… And this is the more important matter at this point, because even if there won’t be a power failure or some other problem that will require a reboot before then, there will be Windows updates next week, and if that is indeed, as it appears, caused in some way by EAM and I need to uninstall it to be able to get to the desktop and then reinstall it later, that’s definitely not a sustainable solution. In addition, there’s the matter of a new version likely to be released now and me not wanting to get switched to it, with who knows what other effects, so I’ll need to switch back to the “delayed” branch, but currently that would just put me back on the version that froze my system. The support guy said the “delayed” branch should get switched to what is currently the “stable” one around the same time the new version will be released to “stable”, but that will mean always checking, stopping updates when I’ll see the post about the new version and then relying on him to let me know when I can switch back to “delayed” and update again, since the “delayed” version changes aren’t listed anywhere. So plenty of reasons to stress and worry, as if I didn’t always worry about all sorts of things anyway.

When I wrote the previous post in this series, I definitely didn’t think I’ll add another by the end of the year and get to those planned 15 bands included this year, but here I am, adding it now. Whether anyone reading will consider this post as including four bands or just two, it’ll still be enough, since I just need two to get to 15. It’ll be a quick post though, just throwing it here, but this is still a whole lot better than not writing it at all and just throwing band names on that list, only to forget about them soon after.

The first band is Orion’s Reign, which I had apparently first stumbled upon long ago, but this year they released their second album, ten years after their first full one. But I actually stumbled upon them again now due to what seems to be their tradition of releasing metal covers of Christmas songs every year, providing a playlist with them on their YouTube channel. Now it’s very odd for me to listen to something like that, but if they would sound like their cover of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, I might, because I found myself quite stuck on that after accidentally stumbling upon it. Other than that, could also link to Nostos, but that also features Minniva, who seems to work with them a fair bit but isn’t actually a band member, so I really should link to one of their actual songs too, and for that I’ll go with Ride to War.

And then there are three projects led by the same guy, or the same two brothers at least, though one sure seems keen to put his name on them, the one I actually stumbled upon being called Marius Danielsen’s Legend of Valley Doom, not that I found anything else called “Legend of Valley Doom” to require something like this, so I’ll just call it like that. The second is Eunomia, which seems to share the story but perhaps have a more typical power metal sound, while Legend of Valley Doom seems to go for a more “epic” sound. The third, Darkest Sins, sounds rather different, and I’m not keen on that sound, but just adding it here for good measure.
To get Darkest Sins out of the way, I see two official videos posted, so I’ll just link to those, Domineer and Fear. Eunomia, on the other hand, seems to only have one official video, for Last Stand, but I’ll go with Eternity as the second pick, out of the few others I could find on a quick search, though this upload may of course vanish. As for Legend of Valley Doom, what’s released under that name is available on the guy’s Bandcamp, so you can pick what you prefer. Since I didn’t listen to what’s there now though, I’ll just select from his YouTube channel, Tower of Knowledge and Visions of the Night. What I did here doesn’t fit the rule I try to follow when selecting songs to link to, but I did say that this was a quick post.

Shadow Magic is the last game in the “classic” part of the Age of Wonders series and intended as a direct sequel to The Wizard’s Throne. For the most part, anyone who played the previous game will immediately find it familiar, in both good and bad ways. However, there have been changes and additions, some of them important, and while the additions generally seem positive, even if in some cases only in the sense of offering a few more “toys” to play with for those who care to do so, most of the changes bothered me, very much so in some cases.

Of course, the most important aspect for a turn-based game is to create that “one more turn” feeling, which it does quite well. Same as for The Wizard’s Throne, only played the campaign, without trying any of the included single scenarios, playing around in the editor or having anything to do with multiplayer, at least this last part having always been the rule, but the 16 scenarios, 13 if you skip the tutorial ones, do take quite a while to complete and they kept me interested the large majority of the time. Sticking to classic turn mode, after I finished my turn I waited for the AI and checked what movements I could see, maybe fought a battle or two if attacked, then at the start of the new turn it was all too easy to go through build orders, possibly select the next thing to research if one completed and there were more items left, maybe capture a structure or grab a resource that was in easy reach, then I ended up thinking of the next troop movements, then since I did so I was tempted to carry them out as well, possibly also fight some battles that seemed easy… Unless major battles or particularly tricky situations gave me pause, before I knew it that “one more turn” was over and I was looking at the next.
There are no different paths to take or optional scenarios within the different sections of the campaign, but the campaign is nevertheless interesting, also keeping things fresh by switching wizards and races every three scenarios, and the different paths to victory and optional parts are in the scenarios themselves, more attention seeming to have been paid to this. In fact, victory conditions often do not involve defeating the enemies. The option is available and rewarding, even more so in terms of improving heroes and finding good items, but tends to be the hard way to win, enemy forces typically being overwhelming and scenarios often being designed to be won by using certain routes and completing other specific goals. Also, if in my review for The Wizard’s Throne I was complaining of scenarios hardly having any story of their own, now there are quite a number of scripted events and bits of text to read, often in the form of a short speech when units join, cities switch to your side or certain locations are reached. Still nothing to write home about and plagued by an issue I’ll mention under complaints, but it’s an improvement, as is the fact that units do have descriptions this time around… Though they seem to have forgotten to add one for one Syron hero.
The final scenario does require defeating the enemy, but that scenario is quite something, offering plenty of options and emphasizing just about every feature of the game, be it good or bad. And there are quite a number of features and strategic options to choose from, the different races and magic spheres tending to favor somewhat different strategies. The Nomads in particular bring some interesting mechanics, but other new races and units, and even some of the familiar ones, can be notable from this point of view as well, and the Shadow World only adds to this, though whether what is added by it appeals to you or not depends on how you like to play. Overall, I do think that the races are better balanced, the differences making it so it’s not a matter of the better race or unit of a certain tier, but the better one for a particular situation. The new item forges also add to the number of options for those who care to use them, though the created items are limited to three attributes and reasonably good items are expensive and take a long time to create, so I for one did without them after the novelty wore off.
Still on the topic of positive changes, while not massive, there seem to have been some improvements to the AI, and the odds remain stacked so much against the player that a truly good AI would make the game impossible, so the fact that it’s not exactly smart can often be forgiven. But I’d say even more notable improvements were made to the information offered to the player. Problems remain, but those largely have to do with information that you’ll probably figure out after a while, and even that was improved, for example the effects of skills now being listed when you customize a wizard. However, the most important change when it comes to the information provided is the fact that what you really do need to know very often, the base values that apply for a combat skill, are now listed when you hover the mouse over it, with the effective ones listed after selecting it, when hovering the mouse over the target.
Otherwise, the positive aspects I pointed out in my review of the previous game remain true. The difficulty can be quite high, even early on, but if it seems impossible you probably missed something, as once you understand what’s going on it doesn’t seem unfair and it is rewarding when you make it, one way or the other. The massive battles that can take place due to the fact that all units in adjacent hexes enter combat continue to set the series apart, teleportation gates provide additional tactical options once you manage to build them, and the fact that city defenders can now freely position themselves within the city at the start of the battle is an improvement. And, while potentially powerful, heroes are still units like any others, not requiring armies to hide behind nor being necessary for other units to be able to go anywhere, which concepts constantly frustrated and, quite frankly, baffled me in other TBS series. Other units are more important now, but it remains possible to play most of the game as an RPG with an added strategy element if you truly wish to do so, without this hindering those who have other preferences.

Since I mentioned heroes, I’ll start my complaints with the fact that, due to how you can now choose attribute increases when gaining a level, they’re significantly weaker than in the previous game. Others may prefer them this way, but since I do like to play this sort of games as RPGs with an added tactical element, with heroes typically handling the offense and particularly tricky situations and other units the defense, it’s an unpleasant change from where I’m standing. And this reduced power isn’t compensated by more control in their development, since gaining a level still offers three random options to select from, not a free choice, and at times you’re not even offered three valid choices, since it’s possible to have one option show up twice or existing or even weaker abilities, such as protection from something that the hero is already immune to, to be among the choices.
Still on the matter of weaker units, breath and some other special attacks are now limited. This does tend to only apply to those abilities that broke the balance and some of the new ones that could do so, the Human Air Galley for example remaining the only unit capable of defeating any number of melee ground units without any risk of retaliation and in fact even gaining the ability to ram and bring down enemy air units, but when you’re used to certain strategies and just want to play the campaign, not go against other players, it’s rather unpleasant… As is the fact that you can’t make use of a unit’s healing ability outside combat anymore. There is some automated use of it at the end of the turn, but I was never certain if it worked the same as in The Wizard’s Throne and, either way, that can’t make up for no longer being able to manually select which other unit to use it on. And while I’m here, I’ll also mention the fact that units in transports now also use movement points, at a fixed rate of two per move. It does make sense, since if a turn covers a certain amount of time then that time passes for all units, not only for one, but in that case shouldn’t the transported units use a set percentage of their movement points instead of a fixed number? And this is just a thought, but if the idea was to make some changes that make sense, in a realistic way, shouldn’t flying units be penalized underground, and be unable to fly over stalactites? Also, as more than just a thought, it would definitely help to be able to arrange units in the field as well, not only city defenders, even in the sense of selecting their positions in a stable formation, not before each battle.
However, the change that caused me the most trouble is not among those mentioned above, but the automatic surrender. In Shadow Magic, units that face overwhelming enemies tend to surrender automatically, which causes all sorts of problems. This can happen even to attacking units, or to units defending cities, or to units that couldn’t normally be struck by their enemies. It doesn’t matter that you can use spells and tactics to win, or at least to force a draw; it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to wear down the enemy, sacrificing some units to weaken the enemy force and possibly buy some time; it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to gain a bit more experience in some easy battles; units that wouldn’t normally stand a chance in a straight battle are likely to just surrender automatically. This completely ruined the strategy of defending cities I used in The Wizard’s Throne, that of finishing up on gaining experience late during a scenario, after getting the enemy under control, or that of harassing a more powerful enemy earlier during a scenario, and it caused me a few massive losses, including cities and access to entire areas of the map, despite the fact that tactics and magic would have made the battles in question not only possible, but in fact basically certain to be won.
When it comes to the story, this time around the problem is that much of it tries hard, way too hard, desperately so, to be funny, which definitely doesn’t fit the grim setting and events. What comes before and after each scenario is all right, but most of what you get to read during the scenarios themselves is a joke, literally, and that also goes for most unit descriptions, which just doesn’t seem right at all. Some occasional comic relief works, making a game where the whole point is to be humorous also works, but when you have a story about terrible wars, desperate refugees, the threat of complete enslavement and basically the possible end of the world and yet almost everyone either keeps making jokes or, well, is a joke, often as a way to point out stupidity or insanity or both, it really doesn’t fit and may even leave a rather bitter taste.
Otherwise, there are some technical problems to be aware of as well. What I played was the GOG.com version and I’m not sure if they’re specific to it or not, but one thing I wondered about was why does such an old game need to constantly use all of one CPU core while it’s running. The big technical problem, however, is the fact that the game will become increasingly choppy, then start simply exiting, with no crash message, apparently when switching between the turns of AI opponents, and eventually no longer start at all the more time passes since the last reboot. For those who turn their computers off daily, or at least reboot regularly, this wouldn’t even be noticed, but since mine is usually only off if the power fails or I need to change some component or move the desk and only rebooted to install Windows updates or in case of a serious problem, it meant that even if I got used to it being choppy, which can start to happen within days, I was forced to take a break every month, the point at which it no longer started tending to come after about three weeks or so. This was one important, and perhaps the most important, reason why it took me close to two years to finish the campaign, since sometimes I didn’t feel like getting back to it after the next reboot, or perhaps started or got back to some other game and didn’t bother with this one again until I either finished or took a long time off that one.
Other than that, the bug that makes you sometimes need to do something else, such as capture a structure, in order for the game to realize that you completed a quest from one of the Spirits remains, as does the one causing negotiations to be ignored if the AI partner would have accepted but doesn’t have the mana required for the transfer. And the fact that when an ally joins you in battle they control their units, but when you join an ally you don’t control yours and in fact don’t see the battle at all, only being presented with the outcome, also remains unchanged and just as unpleasant. In addition, while the issues are minor, often just a matter of some text that seems out of place, a few of those scripted events that make scenarios nicer may not quite work as intended, and pushing past the intended path to victory and striving to defeat the enemy instead may cause even more little oddities.
And to finish with the complaints, despite the improvements I mentioned, the AI definitely won’t win any prizes, and there are still some problems with the information received, albeit much fewer and less important than in the previous game. When it comes to this information, for example I finished the game without really knowing what each level of a magic sphere did and, more specifically, what being a specialist actually implied, only thinking to do a quick search and get the exact information while thinking of writing this review, because the game itself didn’t provide it. And then there was the final Syron scenario, which on top of being listed as “very hard” but in fact being very easy, possibly even the easiest if you quickly understand how it works and play it right, has a victory condition that isn’t as clear as it should be. It’s explained at the beginning, and there is another way to win it if you “cheat” a bit, but after again taking a break and then just reading again what showed up when I checked the objective, I wasn’t quite sure I correctly remembered what I had to do and had to check a guide to confirm it.

Overall, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic definitely has problems, solving a few of those which had plagued The Wizard’s Throne but doing nothing about others and adding some notable ones on its own, but it even now remains a pretty good fantasy TBS, having positive elements that other games in this genre continue to lack or even specifically reject, lacking some negative ones that are otherwise unfortunately all too common, and definitely creating that “one more turn” feeling that is mandatory for the genre. As such, despite the changes I was bothered by, the completely out of place determination to constantly insert humor in such a grim setting, and even the technical problems that I had to put up with and which kept forcing me to take breaks, I did finish it and can say that for the most part I enjoyed it.