The Dink Network

Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays All the Rest of the D-Mods

If you don't have an account, just leave the password field blank.
Username:
Password:
Subject:
Antispam: Enter Dink Smallwood's last name (surname) below.
Formatting: :) :( ;( :P ;) :D >( : :s :O evil cat blood
Bold font Italic font hyperlink Code tags
Message:
 
 
January 17th 2015, 08:02 PM
custom_coco.gif
CocoMonkey
Bard He/Him United States
Please Cindy, say the whole name each time. 
336: Quest for Dorinthia: Special Edition Author: Bill Szczytko Release Date: June 17, 2012
"Life is full of joy and breasts."

REPUTATION NOTE: This D-Mod is one of the select group with a score of 9.0 or better (9.2) on The Dink Network.

Again, there's just one review - Leprochaun again - giving it that score.

Bill released "Quest for Dorinthia" and its sequel back in 2000, at which point D-Mods were still finding their footing. The quality of D-Mods has come a long way since those days. There were some highlights in 1998 and 99 - POTA, Crosslink, Quest for Cheese, Dink's Doppleganger - but for the most part, solid Dink adventures were hard to come by. "Dorinthia 2" was a top-three D-Mod when it came out. Heck, even the first one might've been, depending on your feelings about certain early D-Mods.

When I played the original, though, I had some complaints. I was annoyed by the aimless wandering and noted a variety of bugs including a couple of showstoppers. I also complained about the map (too monotonous, tiling errors), things that instantly kill you, and the way secrets and cheating protection are handled. Considering how frustrated I was while playing, I was mildly surprised how nice I was to it overall, but that's fine. It came out in early 2000, at which point hardly anybody had done something like this.

Bill set out to fix some of the worst bugs in "Quest for Dorinthia" and soon found himself doing more than that, to where he felt a new release instead of an update was in order. "Quest for Dorinthia: Special Edition" was released 12 years, 3 months and 28 days after "Quest for Dorinthia 2," the longest gap between releases for an author at the time by a mile. The description says that "Special Edition" fixes bugs, adds new quests, towns and a secret area and removes much of the "endless wandering."

Even after reading that description, I wasn't expecting "Quest for Dorinthia: Special Edition" to be as big of an overhaul as it is. You can certainly recognize locations, events and lines of dialogue from the original, but a big portion of the content here is new, and what's left from the original is often edited heavily and in some cases, replaced entirely. I went back and started up the old "Dorinthia" for comparison, and the start of the game is totally unrecognizable. The new intro is much longer, and the first section, where you help some talking trees, seems to have been re-mapped from scratch.

QFD: SE is a longer and better D-Mod than the original. The old "Dorinthia" took me barely over two hours. "Special Edition" took me three and a half, which may still be a bit on the light side for an "epic," but I am so done with that topic. The difference is even more than those times make it sound, because I spent a lot of time wandering around lost in the original, whereas "Special Edition" keeps you moving with a purpose that is usually clear and provides multiple means of traveling quickly. There is a lot more stuff in the new one.


Here's the map for the original "Quest for Dorinthia..."


...And here's the Special Edition. See the difference?

Pretty much all of my complaints about the original have been addressed. The map looks much more interesting and varied now, and all of the quests and sidequests now make the game feel like one that should have a huge map instead of a game that would be better if it were much smaller. Dialogue I found bad or objectionable has been edited or removed. The story about evil wizards kidnapping a king and his daughter is still basically the same, but it's now more involved. You see more of the consequences of what's going on.


No longer is this game full of grassy screens that look plain and totally identical to one another.


I've never seen the different tilesets combined in quite this sort of way.

Still, "Special Edition" could have used more work to fix bugs and problems. There were a couple of spots where I got stuck in hardness. There were a bunch of hardness errors, including several places where I was able to walk on water. Quite a few objects have incorrect depth dot settings, and there are a few places where Dink can walk right through objects like beds or rocks. There was an NPC and a sign that didn't say anything. The inventory filling up is a big problem. It should be possible to sell items, and certain items (the mushrooms, for example) ought to stack in one inventory slot instead of taking up a slot for each one you have. Some of the tiling problems from the original map are still present.


Dink is perplexed by his emergent Jesus-like abilities. You know, every time this sort of issue comes up, I get "Omaha" by Counting Crows stuck in my head, but I already quoted it in a caption ages ago.

There are new secrets as well as new main quests. I think I found nearly all of them, although there's a quest where you're supposed to find two special books and I found them both, but never managed to use them for anything. One secret you find in the same location as a secret from the original game (which I hated - thankfully, Bill realized it didn't make any sense and took it out). You can find "Bill Szczytko's House." Inside are some reflections on coming back to D-Mod development after 12 years and a warp to a short section that was developed for the original game but left out. It's one of the neater secrets I've seen in a D-Mod because of the story behind it.


I wonder if this segment had the new walls back in 2000. That would have been pretty impressive at the time.

The old secret where you found the fireball (which, as Bill himself points out, didn't make sense because you were being helped by one of the main villains) has been replaced by a new, less hidden quest. You visit an island populated by fairies (they're called "fireflies" here), who tell you that their magic scrolls have been stolen. You have to visit a hidden school of magic and grill the students to find out who stole them, using their smaller admissions against one another. It turns out these kids have got a lot of drama going on!

By the way, early on you're given an option to fight some knights or run away. You're supposed to run away, triggering a cutscene, but I fought them. They have 2000 HP and will kill you in one hit, but after they attacked each other for a while, I was able to spend a long time punching the remaining knight and win anyway. Nothing happens! How disappointing is that? At least I got to put my "Bill & Kill" impossible battle training to work.

A new feature that I really appreciated was a flute that instantly takes you to a bunch of major locations once you've visited them. Sometimes, it'll malfunction (this is intentional, not a bug) and take you to a different spot instead, but I actually found this helpful in exploring the map.

Some of the creepiness I noted in the old version has been toned down, but don't worry. Fans of raunch will still find plenty of it here.


no no no no no no no no no


I'm not going to answer that question.


Get thee behind me, jailbait.

Despite some lingering issues, "Quest for Dorinthia: Special Edition" is in a different class than the D-Mod it's based on. Definitely play it instead of the old one.


You know, I'm not sure what brought me back either. I'll say it again - Dink has a way of pulling people back in.