Part 12: Fighting the good fight

Alrighty, time to wrap it all up.



Thanks to the Book of Spells we now possess a number of new abilities: Confuse attacker, Make attacker friendly, and Count nearby lifeforms. They are all still dormant, though, and we need to head back to the Sentinels to activate them. In any case, Malcolm won't appear in his room until we've revisited the Sentinels, so it's not like we have a choice here.



What shall I do now?

Defeat Malcolm. That will end the dark hold on this system.

Teach me how to defeat Malcolm.

You have learned all you will need.

Kedro says that as if the recent psi abilities mattered. They do not, and especially not for the end boss fight against Malcolm (as we're about to see). They were most likely added as an afterthought. "More psi abilities are cool, who cares if they're worthless?" thought the devs. No, really: none of the last abilities are essential. There is also no rationale behind them being introduced so late in the game -- unless you count "they were reserved for the sequel" as a sound rationale, but duh. And overal, Probe mind, Look for energy users and (probably) Erase attacker skill are the only useful abilities, and that's just three out of seven.



What will they do?

They will fight the raiders who now mass in its orbit.

Will Malcolm's defeat end the raids?

He is the source of the raids.




So the Caldorrians are automata, huh? That explains the emptiness of their minds. I wonder if they were also programmed to start fights in bars, though.




Everything is an evil illusion. Got it.



There's nothing more we can get out of Kedro, so I guess it's time to seek out and defeat Malcolm Trandle and put an end to his oh so wicked plans.



The way to Malcolm's lair is already familiar to us. It is in fact quite tricky and devious, as Malcolm is located on level 2 of the Battlestation, but we must go through a different section of level 2 and then through level 3 to reach it -- a fact we can't guess just by looking at the message the Look for energy users gives us.



We can now Count nearby lifeforms, but... what for?



And here we are in Malcolm's lair. This time the villain's already waiting for us. Which means the end boss fight is about to start!



Yes, I have come from the Sentinels. You must be Malcolm. They say you are powerful.

All you see around you, my battlestation, towers, is held together by me. This is my world.

I rescued the book from your hold. Now the Federation attacks your world.

I stole the book from the Sentinels. I will deal with your Federation friends soon enough.



With this, the second (and last) energy battle begins! The mechanics here are as simplistic as it gets: press the left arrow key to attack whenever the ATK message appears, and the right arrow key to defend whenever the DEF message shows up.

I've recorded a video of myself fighting Malcolm Trandle, without any kind of commentary since its only purpose is for you to witness an "energy battle" in action. Sadly, I haven't been able to configure the Tandy sound, therefore the video is totally lacking in sound except for some PC speaker beeps whenever Malcolm is hit. I was playing with CPU cycles in DosBox set to 2500, and the battle was laughably easy. Dialogue lines tend to change whenever either we or Malcolm are successful in our attacks, so I deliberately took some blows to show them all off -- the lines could've used some variety, though: they are few in number and, moreover, exactly the same as in the Shadar the Cruel fight. Also, note the steadily growing battle tempo:

Watch the fight against Malcolm Trandle on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRHAGK2rsi8
Watch the fight against Malcolm Trandle on GamersTube: http://www.gamerstube.com/videos/se...t-malcolm-23146


As you can see, Malcolm has 150 points of Energy, while we only have 68 -- but the fight is too easy for that to really matter. We could grind up some more on wounded animals to be extra safe, except there's no point. So no, the game is merciful enough not to make us "run around the backwoods forever healing up wounded animals". At least not forever. Thankfully.



For those not inclined to follow the video all the way through, which can be quite boring, I've transcribed all the dialogue lines I could get when fighting Malcolm:

Your kind will never survive. Your efforts are futile.

Your attacks do not bother me. I can beat you down at will.

Take that you murdering monster!

Go on, try to hit me with the weak powers you possess.

The Federation is legion. Many more will follow. You cannot win.

You fight well for a fledgling, but you are outmatched.

You prolong the struggle, but your cause must inevitably fail.

Only now do you realize how strong my powers are.. The Sentinels have ill-prepared you.

You fight well. But your cause is surely doomed.

Your growing confidence is but an illusion. I am yet stronger now.



And finally Malcolm Trandle is defeated!



He is no more, and we can return to the FSS Awful. First, however, let's have a look at our characters' final stats.



Aleph has made it to the rank of Captain, the game's equivalent of level 17 (out of 20, which, as you may remember, is the level cap).



Beth is Senior Commander, level 16.



Hiroko, being the fastest to level up in the first half of the game, has lately slowed up a bit since healing wounded party members doesn't bring as many experience points as killing higher-level enemies. She is Combat Commander, level 15.



Zain has been gaining exp rapidly since powerful ranged weapons became available. Being always behind at first, he has now caught up with Hiroko.



Gimmel has always been staying in the back line, defending the party against the enemies spawning from behind. And while there were many of those, that hasn't been enough to make him more than a Lt. Commander, level 13. But even though the role assigned to him may have held him behind a bit, still, that was an extremely important role to fill.



Unfortunately, we have to trudge all the way back to the ship bay.



As soon as we board the ship, the end game message appears. Congratulations! And see you in Sentinel Worlds 2!



For all its weaknesses, and there's a lot of those, I enjoy the game. It has a certain charm and naïvité, and it is sad there wasn't a proper sequel that would continue the plot. As this LP has probably demonstrated, this game's story is more of an introduction -- an introduction of the setting, the lore, the psionic abilities, etc. It would be interesting to see, I think, if Karl Buiter could have built upon those in an engaging way. As things stand, however, Hard Nova remains the closest we have to a sequel. Also, now you can judge for yourself if there is enough reason for Sentinel Worlds to have been sometimes called a spiritual precursor to, or at least an influence on, Bioware's Mass Effect.

This LP ends here, and I hope you have enjoyed it. Cheers.