Edited on: October 4, 2025
Posted on: October 1, 2025
ThomHjj
Verified ownerGames: 78 Reviews: 5
Better than Eye of the beholder 2
I will describe the game for those of you who don't know it or who can't remember much. There is an awesome map in the internet to see the whole place and encounters. First let me say about my frustration in 1992 that the game was not as awesome as its cover. In the game box there is an armored knight riding a horse near a river and marches towards the awesome gates of a big city with golden-like roofs build between two mountains rising above a valley. The awesome gates is an ugly simple brown door between some 2 meter ugly simplistic walls and that place is flat and ugly. There are no horses in the game. And that "city"'s name in the cover is not Ishar, Ishar is tthe innermost of an old temple now filled with monsters in every corner, it is where the wizard Krogh is and rules the island. I bought the game back then expecting the awesome city. (9 years later the Gothic game had awesome landscapes as this cover) Now about the game. The rivers in the cover divide the set up in 5 land masses. 1. The small western part where you start 2,3. Eastern of the first river there are larger areas with forests, and the North is divided by another river from the South. In the North there is a dungeon where you must find an empty vial to use for mixxing ingredients you find or buy and make potions that result in something. You need it to solve some magic problems and to make some restoration potions in the final battle. In the South there is an invisible Lizard that has 5 dragon protection "rings". 4. Eastern of another river barrier there are Barbarians in the North who attack you and you can loot 400 coins from each everytime you pass, and there is the biggest "city" in the South. Eastern than the first "city" is a second smaller one with higher level thugs. Here you can enter from the west gate if you want many thugs to attack you and loot lots of money. A mage with a lightning spell can hit them all with 3 clicks. 5. The eastern area beyond another river where Ishar is in a dungeon temple between a forest. (This temple is where the game's cover POV is, though the tiny "city" in Elwingil has no east entrance). You can level up until level 10 31000XP and no more. Each time you recruit a character that character gets the XP of the battles until everyone has the same XP. You can pay training lessons to increase Strength, Agility, Inteligence (used for Mages), Wisdom (Magic lessons), but not Constitution which determines your Life points and Physical condition. You lose your physical condition every time you fight with weapons and restore it by eating bread. Your skills won't change when you level up an ability. And INT and WIS training won't change the spells a character can learn. You spawn without any introduction in the western part of a small island, naked with only a small sword and 2000 coins. It costs 1000 coins to save the game so you have to play and die lots of times until you are familiar with the area. You start near a thief who suggests you go South. The island has different areas whose name you can see in the screen. Somewhere near, you find a blonde female Priest which is good at first aid and can cast Healing and Magic missile, but can't learn a lot of spells. A Cleric is someone with more spells than a Priest. If you take the thief also with you or Nasheer from the North tavern I don't know where you can use lock picking. I haven't used it at all in the game and the thief will abandon the party at some time. In the South there is a strange village with Mill like buildings whose door face different directions. This is the cheaper and easier area. Here you can recruit a Ranger with 19 Constitution who basically will be someone who gets beatten in the front lines with you. In Ishar 1 the interface with the attack button above each portrait doesn't work well with the mouse since if you use a shield to protect your characters then you use a small or medium weapon and the attack button for these weapons is clickable without the delay for two handed weapons. Rangers can learn a few spells, 3 or 4, but eventually he is only good to take a beating. He has no good fighting skills, but he is good in area orientation. Orientation was useful back on the 90s to get a grip of where you are. Here, buy leather armor and find some money in a house South. The North where there is a tough guard you need to fight to get to the taverns can be reached easily even without armor if you use all of Kiriela's psychic energy to cast magic missiles from a distance. West across the river in the South there is another village slightly more expensive. Here you can buy a few shields and helmets and recruit a mage, the occult monk. You can teach him the lighning spell in this village if you have money left. Then the enemies get easier and you can loot some money to rest and restore psychic energy and save the game. One of the awesome ideas in this game is visiting psychoanalysts. Every time you recruit someone the party votes if they want him/her to join the team or not. Even if everyone voted ok for someone to join, a psychoanalyst might tell you that 2 members of your party hate each other. And if you need to dismiss someone to recruit another, or even take an npc with you like the princess in Elwingil, you can suggest a vote for a new member that doesn't get along with one of the others. Members might also abandon you when you rest in a tavern, though a psychoanalyst might have said that everyone gets along. Starting the game having a Tenkeyless keyboard I couldn't choose the language every time. I have to run the digital keyboard and choose 1 from the Numlock at the beginning. Alt+tab, 1 from the Numlock, then alt+enter to maximize screen. The game works fine besides very few incidents that required a restart. The funny thing is that in the game mages or a cursed area near the first city have the blindness spell which turns the action screen black and not just darker. I closed the game 3 times before realising this was an enemy spell and not a bug. Finally I want to say that after 30 hours of messing around and having many abilities maxxed it seemed I couldn't beat Krogh, I don't understand what the Silmaril talisman does, and I have 4 keys from the temple that I haven't used though I opened every door the online map shows. There must be some more hidden passages. I know there are no illusionary walls in the area where you need Apnoia. The witch character who you detransformate and have learned in a tavern that she is the mother of Krogh though she has a spell called Antikrogh doesn't make the battle easier. And the old witch has Constitution 1 which means her physical condition deteriorates fast and you need to feed her constantly or heal her or make a physical regeneration potion sometimes. To win easily the final battle you need the Cleric Obarmon who can learn and cast disolve. Then Krogh can't hurt you. And you might also need to mix a potion sometimes for psychic regeneration. I had enough with Ishar 1 at 33 hours. Some lore and non player characters you meet in this game (in towns or as wandering merchards) is about the heroes of the previous game, Crystals of Arborea, where you play Jarel. Jarel was supposed to be the good ruler of this island replaced by Krogh. If you think this game is old let me tell you that I thought Crystals of Arborea was old back in the 90s when I discovered it and finished it. In Ishar 2 when I reached the urban area only running the game in a window with the browser showing an online map I could keep playing. You can't transfer characters from Ishar 1 to 2. You can from 1 (or 2) to 3 but you will start at 10 level instead of 16 with no learned spells and no equipment or money. So don't spend time maxxing abilities.
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