The gardens are, at least to start with, full of the same creatures as the subway was. I so find the earth mother again who warns me how she has a dark sister who I should not be tempted by.

They had to be coming sooner or later since they were in the training level and I get to a temple with a load of monks on it. I’m a lot better equipped to cope with them than I was in the training level – in fact there is no danger of me running out the huge supplies of armour seal and regen packs I brought with me from the city before the end of the game.

The outer area of the temple is crawling with the monks. I clear them all out with a bit of effort and find a load of switches I need to pull to get to the next section.

There is a demon eye I need to place in the symbol here, just like the training mission.

The demon eye gets to me the inner temple which is much the same as ouside. There are a whole string of objects around here I need to collect one by one. This bag of dust teleports itself between altars so I have to find a way to stop it.

A bit of searching around and I find a skull which I can place on the other altar. I’ve no idea why this should work, or why it has to be this skull but I get the dust.

I use the dust on the statue outside. I only know to do this because I tried using the statue earlier and it said dust was required. This opens up a cupboard behind me and I get a flying icon.

The flying icon is great. I can use it to fly over the whole map. I was expecting it to run out quickly but it lasts indefinitely. There are loads of those tough troops with rocket launchers all over the place to take out. I’m better equipped to deal with them but I still use up a load of ammo.

Just when I’m getting used to it, I have to surrender my flight icon to exit the level.

The penultimate level has me inside the inner temple. I walk into a ceremony being conducted by a Sri-Feng – the moment he finishes they all turn on me.

There are quite a few corridors in this place with moving walls and ceilings which crush or squash me. They don’t hurt as much as you might expect so I can more or less ignore them with my huge regen supply.

I find a nify looking sword which I’m expecting to be super lethal – its not bad but I soon go back to just using my lightning power which seems to be the most lethal for the mana.

 

I walk into another big hall and meet up with the earth mothers sister. She wants me to join her side and throws a nova at me as a demonstation of her powerwhich teaches me a new skill. In the end she leaves me alone and her acolytes all turn on me instead.

I have to explore the exits going off this hall room which acts as a bit of a hub. I find this room with a skull I need in the middle of it but all the carpets teleport me away. Attempting to walk through without touching one is not easy.

Another area has a motif on the wall – I have to find a stone slab which slots into here to get past.

After jumping over some pit traps I find the dark version of the earth mother again who admits that she can’t hurt me as the dark needs the light.  To get through the wall behind her I need another stone slab.

I find it in the hands of some friendly Sri-Feng who want me to defeat Necrom.

Getting the slab isn’t enough. I have to hunt out two spheres to place on this fire altar.

This gets me to the end of the level and another meeting with the dark earth mother who doesn’t want to play favorites and has a gift for me.

The gift contains mana and health boosts rather than the trap I might have been expecting.

Behind a locked door I hear the Sri-Feng discussing me. They are saying how creating Necrom was an accident, that they wish to stop him but have been unable to get me to listen.

After a while they open the door and let me in. I’m distracted from the plot here by the fact that all three of them move in unison like some sort of synchronised air guitar act.

They send me off to fight Necrom who is waiting in the next zone.

This final zone is presumably some sort of alien ship.

Its full of turrets which I just run past and don’t attempt to deal with.

I’ve been told by several people about Necrom drawing his power from some sort of flame. Necrom shows up and starts throwing Novas at me but I need to deal with the flame behind him.

All I have to do is stand in it and it slowly shrinks. I use a protect icon to keep me safe in the meanwhile.

Necrom runs off after the first skirmish and I find him in the NW corner. This time its a more conventional fight before he runs off again.

I track him down for the final time and use up all the icons I’ve been saving.

He takes some hits but I was never in any danger with all the protect icons I’ve got.

His death opens up a door behind him which gets me to a final teleport. I stand on this and the end cutscene starts.

 

The end cutscene reunites me with Katt and a couple of Sri-Feng. It turns out they were trying to stop Necrom the whole time and the rumours about them trying to take over the earth were not true. There are hints of me having to maintain the peace in the meanwhile and possible future games. The earth mother tries to take Necroms crystal at the end only to have it snatched by her sister in the interests of balance which could also have been a future plot device but the sequel never happened.

I’ve really skimmed through the plot on this last post because I’m not entirely convinced it made that much sense. On the whole I’ve gone off this game slightly with each new level since the half way point. Its a great game for 1995 but I couldn’t say it was really worth playing for anyone except Origin fans – I think the problem may just be that its hard to do much with a 3D engine this basic so it ends up feeling like you’ve seen it all before. If nothing else it makes me realise just how good System Shock was because that game is still very much worth playing and it never got stale at any point. Having said that you could leave the gameplay alone in Cybermage and wrap it in a modern engine and it would compete with plenty of modern FPS’s so it was definitely ahead of its time. Overall, its a great game for its day but not quite the classic I thought it might be. I would definitely have loved it back in 1995.

Next: Bioforge