| 5 star: | | (21) | | 4 star: | | (35) | | 3 star: | | (6) | | 2 star: | | (1) | | 1 star: | | (0) |
| Average Rating: 
Number of Reviews: 6
Write a review |
1-6 of 61 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Rezrov review. Read. Rejoice!, February 2, 2024Steve Meretzky took over the reins from Marc Blank and Dave Lebling in his second adventure after the wildly popular Planetfall. His style is quite evident here. While telling perhaps a weaker story with a significantly less serious atmosphere than Enchanter, Sorcerer far exceeds it as a sequel thanks to a more user-friendly design and some truly excellent puzzles.
You’ve been promoted in the interim and are more or less the right-hand man of Belboz, the head of the Guild of Enchanters. One morning he goes missing and in your search for him you discover he may be in the thralls of an evil sorcerer. And, unfortunately, that is pretty much the plot. In fact, the only times you can encounter this evil presence yourself is at the beginning if you fall asleep at home (which is never clearly explained) and at the very end.
Upon starting I was immediately annoyed as I was told I was getting thirsty and hungry, my biggest complaint from the first story. But I was soon relieved to discover a magic spell that obviated the need to eat or drink. That this new spell was even necessary was a rather pointlessly cruel joke, but at the same time a humble acknowledgement of a past mistake. The sleep daemon still exists and for the same reason: to get incredibly subtle hints for later in the game. As the game has no time limit, you can sleep just about anywhere when you get tired without worry.
Most of the game takes place in the land where the evil sorcerer hails, and it is extra-Zorkified as decrepit castles and coal mines butt right up against a gnome-run amusement park with a casino and a flume ride. Most locations are vividly portrayed even if as a totality it’s an incoherent mess. As such the map is easy to remember.
The amazing thing about Sorcerer is how fairly it treats the player, a rarity in 1984. There are plenty of walking dead scenarios you can get yourself into, but they’re pretty much either obvious right before or right afterwards. For example, you can drink a potion when you don’t need it, and it’s immediately clear you need to restore. Or you might enter an area that kills you, but the signs were clear that potential danger lied ahead. But beyond that, there is an optional spell that allows you to essentially create a save point, reviving you to that location if you kick the bucket. And the really cool aspect is that not only is the spell there to rescue you, it can also be manipulated to solve a few different puzzles in the game. While the “normal” way to the solve these puzzles may be more satisfying to some, I was happy to be rewarded with what my brain felt was clever in the moment.
Sorcerer rewards the player in many other ways as well. While there are many red herrings, when you attempt to solve puzzles in logical ways and fail you are almost always rewarded with an amusing retort as to why it didn’t work. The side effect of this was that I trusted the game to communicate well and I never went to a walkthrough when I was stuck. In fact, to this point it’s the first Infocom game where I didn’t require at least one hint (outside of A Mind Forever Voyaging, which is generally puzzleless).
And to top it all off, there are some damn fine puzzles. Two double as copyright protection, but you still must use logic to correctly interpret the game’s lore from the written materials. Believe it or not, there’s a maze that is actually really cool, a statement I may never make again. Finally, an unexpected time travel puzzle near the end is extraordinarily satisfying to solve.
There are three endings depending on how you play out the endgame, with the two better endings requiring you having solved previous puzzles. They’re well written, if a little underwhelming from a story perspective, an expected outcome given the utter lack of plot progression throughout the game.
For those who loved Enchanter, Sorcerer may feel like a bit of a letdown as it veers wildly in tone and barely does anything to further the Zorkian lore. Thankfully, the excellent spellcasting system was maintained; so if you’re mostly just in it for the puzzle-solving you’ll be right at home.
1 of
1 people found the following review helpful:
Solid, but not mind-blowing, October 11, 2022The main thing I enjoyed about Sorcerer was simply that there was nothing to hate about it. It is a solid game, in the best Meretzky style: clear progress from start to end, many simple puzzles, with some interesting mildly-complex ones, and a clear and satisfying ending. In fact, this is a very strongly average game in every aspect I can think of (which is definitely not a bad thing for 1984 --- the norm was way worse).
I feel that this was maybe the easiest Infocom game I've played so far (maybe easier than Wishbringer and Hollywood Hijinx; it's just very well-written and consistently reasonable). Actually, one thing that bothered me a bit was that many puzzles were just too simple. For example: You find a scroll with a spell that affects dogs, you find a dog, you cast the spell on the dog, and that's it (not an actual in-game example). With the exception of one solution ((Spoiler - click to show)Throwing guano inside the cannon), which took me a few days and some brute forcing, everything else was pretty straightforward. Even the infamous early-game thing that blocked many people seemed ok to me; it's all heavily hinted and there is even an in-game hint system, so to speak ((Spoiler - click to show)the vezza spell).
All in all, I heartily recommend it to anyone who wants to actually feel good about finishing an Infocom game without a walkthrough and without banging your head against the wall. This is probably one of your best shots!
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
The Sagging Middle of the Enchanter Saga, August 18, 2022I've learned that my disappointment with Sorcerer is a minority opinion, but it has garnered its share of ambivalent reviews over the years. Obviously, Steve Meretzky making puzzles with Enchanter's magic system could never culminate in a bad game, or even a mediocre one, but the result can match neither Enchanter's innovations nor Spellbreaker's moments of transcendence. It is, in other words, a good game wedged between two brilliant ones.
Its chief problem is a lack of coherence. The Zork trilogy is held together by a kind of subsumed mournfulness. Elsewhere, the recently abandoned habitations and escalating ambiance of dread in Enchanter create a sense of the stakes. Sorcerer feels aimless by comparison, and the player may forget their goal altogether in favor of riding the rides at Bozbarland, a surprisingly thorough (in those days of constrained computing resources) implementation of an amusement park.
That isn't to say that there aren't mechanical satisfactions. Sorcerer's two most famous puzzles deserve their reputations. They also are remarkably different. One relies on intuition, while the other requires careful mapping and spatial awareness. I have often said that Steve Meretzky was Infocom's most reliable puzzlemaker, and Sorcerer offers no counterarguments.
A frequent complaint is that something must be completed in the first (I just checked) 27 moves or so, and it isn't completely clear that this is so. It's true! If that kind of old-school meanness could turn you off of the game entirely, then (Spoiler - click to show)prioritize finding a use for the matchbook.
It's the weakest of what I call the Zork saga (the two complete trilogies in that universe), but that's a very high ceiling. Sorcerer is a four-star game among five-star games, and worth a play for those interested in Infocom's magic system or the Zork universe.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Enchanter levelled up , May 31, 2021My friend and I have been using this Pandemic period to play the Enchanter trilogy over Discord. We just finished Sorcerer and we have previously finished Planetfall/Stationfall.
This game was one of our favorites Infocom games we've played. It has a definite story arc, from the tense intro to the final "chapter". Because there were so many red herrings (puzzles that don't need to be solved and items that are never needed) we didn't even know we were in the endgame until we looked at our score and realized we were close.
There were several unique puzzles we hadn't seen before (both areas which had maze-like mechanics). Unlike in Enchanter, we never had to look at any Invisiclue hints to solve them. The setting succeeded in giving us the feeling of constant danger, particularly when we ended up in the super creepy Chamber of Living Death.
A quibble we had were some areas that felt like randomized deaths that were more annoying than fun. (I was ready to give up on getting anything useful from (Spoiler - click to show)the slot machine when we kept getting killed over and over randomly before my partner's perseverance finally paid off.) Otherwise this is a classic worth playing.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Enchanter's nightmarish older brother, February 3, 2016Sorcerer is the "middle child" of the Enchanter trilogy, and like many middle installments, it tries to go beyond the old game into new territory while developing some aspects.
This game is still focused on scrolls, but it adds potions and many more Zorkian pick-up-and-carry-around items. Many items are items from MIT Zork which have been repurposed.
The writing is, in fact, nightmarish. There is a nightmare early in the game, and don't try sleeping in the first area! You later visit some particularly horrible places, where there are countless ways to die. The game is filled with subtly creepy locations, like (Spoiler - click to show)an underground carnival. And losing is particularly unpleasant.
This game has many red herrings, and one notorious unwinnable state (you must obtain a certain item in the first 25 turns of the game. The game doesn't tell you that).
The game is famous for (Spoiler - click to show)its glass maze, and for its time-travel puzzle. Unfortunately, I had heard about both before, and so I wasn't as impressed by them.
I got up to 205 points before using a walkthrough. I played this game on iOS's Lost Treasures of Infocom.
2 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Very Nice!, March 17, 2010Sorcerer takes place a few years after Enchanter, and with the same PC. Now you live in the guild, a full enchanter, but your mentor has gone missing, which you find out after you sleep in one day.
As old IF classics go, you will definately feel some Abandonitus as you explore the ruins of an old fort and part of the GUE. However, you now get all kinds of nifty spells to mess around with, and potions too!
This game has a few of the best puzzles I've ever seen, and some very ANNOYING ones that require feelies to solve (such as a chest in the basement with a random code, the code requires the feelies to solve).
The hunger puzzle is there at first, and there is a unique variant on the inventory management puzzle (which reminds me of a part in Zork I). There are some scenes where you might randomly die just by entering the room (which is a pain, though you can avoid this- if you know about it- by casting the right spells ahead of time). The outer-world-knowledge "issue" is bypassed by providing you with a resurrection spell- if you cast it before hand, you can be brought back from death (so that out of world knowledge might still be player knowledge!). This also provides a useful solution to one of the harder puzzles. There is also a beautiful variant on the hunger puzzle- the breathing puzzle, very well implemented (and very big pain! The first time I played this game it was online, and I couldn't save! Imagine playing the whole game over!).
I would put this as the best of the Enchanter Trilogy, and better than the Zork trilogy also. (The game even has 2 possible "success" endings, though one is obviously better than the other.) A great play!
1-6 of 6 | Return to game's main page