Sorcerer, the second entry in the Enchanter trilogy, begins arrestingly enough...

You are in a strange logation, but you cannot remember how you got here.
Everything is hazy, as though viewed through a gauze...

Twisted Forest

You are on a path through a blighted forest. The trees are sickly, and
there is no undergrowth at all. . One tree here looks climbable. The path,
which ends here, continues to the northeast.

A hellhound is racing straight toward you, its open jaws displaying rows
of razor-sharp teeth.

That may be the best hook of any of Infocom's games--no desultory "west of a white house" here. Escaping from the hellhound leads to a attack of locusts, a crumbling riverbank, a pit of snakes, a rotted drawbridge...the danger comes thick and fast. Unfortunately, it soon turns out that the landscape in question is a dream--a dream that exactly predicts the middle of the game, true, but still just a dream and unrelated to one's performance in the game. I spent quite a while trying to figure out what exactly I was supposed to be doing in that dream, and only grudgingly concluded that it was a long, elaborate red herring.

Steve Meretzky is among Sorcerer's authors, and his influence is clear: his earlier Planetfall was crammed with red herrings, and the jokey approach to NPCs (distinctly different from the other two entries in the series) also echoes the earlier game. The role of red herrings in a game is a matter of taste--though this reviewer doesn't care for it, he can't unequivocally declare that a large percentage of irrelevant objects and locations makes for a bad game. He can, however, warn the potential Sorcerer player to set aside the "anything this complex must be useful somehow" assumption and not to spend too long on any given problem or object, since chances are good that Meretzky is up to his old tricks. (Lord knows, I spent hours experimenting with certain elements of Sorcerer's scenery, trying to figure out why they were in the game.)

Also notable in Sorcerer is the introduction of magic potions, absent in Enchanter and Spellbreaker--though, typically, only some of the potions that you find are relevant. Some of the potions have effects that are limited in duration, and one is permanent (it still seems to be in effect in Spellbreaker, in fact)...and Meretzky's goofball side is evident in the responses when you drink one potion while the effects of another are still ongoing--e.g., "Uh oh. Your left ear turned into a poisonous toad and ate your brain." Still, even if not especially innovative, the addition of magic potions give the magic another dimension.

Meretzky's forte as a writer is humor, and Sorcerer's genre is wizardry/fantasy, not humor--and though the writing is far from disappointing, the atmosphere hardly approaches that of Dave Lebling's or Brian Moriarty's games. Too often, Meretzky is content to tell rather than show the player what to think--for example, in reading Belboz's journal at the beginning of the game:

The last three entries are strange and frightening, written in a hand
quite different from that of Belboz, and in a language totally unfamiliar
to you.

Yes, fine, we can understand what has happened--but how more skillfully might the sense of unease have been heightened by dropping the "unfamiliar" part and actually reading bits from the journal, bits that imply something sinister! Compare the discovery of the alterations to your paper at the beginning of Lurking Horror; Lebling gives us all sorts of suggestive little tidbits ("there is something about a 'summoning,' or a 'visitor'...") in order to let our imagination roam. On the whole, there is little mood to Sorcerer; the dangers are so often vaguely ludicrous that it is hard to generate much in the way of tension. (Killer vines? A slot machine that crushes you with coins?) There are many, many locations like this:

Highway

This is a wide road winding away to the east and west, perhaps a relic of
the Great Underground Empire you read about in history class. A passage
leads up to the north.

This could be in any game; the "history class" reference is typical of Meretzky in the way it shatters the description. That approach works brilliantly in Leather Goddesses and in other humorous games, but Sorcerer is not as free for humor in that respect, and contrasted with the skillful atmosphere in the rest of the series, the writing in Sorcerer feels a bit flat. (The lack of atmosphere is illustrated by the inclusion of the amusement park--how strange and inappropriate would that have felt in Enchanter or Spellbreaker?) Though the abandoned equipment and empty rooms in Planetfall became wearying, they did create a world of sorts; the world of Sorcerer feels thoroughly incoherent.

All that said, though, there is much in Sorcerer to enjoy, including two of the better puzzles in the Infocom library. I enjoyed the glass maze immensely, even if it required considerable trial and error (and I never thought to take the easier solution); the idea felt so innovative that I was willing to put up with the aggravation. And the coal mine/time paradox puzzle is justly famous, and well worth the effort required to reach it; though I've knocked Meretzky's writing, I must admit that the tension I felt when trying to get through the mine in time was considerable. I don't particularly approve of the inclusion of the maze in the coal mine--it felt like an artificial way to make the puzzle more difficult--but the nature of the puzzle itself was so absorbing that I could forgive that. (And there's something vastly entertaining about being told "You cease to exist!...If you had continued to exist, your score would have been..." when you violate the confines of the loop.) As a mind-bender, the coal mine puzzle is one of the best--consider sometime where the knowledge of the combination originated--and the feel of ultimately getting through is indeed rewarding. (I always felt like the character's need for sleep once that puzzle is completed is intended to mirror one's own relief at being out of danger at last.) Minor annoyances--the maze, Meretzky's insistence on "Wheeeee!" in the coal chute--aside, this puzzle is clearly the highlight of the game (it makes the final few puzzles--fairly "duh"-worthy puzzles--feel wildly anticlimactic, though). Sorcerer is not especially hard--it was rated "advanced" under the rating system at the time, but there are few if any genuinely difficult puzzles (though figuring out what to solve takes a good deal of energy, of course).

For fans of Enchanter, Sorcerer is worth playing; it continues the inventive use of magic to solve puzzles, and there is a genuine sense of accomplishment at the end. Though, particularly in the writing, it doesn't quite equal the standard set by Enchanter, it is well worth the time of any fantasy-game enthusiast.