Bug Error In Your Favor (Mostly)
It may take some time for them to show up, but Possessed is unfortunately a buggy game. All of which are basically a guarantee to run into for anybody that plays the game in full. The game's credits list four different beta testers, and jojo himself had a few games under his belt already so the number of bugs here is really surprising. Anyone playing a number of ZZT worlds eventually realizes that bugs are all-too common, but so often I find myself still wondering how these issues went unresolved. Most of them here are fixable in seconds, save for one where the trouble is that it effects nearly every enemy in the game.
So let's start with that one first because it's hardly an error unique to this game. It's the good old fashioned #TAKE HEALTH without a followup #ENDGAME. This classic blunder means that when the player's health gets low enough, enemies will be unable to inflict the damage they're supposed to, and rather than ending the game or having any other fallback command to execute if the #TAKE fails, nothing happens, rendering the player invincible to certain foes.
Thanks to jojo's well-placed health refills throughout the game, I didn't realize this was even an issue until the final level. Its more cramped halls meant getting pinned in a corner between two enemies who would endlessly attack for zero damage forcing me to reload my save. With this oversight, you can at least feel sorry for jojo who would be required to add code to every enemy in the game to prevent this from being a possibility.
The same level also introduces a new tiger-looking guard enemy with their own distinct bug. Everything about them works as intended until the killing blow is delivered where instead of throwing a star, the object throws an error. Due to a missing direction for where to throw the star, the guard's final effort is in vain, unable to pull off that a desperation attack before they would otherwise die.
Only a few of these enemies are even present on the last level, so the benefit of not having an extra star to deal with isn't all that big a deal. In theory, with some rotten luck, you might cause them to lock up in a spot that would prevent you from continuing. An easy fix with ?ZAP if you're that unfortunate at least.
The one bug that I really can't believe made it to the final release is a passage error of all things. After finishing the second level, the passage to the cutscene that serves as a prelude for the third doesn't place players in their little box in the corner where they belong. Instead, ZZT finds a matching colored passage within the cutscene itself, as if an audience member at a play found themselves suddenly on the stage.
After the amusement of watching yourself be chased off by dwarves you're likely to try your luck and see where the passage you were placed on goes.
As you can guess, this is not the next level.
This does mean that playing the game does require the use of the cheat prompt, as they only way to proceed is to ?ZAP to the correct passage. Did the testers not actually play the entire game? Did jojo forget to fix a bug that could be fixed by removing the decorative passage? Who knows!
All I can say is that it forces an awkward break in the flow of gameplay, and makes the game feel less polished as a result. As far as bugs in ZZT games go, the tools are readily accessible for players to fix them themselves, which is more than can be said about the enemies that can't kill you. It's just a shame it comes down to that in yet another ZZT world, especially one as engagaing as Possessed.
And then there's one last bug in which the battle with Ganin absolutely does not work as intended. The fight has Ganin destroy your weapon, depleting your ammo, and expecting you to take an awkward alternate route to victory. If you manage to keep Arkin from being aligned for several seconds, Ganin will place a bomb on the board. Use the bomb on an odd wall at the bottom of the screen and supplies for the posession ritual will pop out. There are a multiple problems here including subpar balancing as well as the scripting not working as intended.
Bombing the wall to get the ritual components isn't a one and done thing. One bomb equals one ingredient. With blasts revealing candles and oils and powders in a very hard to take seriously manner. You need four bombs to hit the target to defeat Ganin as intended.
This is not something that can be done reliably at all. Ganin alternates between moving randomly and moving towards the player, and he does so at cycle one. A number of labels get zapped each time he finishes moving and remains unaligned with the player. Being aligned with him for even a moment resets the count entirely making it pretty much impossible to get a bomb to drop in the almost entirely open arena. The best I could manage was to try to use some of the debris on the ground to snag Ganin in place, which kind of works. However since he still moves randomly as well, even a trapped in a corner Ganin has a chance of backing out of it randomly and then moving north when he attempts to move towards the player, which frees him from the trap.
Even when it's pulled off, the bomb placement is always towards the player. Any bombs produced end up reducing the amount of debris that can be used to try and restrict Ganin's movemoents. Each bomb becomes more difficult to spawn than the last. Not to mention, the check to place a bomb only fires if one isn't present on screen, so there's no hope of trying to use multiple bombs as an obstacle. The length of time you need to not be aligned with ganon is far too long for the fight to even feel possible. I do not think it can actually be done.
The botched fight is a big disappointment as it means you'll have to dig through the game's code to see the text describing Arkin performing the ritual on Ganin and then imprisoning yourself in the ring. (This also seems to contradict how every other possession was Arkin "taking the form of" rather than inhabiting the body of a creature, but I suppose this instance is posession as you'd expect.) It also means skipping a cinema board where Arkin escapes the ring by returning to his original form , leaving Ganin trapped inside the ring forever. This scene is supposed to set a flag then checked for when the player touches Panse to trigger the rest of the ending where they celebrate a job well done and move on to the finale.
Despite all these problems, another bug still lets players see the last half of the game's ending. Touching Panse at all during the fight will cause the game to act as if Ganin had been sealed. This fluke occurs thanks to the flag heheh being used for trapping Ganin having already been used earlier as the same flag for having a bomb fruit grenade used to blow up the troll army. Jojo never clears the original flag so any player that makes it here will still have it set.
Final Thoughts
Bugs be damned though, Possessor was a great time and is now easily one my most recommended vintage dungeon crawlers. Jojoisjo fumbles with plenty of bugs, but I just didn't care so much while playing. I was too invested in the great level design, creative story concept, and simply wanting to know what was in store for the end of the game.
Barring the passage error, the epxerience holds steady for almost the entire game, and it's hard not to be impressed with how much care jojoisjo put into making a dungeon crawler with more to it than getting to the bottom of the dungeon and beating up the big baddie. The underground world here feels like it's full of people, culture, and ripe with other opportunities for adventure.
In terms of level design, it's some of the best I've seen. With an impeccable sense of what resources to hand out to players and when, plus enemies that are rewarding to fight, it's hard not to fall to in love with the game. Jojo structures his dungeons in a more sprawling layout while taking care to make sure players can navigate via landmark or signs. Backtracking through empty rooms is a rarity thanks to shedding torchlight on obstructions to keep players from heading down paths not yet worth taking as well as sometimes adding in new enemies to seemingly emptied rooms.
The combat makes great use of the format jojo committed to. Enemies without projectiles prevents them from defeating themselves without player interaction. Players get to take advantage of range to look for safety in their nearby surroundings, keeping an eye out for narrower passageways which let enemies group up close together where they can easily be picked off. Sticking with dark rooms means players can't linger for too long lest enemies have the chance to get the jump on them. Resources hit a sweet a spot allowing players to feel comfortable rather than constrained by combat, while not going so far as to make it a matter of shooting fifty bullets into the darkness and being done with it.
Not to mention the staggering mechanics that really reward players for focusing indivdual targets and avoiding shooting wildly to begin with.
The themeing of the game gives it a unique vibe. Picking up a dagger and knowing what dark purpose it will serve is far more compelling than picking up yet another key, and when you do disocver the injured dwarf or whatever species you'll turn into next, there's a twinge of sadness as you realize what it means for them. Or perhaps it's a sense of bloodlust as you prepare to find the exit to the next section of the underground, excited to see what you'll be tasked with doing next after claiming your new form.
There's some room for improvement. The bugs, while easy enough to work around, do take their toll on you by the end of the game, and the final boss fight would be unwinnable if not for being able to accidentally skip it. Doing so means missing out on the pseudo-self-sacrifice scene, which would have been a highlight had it not been trapped behind a futile fight scene. Hearing the error noise on the game's last level definitely rattled me as well. If doing something as natural as fighting off enemies leads to issues, then at that point all bets are off. I was worried for most of the final level about what might break next, which I guess was justified.
Really though, if you ever enjoyed any ZZT dungeon crawls, Possessed will deliver on what you're after. I was quite surprised the game had zero z2-era reviews. Were it not for the late game fumbles, I think this would have been a real classic, and far less obscure than it seems to have ended up being. At the very least, jojoisjo can finally sleep soundly knowing that I'll associate his name with something more than 4.
