The Dink Network

I'll get into what changed my mind later.

The sequel picks up right where Dink left off. Now he's in New Derlicon and tasked with finding a magic crystal that was stolen from a museum which apparently only had the crystal on display. I think the badguys took the entire exhibit, too. He also found out that Libby from Stonebrook was kidnapped by blue soldiers.

So already, we've got more going on that in Historical Hero I. The first only had a rescue mission, a very light goblin conflict, and an incompetent group of villains who want to rule the world for no reason. In fact, that's not even close to all we've got going on in this game. We've also got the threat of Armageddon happening because the Disturbed Rats are back and BatHat is somehow leading them. BatHat's plan, I think, is to release a demigod called AvoMal who the Ancient Gods warned Dink of. AvoMal is the Second Dragon King or some crap, and there's also another villain who is only mentioned called Armageddon who is the father of Dink's evil twin, Atraquis.

This one feels much more like an adventure when you factor in the world threatening magic beings like AvoMal and Atraquis.

The first big chunk of this game, however, is an absolute drag. It even starts out with fetch quests to be able to make your way to New Tutras which is the worst town I've seen in a dmod, I think. This place is a giant square that feels empty, is covered in shit, and has two dead ends. To the north, a guard won't let you passed because King Olympos is setting up some crappy festival to celebrate nothing. His daughter was also kidnapped by a dragon, so I have no clue why he's setting this thing up at all. To the west, there's another guard blocking your way to he goblin lands. Yes...goblins. Again. This time, they play a larger role but they are still a side thing. But at least they're there to expand the events in this game I suppose.

After ducking around for a very long time in New Tutras, I finally got to pass the bridge to face Olympos. The next task was to rescue the princess from a dragon. A classic scenario that I remember being fine with.

What I was not fine with, though, was the dragon boss. This guy was not a good boss. What he does is occasionally stick out from the sides of the screen to blast a week fireball at you. Sometimes, he flies through the middle of the screen to give you a slightly better, but still not very good chance to hurt him. Why is that not a very good chance? Because during the course of the fight, spikers fly out from the top to chase Dink around and they do huge damage, so I had to keep my distance and throw fireballs at them. When the dragon flew by, the spikers were in the way.

The game didn't improve afterwards when I had to battle a goblin war on my own. The guards at the battlefield gave me 6 minutes to sweep the area and kill every single goblin there was. The first few times, I got killed by the catapult even though I returned to the place the guards told me to before they go ahead and launch the catapult at the goblin town. They didn't say to kill every single one of the goblins, so I ended up coming back only when I was low on time. I don't know why the catapult launches a nuclear bomb with an invisible explosion and no sound or why the guards were at a spot endangered by it, but that's what happened.

Eventually, I killed all the goblins after I left to get the acid rain spell which is actually a pretty alright spell as opposed to it in the original game which is absolutely worthless.

Next boss - a boring damage sponge. Now I had to battle the goblin leader who would take a few hits and then enter an invincibility state that lasted about 9 hours while he spun around in one place while I stood back to wait. I had to mostly wait here as my acid rain charged up, but it barely did damage. Hellfire worked much better, but it was still a game of waiting. On top of that, there was a lot of stuff in the way while I ran around, so that wasn't helping.

Speaking of stuff in the way, the goblin lands has a lot of stuff in the way. Almost all the places do, I guess, but the goblins lands even had stuff placed at the edge of screens so I couldn't enter them from certain places without becoming stuck.

Finally, we get to where the game became much better. After I farmed gold and gained several levels, I took down Hades and received the Hades Sword. This thing is the Nightmare Sword from Cloud Castle 2 - hyper boots + clawsword or lightsword I guess. Now the game is incredibly easy. I can tear through anything with ease. At this point, I was going through the game much quicker since there was no more mindless wandering to do and I really just had one final dungeon to enter. There, I also had no issues with combat - the polar opposite of what happened in the final dungeon in Historical Hero I.

Now, here's where the bosses became fun. I imagine they would be much better if I didn't have the Hades Sword, but whatever. The four wizards including BatHat was easy as hell. It was just a fight with a dragon. The fight with Luna, a new villain was a speed-charged fight with flashy fire spells, but also very easy. Afterwards, it was time to face off with AvoMal.

At first, I thought I was supposed to lose this fight since there was no way to harm him. So I stood around for a while and let him kill me which took a while since I was only capable of taking 1 damage at a time at this point. Didn't work. So then I thought I needed to complete this scroll a little girl was selling at New Tutras for 5000 gold pieces. I tried leaving the castle but Dink wouldn't let me.

At this point, I think I looked it up and found that you need to wait it out and kill 10 dragons before AvoMal takes you into the sky to have the true final battle with him. Ok, not really obvious.

Now the final battle with AvoMal is probably the coolest fight I've yet seen in a dmod. He takes you to a tower where it's pouring down rain and there's occasional flashes of lightning. He does similar things in this fight, but he actually walks around now.

...he can also be hurt suddenly, so I ended up crushing him easily.

But even that wasn't the final boss. Before being able to leave, I had to fight Atraquis one more time. But this time, he's fused with Seth and AvoMal...because. And he could do it because. Uh.

Whatever, Dragon Kings are easy.

So to put it bluntly, this started off feeling worse than the first I think, but the action picked up and there was some pretty flashy battles going on at the end, so I guess it's not too bad after all. I don't think I'd tolerate playing through it again with that huge chunk of bad, though.

Also, Hydra Fire. If you get that spell, have fun being a touhou boss or something.