This is a ruined temple to a forgotten god. Black basalt pillars reach to the ceiling, but some are broken and lie in huge fragments on the ground. The air is stale and filled with the odor of decay. Bats roost in the rafters, the only remaining worshippers.Though the plot of the game amounts to, as with the first two entries, "save the world from an evil force through your use of magic", there is far more going on here--and the plot is much more integrated into the game as a whole. The initial development/hook, though very different from the device in Sorcerer, has considerable shock value--and, incidentally, serves to draw the player into the story rather than sounding a false alarm. Learning the "rules" of the game takes some time, and there are numerous opportunities to make the game unwinnable, many more than in Enchanter or Sorcerer (including one juxtaposition early in the game that seems like a "pull-my-finger" joke of sorts)--but the unconventional nature of the story makes every new development a new discovery in a way that cannot be said of your average collect-the-treasure cave quest.
Spellbreaker was given an "Expert" difficulty rating under the system at the time, a label only somewhat accurate. The bulk of the game's puzzles are fairly standard use-the-proper-spell affairs, though some, naturally, rely on wits rather than magic--but up until nearly the end, Spellbreaker could just as well be an "Advanced" game. The last few puzzles, though--certainly two of the last three, and a few others from near the end as well--are vastly more difficult; I will candidly admit that I needed a substantial push. (In fact, I didn't even get the premise of one of them without assistance--one that amounts to a variation on a mathematical problem--and I suspect I was not alone in that respect.) That factor increases the frustration level of Spellbreaker considerably; intuitive leaps are needed at the end that were simply not necessary earlier, and the unwary player might well assume he or she has missed something that would make the last few puzzles less baffling. It should also be said that, considering the intricacy of the puzzle-solving required to get there, the great climactic ending is something of a letdown--one short paragraph, in effect, hardly longer or more resounding than any of the many deaths one can die. The nature of the ultimate ending does, in a way, explain that--but it still feels like a letdown (I wondered for a while whether there was another, "better" ending). Despite frustration, though, there is an elegance to many of Spellbreaker's puzzles that the player can only admire; Lebling manages to shake the feel of "put the octagonal key in the octagonal hole" or "give the food to the animal blocking the door" that plagues many games. (The implications of the sand room puzzle are either completely absurd or supremely logical--either way, they might give you a headache trying to sort it out.) In a sense, the puzzles reflect the plot--on occasions, magic ceases to help the player at all; there are areas and situations where no amount of spellcasting will set things right, a subversion of the "spell for every occasion" feel of the first two games. In other instances, though, the player's magical powers circumvent the rules of the game's universe in ways that the first two games (in the temple and the coal mine, respectively) had only hinted at. The effect is occasionally a bit dizzying--in that the geography is largely non-contiguous, the player jumps between realms and situations, and types of dilemmas, rather abruptly--but the final confrontation ties things together, for the most part.
Spellbreaker's plot has been described, and criticized, as "narrow" and "linear," which usually means that the amount of exploration possible before the player is confronted with another puzzle is small--and hence that only one or two puzzles are available at a given time. Critics of such an approach claim that it makes a game too easy--but Spellbreaker should give the lie to that; even though the difficulty increases toward the end, as noted, there are few puzzles that could be considered obvious. Moreover, after the first few puzzles are solved, the game opens up considerably, to the extent that it is often possible to have five or six unsolved puzzles at hand. (And there are also a few dummy puzzles, or what seemed so to me, and a few that require specific tools that don't come until well after the problems are first encountered.) Granted, the freedom of the player is limited; the amount of variation in a winning game of Spellbreaker is minimal (as in, there are only a few puzzles or tasks whose order of solving or accomplishment can move around--and not very far, at that--whereas very few of the puzzles in Sorcerer, say, were in sequence)--but that is part of why the game was, in fact, rated "Expert"; of the several puzzles available for head-scratching over at any given moment in Spellbreaker, it is likely that only one will be solvable. The feel of the game lends to the sense of narrowness, true--for the uninitiated, the player follows a trail of sorts of mysterious cubes that transport him/her between a series of apparently disconnected locations, and the surface area that each cube provides to explore is limited to one or two rooms in a few cases. But it is possible to have several cubes whose possibilities are not fully explored at any given time--one cube, by my count, has six distinct puzzles associated with it. The point is that Spellbreaker avoids the usual problems associated with linearity (in a way that, say, the recent Time... does not), and provides one important advantage inherent in narrow games--the sense of a storyline that the player discovers/is drawn into, rather than a bunch of problems to solve. (The cubes, suffice it to say, have a significance beyond their ability to transport you hither and yon--and once you realize that significance, the plot of the game becomes much more intriguing.)
The writing, as in most Lebling games, is controlled and skillful, all the more so considering the nature of the game's world--the sheer surreality of your surroundings as the game progresses. (Try to picture this scene, for example:
This place is odd indeed. Nothing that you look at is what it seems. If you look at something carefully enough it turns out to be something entirely different. The room is cluttered with objects and obviously hasn't been cleaned in a long time. The floor is overgrown with grass and weeds, and rabbits have chewed them. There are bird nests around the ceiling and droppings here and there. A very untidy and unsettling place. Much of the walls, ceiling and floor is covered in mirrors. There are empty, mirrorless square areas at north and south and a round black emptiness to the east.If you can visualize that scene at all, your imagination is better than mine.) There are, of course, defensible reasons why Lebling chose to have that particular room appear that particular way--but it is also true that the atmosphere is sometimes more baffling than evocative of anything in particular. But though the nature of your travels allows Lebling to give you scenes like this...
Light Room This place is bright and glaring. The very materials of which it is made blaze with light so bright that their forms are obscured. There are glowing archways to the west and south....or this...
No Place There is nothing here. You are here, but there is no here where you are. You see nothing. Your senses are vainly trying to find something, anything to work on. You can know your body is there, but you can't truly sense it to confirm the suspicion. Your mind is alternately drawn in three "directions" (or at least what seem like directions): east, west and south. There is something slightly different about the nothing in those directions....the sense that the author is Telling You A Big Cosmic Important Tale is mostly absent, thankfully, and the game manages to take you into realms several degrees removed from the average landscape without losing the feel of the adventure-game romp, no small feat. Those who have finished the game might do well to consider the nature of what Spellbreaker was purporting to describe, and the restraint with which Lebling carries it out; that much of the game seems prosaic is, in a way, high praise. The humor in the game is essential to its enjoyability, in that respect--in the plain scene, notably, in the merchant's patter, and in the very nature of the idol puzzle--and the absurdities (and acknowledgment of same) help keep the game from becoming portentous.
Spellbreaker and Trinity have been mentioned in the same breath, and for good reason--their plots have much in common, and there is a deft interaction between puzzles and story in each game that makes them just as absorbing for the narrative as for the challenge of the puzzles. A resounding conclusion to a somewhat uneven series, Spellbreaker deserves to be considered one of Infocom's very best.