Hillsfar - In-depth Written Amiga Review With Pics

 Hillsfar

Amiga, 1989

Westwood Associates/SSI

$49.95

*My video review for Hillsfar
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*Introduction music recorded directly from my Amiga
*Game best played in NTSC mode with 4:3 aspect ratio

Over the past ten years, I've sat down in an attempt to play Hillsfar on multiple occasions, never able to get too far into it. It had come in the "Silver Collection", a late 1990's DOS compilation of mostly Gold Box titles. Compared to those other games, Hillsfar just didn't seem to connect. Indeed, when I originally sat down this time to cover it, I was at first in the exact same spot I had previously been in. I just didn't seem to get it. Luckily, despite modern reviewers wanting to correlate themselves not understanding it into the game actually being bad, I was able to keep in the back of my mind that the problem probably laid with me, not the game.
^Created character, world map, the city, and our guild

Manual in hand, this time I forced myself to give Hillsfar the respect it, and most games deserve. The connection with the Gold Box games becomes more obvious once you start reading the story from the manual. Taking place after the events of the officially licensed Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Pool of Radiance, and directly prior to Curse of Azure Bonds, the game was meant to fill the appetite during the wait for the aforementioned Curse. Though interestingly, it really would have only filled that wait in terms of its original Commodore 64 roots, as the DOS port of Hillsfar was released at about the same time as Curse. On the other hand, Amiga D&D fans eagerly awaiting the first Gold Box title, would only have the action-adventure games (Hillsfar/Heroes of the Lance) to tie them down until 1990, when Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds would finally come to their system.

^Exploring the city of Hillsfar

Hillsfar starts much like its Gold Box brothers, with you needing to roll the dice in order to create your characters. Every race and class available to you in those games is also available to you here. Prominently advertised when new is the ability to import characters from either Pool or Curse, and upon completion of Hillsfar exporting the buffed up characters back to Curse. Despite attempting this in various different ways I was never able to import any characters from the Amiga versions of those games. My guess would be that due to Hillsfar coming out prior to the release of Pool and Curse, it simply was not compatible with those character files. ^Hand drawn map of Hillsfar area from manual, advertisement noting importing/exporting

Personally, I feel the Amiga's incompatibility with the importing feature was a blessing in disguise. Hillsfar's gameplay centers around your activities with one of four guilds. Fighter's, thief's, cleric's, and mage's all have a separate guild to report to and receive quests from. This means there are basically four distinct story lines, a bump in terms of the games replayability. However, Pool and Curse allow up to six in a party, meaning you'd likely need to repeat at least two of the quests in Hillsfar if you're wanting to export your entire party with increased stats.

While my feeling is Hillsfar's story is more than enough reason to want to play the game, performing any of the guild quests a second time would likely leave you with a repetitive impression. You're more than capable of putting up a fight in Curse with your party from Pool, so I see no real need to further stack the deck in your favor there. Now, having at least one player make the journey to Curse may be of interest to some because you'll apparently receive a few more journal entries when Curse detects imported Hillsfar characters, and you'll even get some extra help in a couple of the battles.
^Exploring the sewers, riding our horse to various outdoor areas

You play as one character/class at a time. Starting off at your own camp just outside of Hillsfar (the only place where you can save), you ride your horse into town via the deadliest, most unkempt dirt path of all time. All areas of the outside world are reached via this horse riding sequence. Certain areas will prove more difficult than others to reach, and falling off your horse too often will eventually cause it to abandon you, necessitating a walk to your destination or the trading post, where you'll be able to purchase a new one. While the sequence might prove difficult at first, you'll certainly get better as the game goes along.

Upon entering Hillsfar proper, you'll find yourself at home in the city view. Presented, as are the Gold Box games, in a first person view, but also featuring a wonderful in-game overhead map. Perhaps since Hillsfar is the only city in the game, I find this view to be the single most detailed of any of the Gold box games. The colors are certainly less here, but different sections of the city have different overall colors, and thus feel. The buildings themselves have more pixels dedicated to them, and there are many unique structures. Brick, cobblestone, and wood textures line your field of view. Later games would get more color, certainly, but never would an individual city be depicted quite like Hillsfar is.

^Trading post, archery range

Explore the richly detailed city, and note down any unique locations via an included city map at the end of the manual. You can enter absolutely any building with a door, though the majority of them you'll be breaking into. If entering a non specific building (or a named one after hours), your view will change into one reminiscent of Ultima 6 (but coming out prior). Here the interiors of buildings are incredibly detailed. Chairs, desks, tables, and even people for you to see, though you can't interact with them. Your goal in this view is to find and loot chests, then escape before the Red Plume guards find you. Much of your time will be spent in this particular view, as your guild leader and others send you to various  locations in order to find people or items.
^Taverns feature prominently in Hillsfar, chest looting, lock picking

The thief class has their own separate lock picking sequence. Computer Gaming World went as far as to say this is the single best simulation for rogues to ever exist. That reviewer must have been mighty good at lock picking, because I found myself largely ignoring this mini game. I was so put off by this sequence that I intentionally waited until I had played all other character classes before attempting life as a rouge. The above gif is my only successful lock picking attempt. Time is always on a crunch, and most chests have far more tumblers than the above three, some going beyond ten. I understand the concept, but I could never execute it well myself. Thankfully, the sequence is not required, you can get by through bashing most chests or using a knock ring, just like  the other classes. ^More story, a secret door, combat, and death

Other mini games include a challenging archery contest, where your joystick movement will need to be quite precise, as there's a ton of random movement to simulate aiming an arrow. Finally, there's the arena combat. No weapons are allowed in Hillsfar, and even outside of the city you'll find no actual combat sequences. Battling in the arena might prove the most difficult sequence of them all, though listening to gossip at your local tavern will help you understand the various contestants strengths and weaknesses. Again I found some reviewers of the time praising the arena combat as helping to immerse you into the D&D world.
^Whiplashing Whiplash

Speaking of taverns and immersion, I really found myself enjoying the bar hopping in this game. Think to where you were actually in these fantasy situations. Battling monsters, questing, maybe even being resurrected from the dead, don't you think you'd be spending an awful lot of time at your local bar? Rarely are taverns utilized to much of a degree in the Gold Box games, mostly consisting of untrue gossip, and even an occasional (sometimes all too frequent) brawl that you want no part of. Quests don't usually send you off to drink in order to collect information in those games, but you'll be hopping all over getting your drunk on in Hillsfar! Talk about immersing yourself in this fantasy realm. I have great respect for the way taverns were handled here.

But the thing that most endeared me to the game were the quite numerous blocks of text coming my way. By no means is it a grand tale of us saving the entire world, it's on a much smaller scale than that. Much like the other parts of this game, I find this to be a fantastic change of pace. Largely each guild will be sending you on the same type of fetch quests, but the story behind that fetching I found to be quite well written. You first start out trying to prove yourself to each guild, fighter's have to fight, cleric's need to help, mage's must obtain knowledge, and thief's gotta rip stuff off. As you proceed with the game you'll find yourself more entwined with locally epic tales. A fighter will be heroic and rescue a damsel. the cleric will seek out a special item for their church, a thief will rid the city of a competing gang and break into the castle, and the mage will have you searching ruins and dead dragon corpses! Upon completing one guilds quests, I took about a week off before staring another, and found myself again thirsting for the next storyline. ^Some end screens, and our finished character, now with double the hitpoints

In terms of the Amiga version that you're seeing here, it's about the straightest of a port you can get. There's probably a good reason this came out before either Pool or Curse on the Amiga, and that's because not a whole lot was done to this one in the porting process compared to those others. It is a direct port of the DOS version, which is itself a port. The DOS version was unique compared to the original Commodore 64 game, but Westwood did very little when it came to the Amiga, and for that matter the Atari ST as well. We've got 16 color EGA in all its glory (cough).

It's unfortunate that not even the little things, like changing the red skin tones to peach couldn't have been accomplished, but for the most part the game is still graphically appealing for the time. Despite coming on just a single disk, I quickly turned to installing the game onto my hard drive due to annoying load times in the city itself. On hard drive, it runs perfectly smooth. The Amiga version would still probably rank as the definitive version because it really does not take much to topple EGA DOS to be honest with you. The intro music on the Amiga is fantastic, while DOS features no music. The in-game sounds can be quite maddening via the PC speaker, and while nothing special on the Amiga, they won't bother you either, making it just a little bit higher in terms of the other versions.

Magazines of the time for Amiga as well as other systems generally felt the game was good, some going as far as saying it was great. Those thoughts were coming from reviewers who both liked and disliked the Gold Box games. There were a few who thought the game didn't quite live up to the others, but I didn't really find any examples from the time saying it was a bad game. In comparison modern reviewers tend to outright dislike the game, though I've noticed most of these don't tend to get far into it. I can respect thoughts that Hillsfar, in comparison to the depth offered in the Gold Box games, might not seem up to par, but nothing I see from it speaks to me as being bad.
^Fist bump!

It's best to just treat Hillsfar as a standalone adventure, separate to the Gold Box games in terms of your direct characters, but still in the same universe. The game was meant to whet your appetite for Curse, and it did just that for me. The perfect change of pace from a series of games that while legendary, are called the "Gold Box" games for a reason, in that they all share a common game engine. They're all similar, which in a way is a great thing, but it also causes me much appreciation for this game, connected to that same universe, but vastly different in its form. Upon completing Hillsfar, I had a genuine feeling of remorse about how I sat in front of it time and again over the years and wouldn't let myself dive in. Having beaten all of the Gold Box games, it felt great to once again experience a connection to those games in a fresh way. If you're a fan of those games I feel you owe it to yourself to see how you feel. Get the manual and dive in. If you've never gotten into the Gold Box games, judging from some reviews of the era who didn't seem so fond of them, they also seemed to enjoy this adventure. Play it and see if it inspires you to check out Pool or Curse.

Please check out my video review, where I always come at it from a different angle compared to the written variety. Always unscripted, with a lot of extra goodies including readings from the manual and magazine reviews of the time period. Readers of this may also enjoy my written reviews for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Champions of Krynn, and Battletech: The Crecent Hawk's Inception.

*My video review for Hillsfar
*Next article

*Previous article

*Alphabetical list of writings
*Introduction music recorded directly from my Amiga