Treasures of the Savage Frontier: Rankings

This box means business... it's real; isn't afraid to get its hand's dirty. 

Treasures of the Savage Frontier
1992

The only real big change staff-wise from Gateway is that Mark Buchignani seems to have been promoted. He was credited as only an encounter author in the first game, but seems to be on the level with Don Daglow for this one.

Each of these games has, wow, FOUR encounter authors? I find this surprising because the encounters are so damn repetitive in both games. Either each person only wrote certain types of encounters, or they all ended up writing the same ideas separately. I almost think the second is more likely. I can imagine the team going "Wait, your climax had the villain being a secret tattooed Kraken spy also? Oh dear..." a week before release. Granted, I've never designed a video game before, but I have designed D&D adventures, and I think this team could have done better.

This was one of the more unique and memorable, if frustrating, battles.

Treasures is the Gold Box game I've had the least amount of experience with previously, having only played it shortly in my childhood before moving on to something else. There has been a pattern throughout my life with these games, I start a series planning to get through it with the same party. Then, I make it to the last game and just get burnt out. Having made my way through the game for this project, finally, I can understand why this happened in my youth. As I've stated numerous times about Treasures, in the later Gold Box games, the combats become such a drag. The rules set these games are based off of was never balanced for high level play, and man does it show. It also seems like the designers compensated for the ability to save and reload by making the combats ridiculously hard; it should not surprise you that I think that was a mistake.

Hordes of pirates are kind of fun... kind of. The hordes of lightning bolt throwing mages that followed them were no fun at all.

All my griping aside, at least it's done. After some 20 years probably since first I had the thought to complete all the Gold Box games, at least one series is down (granted, it's the shortest, but that's not my fault!)

Mechanics - It's the tried and true gold box engine. They added some bells and whistles like weather and love. These didn't add much for me, and in many cases detracted from my experience. Weather would have been good if it reduced visibility, but it only reduced movement, increasing the power of spells, which is the last thing this game needs. I'll put it just below Gateway, because the designers put in those questionable things, but still didn't figure out the importance of being able to "center" while manually aiming, or being able to load without quitting to DOS.

3. Lightning Returns: FF13

4. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

5. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

6. Final Fantasy 13-2

7. Final Fantasy 13

Storyline - It's average, sometimes a bit repetitive. I was probably giving it more credit than it deserved while playing for story, when I was really thinking about atmosphere. The events often seem random, and the ending doesn't tie in well to the rest of the game. It's a long game; they could have cut a fair amount, and the game would have been better off for it.

5. Final Fantasy 13

6. Final Fantasy 13-2

7. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

8. Forgotten World

9. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

It's... another pointless revelation!

Atmosphere - I think they immersed the player better than in Gateway. This is a strength, but is ruined by what happens in between the good stuff. I think it's rare that a game simply needed to be cut down to make it significantly better, but that's exactly what Treasures is. I guess they felt it needed to be 40 hours of gameplay to be marketable, because man, that extra 20 hours really ruins the game. It's still good enough to come in at number 4 in my rankings.

2. Lightning Returns: FF13

3. Final Fantasy 13

4. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

5. Final Fantasy 13-2

6. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

End Game - Besides getting tired of encounters, I found the actual end game at Fireshear and Ice Peak to be a lot of fun. It's odd that the ending didn't tie in to the game's main plot at all, but wound up being the most fun part. What does that tell you about the rest of the game?

1. Lightning Returns: FF13

2. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

3. Final Fantasy 10-2

4. Final Fantasy 10

5. Final Fantasy 13-2

They really enjoyed showing off their text color capabilities... I really wish that time would have been put toward the "center" command!

Difficulty - Treasures was crazy hard, for me at least. Probably not as bad as FF13, but close.

2. Forgotten World
3. Final Fantasy 13
4. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
5. Final Fantasy 10-2
6. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

They lifted this beast that was created for Pools of Darkness, where the party is about ten levels higher, then had the nerve to have reinforcements appear!

Balance - Nah... barely better than FF13.

4. Final Fantasy 10-2
5. Final Fantasy 13-2
6. Treasures of the Savage Frontier
7. Final Fantasy 13
8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

Music - Treasures's single tune is eerie and minimalist, even here they forgot to make the game interesting.

4. Final Fantasy 10
5. Lightning Returns: FF13
6. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights
7. Gateway to the Savage Frontier
8. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

Art - Treasures has some good stuff, but  it re-used a lot of assets from Gateway and Pools of Darkness, as opposed to the all fresh Gateway. There wasn't much that stuck out to me, besides the cool snow wall sets at the end.

5. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

6. Final Fantasy 10-2

7. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

8. Forgotten World

9. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

Here's another guy from FRUA I was happy to find. Jake was nowhere to be found.

Best Villain - Freezefire? Geildarr, Cortona... I realized while writing my notes that the lack of named villains in the game was a big detractor to getting invested in it. 99% of the time, you are fighting faceless organizations; not very interesting. I'll have to go with Freezefire. Wait, you're saying a dragon who isn't introduced until the end of the game and doesn't say a word is better than Shuyin? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

3. Barthandelus (FF13)

4. Gilgamesh (FF13-2)

5. Freezefire (TotSF)

6. Shuyin (FF10-2)

7. Broadhand (GttSF)

Augustar makes his impassioned speech after suddenly recovering from his greed for The Gem.

Worst Villain - That asshole soldier who drugged us. Although really, we're the assholes for falling for the same trick.

4. Vaalgamon (GttSF)

5. Jihl Nabaat (FF13)

6. Asshole Soldier (TotSF)

7. Caius Ballad (LR:FF13)

8. Angry Old Pirate (F:NWN)

You...

Best Ally - It's close between Siulajia and Ougo, but Ougo deserves it because he is also linked to one of the few quests that is interesting.

3. Sazh Katzroy (FF13)

4. Rikku (FF10-2)

5. Ougo the Strange (TotSF)

6. Krevish (GttSF)

7. The Angel of Valhalla (LR:FF13)

That may be, but you seem to have lost your marbles.

Worst Ally - Jabarkas, he is an alternate love interest who comes in to play if your lead character is female, but why introduce him if he is going to mean nothing?

4. Chocolina (FF13-2)

5. "Hope Estheim" (LR:FF13)

6. Jabarkas (TotSF)

7. Jagaerda (GttSF)

8. Father Bartholomew (FW)

And that's pretty much all he does...

Best Enemy - Freezefire, he was badass, even if he did disintegrate one of my guys. Actually, that kind of makes him more badass. Like Bhunivelze, he is the best this game has to offer in two categories.

1. Bhunivelze (LR:FF13)

2. Yojimbo (FF10)

3. Freezefire (TotSF)

4. Dahaka (FF13)

5. Angra Mainyu (FF10-2)

Worst Enemy - Magic-users... F! It was unreal what these Bs did to me in the course of this game.

1. Gilgamesh (FF13-2)

2. Mages (TotSF)

3. Cid Raines (FF13)

4. Shambling Mound (GttSF)

5. Meonekton (LR:FF13)

Oh Hosttower mages, how I hate you, let me count the ways...

Best Mini-Game/Puzzle - Falling in love. It would have been a neat feature, if it weren't for potentially losing control of the character in combat. The game deserves credit for implementing a relationship mechanic way back in 1992.

1. Blitzball (FF10)

2. Falling in Love (TotSF)

3. Kraken Code (GttSF)

4. Cavern of the Stolen Fayth (FF10-2)

5. Hold 'Em (FF13-2)

Worst Mini-Game/Puzzle - The lucky papers, because; all that work for nothing... Amanitas's crown makes them redundant, excepting their use as MacGuffins.

2. Lightning Dodging (FF10)

3. Spherebreak (FF10-2)

4. Mirror Map (GttSF)

5. Hide-n-Seek (FF13)

6. Lucky Papers (TotSF)

Side Quests - Farr Winward was very cool, the secret dwarf dungeons not so much.

3. Final Fantasy 13-2

4. Final Fantasy 10

5. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

6. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

7. Final Fantasy 13

This guy and some dwarves point you to secret dungeons. I'm not sure I even mentioned them in my posts, because there isn't much to talk about.

Overall - Given this was the "last" of the GB games, I had high hopes that they would have ironed out all the kinks, and pulled out all the stops. Of course, the end of a long running series often means something else... that it didn't do well. I had a very FF13esque feeling about half-way through, here was this game from a beloved franchise, and I thought "This feeling... OMG... I think... this game might blow!"

Treasures isn't quite as big a shame as FF13, but almost there.

4. Final Fantasy 10-2

5. Final Fantasy 13-2

6. Treasures of the Savage Frontier

7. Final Fantasy 13

8. Forgotten World

As the Heroes of Ascore, and now of all the North, return to the Tired Traveller, I'm happy to see the door shut on this one. I'm also curious about others' impressions of Treasures, since I do feel like it's the least talked about of all the Gold Box games.

Comment to gain Gil and influence my playlist!

Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 12: Fin

It's the climax of Treasures of the Savage Frontier... finally. The party must take the evidence they have gathered to the council of Mirabar. There they must prove that Waterdeep is not the expansionist power that Luskan has secretly made it appear to be. If they do not succeed, Mirabar will side with Luskan, and the war that would follow could easily spell the end of the Lord's Alliance.

Treasures has enlightened me as to where a number of the pics available in FRUA come from.

The party, with the help of the lucky papers and crystals, easily convinces the council that the Axis of Evil is at fault.

As it becomes apparent that the council will vote to remain a part of the Lord's Alliance, the Neverwinter representative moves to leave the council room. He is stopped by the guards, there is a struggle and it is revealed he has a Kraken tatoo! What a surprise! This hasn't happened ten times already! Thankfully, I had properly buffed my characters before entering the council, and managed to beat the mega-battle with only one character going down.

More Krakens and Hosstower mages... yay.

After this, the two rulers of Mirabar, Rauthym of the humans, and the dwarven King Steelfist request the party's presence. They both offer rewards, and here is where it gets a bit weird. It seems both the humans and dwarves lay claim to an ancient dragon's treasure hoard, and want you to recover it. Specifically, The Gem. That's right... not a gem, The Gem. There is no explanation of what The Gem does, really. It's like the design team sketched out a plot, planned to flesh it out later, and never got the chance.

The game completely shifts gears here, you've spent the whole game stopping the Axis of Evil's plans, and now that they're thwarted, you are sent on a completely unrelated hunt for a dead dragon's MacGuffin. The odd part is, despite its incongruity with the rest of the plot, it's arguably the best part of the game. The party must first take a ship to Fireshear.

I was hoping Fireshear would be a nice town, a simple base of operations for the rest of the game, but no, Treasures don't play that. Fireshear is an underground city, and the party immediately finds signs of trouble in the form of mutilated bodies.

There is a well set up atmosphere of survival-horror as the party explores Fireshear. They come across mutilated bodies and ransacked rooms, wondering what beasts could have caused this kind of carnage. Then it just turns into, as usual,  repetitive encounters with large amounts of abominable snowmen. Or yetis... I think in D&D there is a distinction between abominable snowmen, yetis, and sasquatches.

These battles fall into the pit trap that many of the Gold Box games do of having massive amounts of creatures in random encounters to make them "challenging." This brings me back to my point of D&D working best as a game of attrition. If every stinking encounter is a life and death "challenge", the game quickly becomes a drag.

At the end of the two-level dungeon, you find out who the mastermind of the yeti infestation is. Perhaps the most feared creature in the Realms...

Sorry, most DREADED FOE in all the Realms.

I had little bit of trouble with this battle, as one is bound to with the myriad of status effects a beholder's eyes can cause. However, I probably would have made it out of the battle in good shape if not for that berzerk-lover mechanic I mentioned distaste for earlier. I think an excerpt from my notes will best illustrate my feelings at the time:

"This game... I would have beat the beholder with only two guys getting stoned, expect for the STUPID MOTHER F*NG BERSERK LOVER MECHANIC MADE AUGUSTAR SHOOT F*NG ARROWS AT THE STUPID ICE HOUND. Chode was disintegrated. F*."

Augustar was pumped up with magical arrows and haste, and would have easily taken down the beholder, except that he was out of my control. That's what you get for falling in love, in Treasures.

I won the battle relatively handily with a new strategy. Which brings me to another excerpt from my notes:

"I love fighting the hardest battle so far, and getting the same amount of XP as one of the easiest :{"

3,000 XP for beating a beholder and his army of minions? That's less than most of the random encounters in this game, even the easy ones. Treasures, you can *** and ***.

After freeing the still living miners and defeating the beholder, Fireshear becomes a functional home-base, complete with a magic shop. Treasures did manage to get one thing right, it handles its economy very well, unlike the other Gold Box games. Magic shops are scattered throughout the game that allow the characters to spend extra cash on items that are both useful and not overpowered. This is a balance that the other Gold Box games are infamous for not being able to negotiate.

Wow, what a climax! The game must be almost over, right? Well, relatively, but there are still four more maps to negotiate! I'm not kidding when I say Treasures is the FF13 of Gold Box games. It has a good story on paper, and is filled with good ideas. The execution of all this plays like a team created these good ideas in a vacuum then tried to plug them together at the last minute, which is exactly what FF13 is. Treasures' design team is much smaller, so I'm not sure what exactly happened with this game, but the result is analogous.

Ice Peak, the last part of the game, and Mirabar have unique snow tile sets which are neat.

The characters meet some Northmen and Ice Folk on Ice Peak. The Ice Folk seem to think their coming was foretold 600 years ago.

If you mean the end of the game, than yes, definitely! Please!

There is a useless sub-plot of soldiers from Hellgate Keep seeking The Gem, and of course you must fight them first, because Treasures wouldn't let you get through a map without fighting hordes of high-powered NPCs.

I don't have any notes for this image... but I feel like I reloaded after this.

After the battle, the heroes seem to be magically mesmerized by the dragon's horde, losing control and falling victim to greed. They are especially drawn to The Gem. THE GEM!!!!

You don't think this dragon is going to come back to life and attack us do you? Well, I think any RPG player worth their salt would be disappointed if it didn't!

Amanitas appears and interrupts the greed filled party. He reminds them they are here to retrieve the Staff of Ages... No, that's not it, it's The Gem (TM) they seek! Amanitas warns them their enemies are hot on their heals, then he disappears oddly. Augustar greedily fondles (their words, not mine) the gem. The ancient dragon, Freezefire awakens! Then Augustar is suddenly back to normal and says a heroic speech. Hmm, I just realized even this haphazard ending sequence is reminiscent of FF13.

"I don't know. It was a new Focus, or something. You know, I'm thinking, didn't really make sense of course." -Sazh during the final sequence of FF13. Yup, applicable.

Fighting the reanimated ancient dragon was fun, and he had a cool unique sprite.

The game even anticipated one of my characters getting disintegrated in the final, fateful battle.

Not intentional I'm sure, but I did find it funny that only 5 of the usual six PCs are depicted. Although, one of them looks like Siulajia. Maybe the last of my heroes is off in the corner there, heheh?

The ending uses the same tile effect Gateway did for an affective ending.

Being as I completed the game more than a month ago, I'll again refer to my notes to sum things up:

"The game does great things with story and npcs, outside of that, it does most everything wrong. Dungeon design isn't as bad as the first game, but there is a lot of empty space. Encounters are boring or "unfair" (surprise attacks with disabling and high damage abilities. I honest to god only made it through a few set encounters without losing a character or two), random encounters happen too much, and treasure is abysmal. The magic item shops were a plus. I hate to say it, but this game is not good."

Just like FF13, it's a game I had high expectations for because of its pedigree, but it fails on almost every account. I do look forward to CRPG Addict getting to it for another opinion, because there aren't nearly as many perspectives out there on Treasures as there are on the other Gold Box games. I'm curious whether the game felt so bad mainly because of my nostalgic expectations, or if it is really an objectively bad game. I hope it was entertaining to read about, because man, it was a drag to write about! It's funny how that works.

I've got to assume this is supposed to be Yartar, to bring the game full circle. It is a nice touch that the scene now shows the game's new lovers. I mean that they are lovers in the game, not of the game... I doubt anyone loves Treasures, except maybe it's parents.

Comment to gain Gil and influence my playlist!

Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 11: Not My Best Work

The party returns to Neverwinter.

I was somewhat surprised that the strange man we had just helped, Ougo... the Strange, was still with us as we returned to Neverwinter. The party didn't know what to expect, as they had just been shipped off as prisoners from this very city.

Oh... phew.

The quest in Neverwinter involves... wait for it... fighting ridiculous amounts of enemies behind hidden doors around Neverwinter. Fluff-wise, in this case, the party is rescuing the captured ambassadors from the beginning of the game. Besides the fluff, it's the same thing I've been doing all game. I can sum up Neverwinter pretty quick: I found the hidden ambassadors, returned to Lord Nasher, and received a reward.

From there, I went to Port Llast, just north of Neverwinter. I think I was just visiting it to see how similar it was to the Port Llasts in Neverwinter Nights and Gateway. The layout was pretty similar, giving me flashbacks to the ridiculous random encounters in NWN. 

Instead of having the abandoned Gallant Prince in its harbor however, Port Llast now offers exciting tours!

In a video game, this assures that there will in fact, be pirate attacks.

Before taking on the tour, I searched the town itself. At one point I encountered a large iron golem, one of the over-powered monsters created specifically for the Gold Box games. I was already a little worried about that. Then, of course, another one "entered the battle" from behind me. At this point it was getting crazy ridiculous. I followed this by going on the sea tour, and getting attacked by waves upon waves of mages. At around this point in my notes, I had pretty much decided that Treasures of the Savage Frontier is the FF13 of Gold Box games. 

The party then made their way to Luskan, and rescued Siulajia. Ougo took the opportunity to leave to see his family in Neverwinter. He assumes his family wants to see him...

There is a slight connection between Siulajia's family and the crystals, or something, it's a bit of a Chekov's Gun.

We also found Jagaerda again, and she sent us to the island of Rauthym to rescue some guy named Redleg. Even looking through my screenshots, I can't really remember what the story was. At this point, the game had overstayed it's welcome by about 20 hours, and so has writing about it. I estimate I played 46 hours of Treasures of the Savage Frontier. Most of it was the same thing repeated ad-nauseum. I think the game could have possibly been a good one if it was cut in half.

Here's a screenshot of Redleg.

 So after this, we finally get a message from Amanitas leading us to the end game.

This brings me to my next point. Throughout the game, the player finds numerous "lucky papers", as I've mentioned. These are hidden messages the enemy is passing around with their plans. To read them requires crystals that can be retrieved by the different members of the alliance: The Krakens, The Zhentarim, and the Hosstower Wizards. Ostensibly, the player collects these crystals to figure out the enemies plans, and heads to these places to stop them. This can be done in any order, creating an "open world" experience.

Looking at a lucky paper with all three crystals.

Right at the beginning of the game, Amanitas gives the players the option to receive an "artifact of great power." This is the Crown of Amanitas. This item completely negates the usefulness of the papers to the player, as Amanitas gives them messages leading them to the next part of the game, in ascending order of difficulty. It is possible that accepting this item is an "easy mode", which would be fine if it was explicitly explained to the player, but it is not.

Even if the player doesn't take the crown, it's a little hard to imagine decoding the partial messages actually meaning anything, as solving the issues always comes down to finding foes behind secret doors, nothing specifically related to the plans of the papers. There may be something I'm missing, but this whole plot just seems like a farce for the player. Collecting the papers and crystals is time consuming, yet in the end means nothing, besides the fact that you simple need to collect them, MacGuffin like.

Full transparency, while looking up what I might be missing with these papers and crystals (because, as I explained above, I couldn't figure out how they could actually be useful), I saw that if the player is missing any of the crystals, Jagaerda simply gives them the ones they are missing in Luskan. So, I went through a boat-load of reloads trying to get those crystals for no reason. This fact is harder to fault the game for since I only know this from the clue book, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The good news is, the game actually improves dramatically as it comes to an end!

Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 10: They Are All Kept Equal, By Hatchet, Axe, and Sword

After the ship they were aboard was attacked and sank, our party finds themselves fortuitously washing ashore on the island they were headed to, at Farr Windward. Or, it could be considered non-fortuitous, as Farr Windward is a colony meant to hold the insane, and those otherwise not fit to be in regular society.

Farr Windward comes from the established Forgotten Realms lore. I think it's a very cool concept; it's an insane asylum in a fantasy world. That's not something I can recall being done before. I think it's obvious the designer of Treasures was also taken with the idea, as Farr Windward is the most developed side quest I found, and arguably the only really interesting part of the game.

This is the picture that greets the party as they emerge from the island's tunnels; a not so subtle hint that this isn't your typical village.

As the party arrives, they are swept along in a raucous parade. They soon find out that this celebration is actually a funeral procession. This is presented as strange, which to most people it might by. I honestly hope people are celebrating at my funeral or wake, but ya know, maybe I belong in Farr Windward too.

The colony had many unique items for sale; mostly different types of their biggest export, "farrberjiks". These included farrberjiks, farrberjik lined robes, fuzzy farrberjiks, and farrberjik lined boots. As they were all quite expensive, I couldn't resist looking in the clue book to see if any of them were actually useful. It turned out that the farrberjik lined boots acted as boots of striding and springing, which allowed the user to jump in combat, which worked like a dimension door. I thought they were going to be very useful for my thief to get behind opponents, but unfortunately I didn't end up using them that much.

My favorite items were the "certificates of normalcy", not wanting to appear to be queer, I of course picked these up immediately.

The party was approached by an interesting fellow who introduced himself as Ougo the Strange. He noted the party's normalcy, perhaps it was our certificates. He seemed harmless enough, so was added to the party.

Ougo gives hints like this. Here he is saying the walls have "ears", meaning that there is a secret door leading to spies.

This one took me a second, 10 Gil to the first to decode what Ougo is saying.

With Ougo's help, the party discovers that the guards of Farr Windward are also spying on the inhabitants; keeping detailed files on their every move. It would seem Farr Windward is not just an asylum for the insane, but also an internment camp for the politically inconvenient.

After discovering the spies, I couldn't find anything else to do, so left Farr Windward. Ougo would not go with us, so I felt there was probably something more to do in the town. I checked the cluebook, because I didn't want to miss anything here. It turned out I had missed a secret door (Once again, this is how every dungeon in this game works: find NPC, fight enemies behind secret doors). 

Behind this second door, the party finds a man who is about to be branded with the distinctive red circle that marks Farr Windward's inhabitants. Anyone marked with this brand is not allowed to leave the colony. Ougo grabs it excitedly, and leads the party back to the house of the man whose death was initially being celebrated as they arrived. It turns out, his death was a ruse.

Ougo is apparently an excellent living statue. Haalbok covers him in white paint, and this convinces the guards at the gates that he is in fact carved from wood. 

The party then makes their way to the other side of the island, through long, dark tunnels. Since this is Treasures of the Savage Frontier, we can't have a section that is perfectly polished, so the tunnels have an insane encounter rate. I feel like it's a bug, one of the many things QA should have caught, in my opinion. I was fighting very tough encounters every few steps.

Being the heroes of Ascore bearing a gift for the leader of Orlumber, the party is granted audience. Then Ougo springs to life!

  

The man yells "But... I'm normal!" 

Ougo replies "I also feel I am normal."

Ougo suggests that the brand be declared to have no meaning, and then the problem will be solved. The ruler of Orlumber relents, to save himself.

This is all presented in a somewhat righteous fashion; letting the free-thinkers free in a sense. I personally have my qualms about releasing the certifiably insane back in to the public, but hey, its just a game. The point of not persecuting people simply for thinking out-of-the-box is done well.

Altogether, I did really enjoy Farr Windward. Like I said, it is arguably the best part of the game, the only thing that comes close is the end game, but I'll get to that later. The unfortunate part here is that it's a side quest, easily missed if the party simply decides to leave the island.

Truly, now everyone is "normal."

Comment to gain Gil and influence my playlist!

1 Gil to Raifield for commenting!