Excellent sequel. In Trial by Fire, the designers decided to take a major shift in the setting. Moving away from the traditional medieval fantasy of the first game, QfG 2 takes place in the home of the Katta, the scorching desert town of Shapeir. With a new setting also came many improvements over the first; such as improved combat, music, sound effects, more involved story, and some quality of life improvements. First let's discuss the story.

Our hero travels to the desert land of Shapeir on a magic carpet ride. You are told that there are four elementals that will attack the town and must be stopped; fire, air, earth, and water. To stop these elementals, you must gain the necessary knowledge from the different guides around the city and acquire the necessary resources. You also learn of Shapeir's adjacent city, Raseir. After capturing the elementals and saving the town of Shapier, you must travel to the city of Raseir, which is a darker, rougher town to its counterpart that is ruled by a dictatorship. In this rough town you learn about how tough it is to live here and then are soon thrown into the dungeon and then pulled into the villain Ad Avis's plot. The final act of the story with the Raseir and Ad Avis is a little rushed, but it is climactic and a satisfying way to end the game. There is also another goal that the hero can optionally follow that involves becoming a paladin at the end of the game. If you commit enough honorable acts and increase your honor stat enough over the course of the game, you become a paladin in the end. It adds some interesting moral choices to make along the way that the first game didn't have with a satisfying pay off at the end, if you choose to walk that path. The pacing of the story progresses on a day to day basis. This can lead to some problems from a gameplay perspective, but works well from a writing stand point. Having important story events, such as the elementals appearing, occuring on specific days, means you don't have much control over when to deal with these problems. This makes the threat against the city feel more real and dangerous toward the hero and the player.

A familiar looking space ship flys by.

Next is music and sound effects. This game was released a year later and they had a higher budget and improved production values this time around. This led to some higher quality and improved music and sound effects. The first game had excellent music as well, but the sequel really took things up a notch. Not just improved music, but there are also some atmospheric sounds like the wind blowing through the sand in the desert, or the musician playing the flute to the snake in the plaza, or the sounds of fire and boiling water in the apothecary shop. It all adds to the excellent atmosphere. For 1989, I can't think of many other games of this time that had such effort put into the sound effects.

Star gazing in the desert.

The combat was also improved a bit. The camera is zoomed out which did kind of throw me off at first, but eventually I got used to it and even preferred it. It also feels easier to pull off the different moves like dodging and blocking compared to the first game. The combat does however get way too easy by the end. Like with QfG 1, you get really powerful by the end, even more so this time around. In QfG 2, you can train at the guild hall as much as you want, as long as you have stamina. While the first game will limit you to once per day, this game has practically no limit. Once your stamina gets too low, you can go back to the inn, rest, and be back at full stamina and continue to train. This allows you to easily and safely keep increasing your combat related stats and skills indefinitely, as long as you don't have any important story events to complete. Even though the combat can become too easy, I think the fundamental design is rather unique. It's different and more engaging than your typical turn-based system in most contemporary RPGs, at least when it comes to one on one battles.

Aziza reveals the true form of your saurus.

Not everything about the sequel is perfect however. One thing was the city layout and navigation. To navigate the city you have to go through the alleyways and without a map, they are really confusing. You can't buy a map right away because you have to convert your money from the first game to the new currency, but that requires traversing through the alleyways to find the money changer which is way more difficult than it should be. The reason they made you go through this whole complicated process to get a map is due to the piracy protection that was put in place. Most games of the time had something like this that would require the game manual or a code-wheel that comes with the game to prove that you own the game. In QfG2's case, the game came with a physical map that was necessary to navigate the alleyways to get to the money changer, so you can then buy the actual in-game map. An unfortunate blemish on what is otherwise a great game. Once you finally get a map, however, it shows your exact location and even lets you teleport to any location you have already visited which is surprisingly generous and player friendly for a game of this era. Another issue is, as I mentioned previously, the pacing of the story progression. The way you progress the story in this game is on a day to day basis. So on certain days, story events will occur, such as an elemental appearance or a secret note will be passed to you, or the poet will perform at the inn at night. So there will be many days where there is no story event occuring and you just have to wait out the day training at the guild hall or fighting enemies in the desert. This also leads to the problem where you might not be prepared to deal with a certain elemental on the day they appear and can screw yourself if you don't have the items necessary. Not a big problem though as long as you save often.

A tease for Quest for Glory 3.

With all of that said, this is a fantastic sequel and I had a great time with it. The writing, variety of characters, environments, and sound design are all much improved from the first game. The new desert/arabian setting is a nice change of pace and is a setting that you don't see in many games, especially at the time.