Shadowkey, a suprising Morrowind-alike for the N-Gage

I started playing The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey for the N-Gage. This is one of that "bucket list" games. Not really a good ones but those that trigger curiosity to the point I need to experience it myself.

Original N-gage with side talking

Upgraded N-Gage QD

 

N-Gage games got pirated into oblivion back in the day and first time I got to play it (as I never had N-Gage) was on Siemens SX1 (phone that run N-Gage games with better compatibility that Nokia phones and smoother because of CPU that could be overclocked. You can take a sneak peak on this extremely compressed video.

Siemens SX1 with silly side buttons and tiny control stick

It even had higher resolution for the top status bar (176x220 vs 176x208) and I played with my friend a wireless Bluetooth multiplayer The Roots: Gates of Chaos (aRPG) in 2006! Still, the side buttons were an abomination. Shadowkey lets you fortunately remap those. These days I got myself EKA2L1 and connected my wireless DualShock clone to the PC. Remapped buttons for double analog stick-like controls (left walks, right looks) and other buttons too to make it more "console-like".

Screenshot from controls configuration in EKA2L1

I remember trying N-Gage games in a store and on that silly SX1 - it felt like DOS Duke 3D controls and the SX1 gave me a tiny joystick dip in the finger after hours of playing. Double analog setup and key maps makes the game controls 100% better.

The game itself suffers from plot that, in the middle of reading, made my eyes gloss over. You're free to ignore it and focus on a each quest. Putting simply: there's war, there's big bad aside from the war. Collect X of things to fight and beat the big bad.

This is the "PS1 conversion of Morrowind", a first person action RPG with extra stats. Magic is very limited and so are weapons and items. Almost no skills. I think it could be good for 3 play throughs (warrior, mage, thief types), but I can't imagine the patience.

Having said that - it's a fun as aRPG, if you can accept weird conversions that are neither challenging or well made.

It has MORROWIND MUSIC! 😍 Visuals are actually PS1-grade, with Silent Hill-like limited draw distance with low resolution.

This is "solved" by a fog-of-war type map (opens up where you've looked) that you can walk with it opened. Enemies can still attack you and if you walk into a chasm that looks exactly like a wall on a map - you're dead and have to reload.

Low draw distance can make you confused if it's a sharp drop you can walk into or a chasm. Same goes with very brief quest descriptions - it's a good idea to note down what NPCs are saying about locations. If all fails, look into this FAQ from 2006.

Here are some more cool resources with even a Map Viewer! If you prefer to experience the story rather than a game I've found this summary and storyline - it's neat and uses all the actual text.

As for the emulation - on 16:9 screen it looks really weird, so if possible set yourself with a portrait screen. If you have 16:10 (so 10:16) aspect ratio portrait is good, but possibly portrait 4:3 CRT (so 3:4) for low res could be even better. Here it is in action:

Effect of CRT just somehow makes sense. I think it would look even better on CRT monitor rather than TV.

 
Review and thoughts
I finished the game, but I can't wrap my head around how much the ending was underwhelming! It's ~20h if you're completionist and I did basically all the quests and beat the final boss at level 29. The game itself is... okay...ish. If you like simple aRPG with Morrowind flavor, you'd like it. The thing is that every time you think the game will start for real, it just throws you another dungeon and another simple quest. Even the main "city" is just another dungeon.
While the world seems to be varied, all locations are just a dungeons with a skin and some characters. The city has ~20 pseudo-quests where you have to give X item for EXP. You need ~10 bread, 5 ointment and rest is asking for money. All copy-pasted conversations. Other quests are mostly bring X, kill Y, go to location Z and interact. Rest is hack and slash and that's it. Characters and locations are super samey, just have different skins. It's really hard to keep your attention on what's going on because it barely matters.
There were some resemblance of "choice", but only outside of conversations where you just ignore the quest. NPCs should all be non-aggro, because you have X item with you for the quest, but some are, some don't. You can kill all, without impact to the story.
Inventory space seems to be endless and I have only one instance of not being able to buy more - I couldn't buy consumables because I had too much spells (?). I tried selling all consumables, but that didn't solve the issue - I had to sell the spells too. It's buggy.
I played as Knight and was able to open all locks after leveling up. Maybe mage-type is more hard to play as, but Knight just rips through all the dungeons with right items. After half of the game it doesn't matter if you pick up anything or if you sell it. You'll be too good.

Ending spoilers ahead!

Ending is a boss battle, but if you completed all dungeons and did the quests it's a piece of cake. Press attack bunch of time, press potion hotkey. Literally one minute and it's gone.

You'd think there will be an ending, but instead: confusion. I used the ending teleport and just walked around confused for two minutes without any feedback.

Suddenly, a SINGLE splash screen! After that, next 2-3 minutes of walking confused.

Then... shock and awe: one of the characters does the end game dialog... more or less. Anyway, this is the ending as far as I can tell.

I have a feeling that they created complex game engine, pretty good levels and suddenly they had to release the game next week, so they put all the notes into the quests and didn't even bother with a proper ending. Again - gameplay is fine (too easy), but the ending just sucks.
It feels like a game based on cartoon that had some initial funding, but then everyone stopped caring. It's a shame, because someone made a great base but the seemliness of levels and story and a too simple gameplay and slapdash ending broke a cool product.

I may seem very upset after finishing the game, but N-gage had so much potential that was wasted. With good writing and balancing it could be so much more. Maybe they knew that N-Gage will fail, so they quickly pushed the game out the door, not to spend too much effort. Shadowkey was released in November 2004 when CEO already claimed in February of 2004 that the platform will be given time until 2005 to see if it succeeds or not.

 

(Originally posted on 6th March 2023 on Twitter.)