I finished off Moebius today. The first task was to track down the condor and get some feathers. The game has a listen command you can use to track down anything on the map – it gives you a sound e.g. flapping of wings and a direction. I found the condor in the south east of the map and at dusk it nested so I swung my sword at it and took a few feathers.  This meant I could now transform into a condor and fly to the previously inaccessable level exit teleport. I couldn’t get this to work for a while, but a quick read of the manual reveals that I have to get the were-spell blessed by a priest first.

The final world is the world of fire. Thankfully this world is a lot shorter than the others, but the battles are also a lot tougher, with nothing except evil monks to fight + the warlord.

This is the fight with the final warlord. He kills you with one hit, but is far easier to hit than the monks so this is actually a much easier fight.

The warlord was guarding the orb but if I try to pick it up I get sick. It appears I will have to rescue the two priests first. I have to lead them back one at a time from the far side of the map as the second one drowns otherwise, but I get both shrines liberated and one of them gives me some gauntlets.

Once I have the gauntlets, I use them to pick up the orb and head for the exit teleport. I go through that and I’ve won the game.

The ending is very brief. Moebius himself says a few words and thats it. He does say to write in and inform him of your accomplishment – this implies that Moebius may have had completion certificates like the Ultima games.

I’m glad to have got this game out of the way. I didn’t especially enjoy playing it, and without the level maps I found on the web it would have been worse. Back in 1985, the graphics and novelty would have been enough I expect to forgive the other problems. Playing it now, I’m really just looking at the gameplay which was slow, boring and repetitive. I couldn’t even use the option of speeding the emulator up as I ended up passing turns through not moving quickly enough and running out of water. I’ll have the sequel Windwalker to play at some point, I really hope its more fun than this.

Next up: Autoduel.