Disciples of Steel

[russellnash]

I played the RPG Disciples of Steel to the end.



It has a first person perspective for dungeons and third person for combat, a little like Curse of the Azure bonds.
The intro gives you a good clue of where to go to complete the game. The game is initially very hard , but it becomes much more playable when you play Peter Petari's Atari Games Adapted version which has a save anywhere function. I found it on his latest disk image. All versions I have found can be played form hard disk.
The game has a problem in that it crashes when you enter the palace of Kitari. This stops you from completing the quest lines for this and two other palaces that have related quests. It doesn't stop you from finishing the game. All versions I have found to download have this problem. I have never seen this game for sale so who knows if the original had this problem or not. It is annoying because I didn't want the game to end, but it took about 3 months playing time anyway. For me it is one of the best RPGs ever.
I have attached a walkthrough which as far as I can tell is no longer available on the internet.

[Darklord]

I remember this game from back in the day.

IIRC, aren't some of the icons for characters almost exactly like members of the band KISS?

[russellnash]

Yes, it looks like Megasoft were KISS fans. The portraits are generally ugly. Interestingly it was developed in the USA specifically for the Atari ST. I can imagine that getting a few negative comments at the time. It came out in the UK in early 1992 if I remember correctly. At that time the ST was being talked down big time, but it was a good year for games, up until my STE was stolen in September.
I have been playing the games that I either missed out on completely or only played briefly at the time, especially the RPGs. They are also more playable now due to hardware and more hard drive playability.

[Darklord]

I remember when it came out. I was really excited about it. I'm pretty sure I bought a new
copy at one point in time. IIRC, I really liked the initial part of the game, setting up the
characters and the interface, but when I got into the game itself, I was a little disappointed
and never continued it.

It's a really great time for ST gaming, IMHO, with multiple mass storage devices available, and
almost every release now converted to HD use, along with optimizations for later versions of
TOS, increased RAM, trainers, etc,...

As well as a few titles actually being redone and significantly improved.

[russellnash]

Yes, it is a great time for Atari ST gaming. The problem with the game is that it is too difficult and therefore hard to make progress. Initially most opponents are too strong, you have to try to start against something relatively weak like the Jabberlings. The save anywhere function lets you attempt different tactics by reloading in seconds and therefore survive the encounters better until you are stronger. The cleric ends up with a super powerful spell eventually.
It is a shame that you haven't got an original copy anymore, then you could create one character, take the boat to Kitari and see if it loads or not. Most of my original games are gone too.

[Darklord]

That's really too bad about that one crash point. I wonder if anyone has mentioned that to Peter?

He's actually pretty quick about fixing problems. I might mention that to him the next time I'm
logged into his forum.

[Darklord]

Okay, I was on P.Pera's forum a short time ago and I posted a message
about the game crashing where you mentioned.

I'll report back here if/when there's any info...

[russellnash]

Sorry, I have only just read your post. Yes he knows about it, I generally give him feedback when I complete a game. He does tend to fix things that he is able to fix immediately. Probably because of the rarity of the game we will never know if it was in the original or to do with corrupted disk images, for example.

[Darklord]

Oh, okay - I guess I just "reinforced" the report.