Let's Play Sierra Games - Freddy Pharkas!

[Tawmis]

[Rath Darkblade]

You always have the most attention-grabbing "teaser" images. (I mean the ones where you shrug, but with a different hat on each time).

(Sorry I don't have much to say about the video itself, but yes, everyone who's played FP knows the ballad).

[Tawmis]

You always have the most attention-grabbing "teaser" images. (I mean the ones where you shrug, but with a different hat on each time).
(Sorry I don't have much to say about the video itself, but yes, everyone who's played FP knows the ballad).

Hah, yeah, any time it's a channel update, I use the shrug photo I did - and just do something with it.

When it's a commentary video, I usually just photoshop my head on the normal image like this:




Just because it's silly and fun which is what I try to make my channel be, while I relive and talk about the games I loved... and some (I am looking at you Lighthouse, that I came to hate...)

[Tawmis]

Yeesh. Life has really kicked me around. I said I'd be playing this back in July 2024...!

But to be fair, I ended up playing the indie Sierra inspired game Tachyon Dreams Anthology (in August 2024)... then commentary on it and Les Manley 2 (also in August)... then did... urmph, Mystery House in September 2024.... But still that's like 6 months of not playing a video game for that channel. I am hoping to get back to this and return to Freddy Pharkas (in replaying the game, so far, have not enjoyed it as much as I remembered from eons ago... a bit tedious lol...)

I did put this out 4 months ago to talk about some of the drama of my life... lol

[Tawmis]

Phew. Now I remember why I don't enjoy Freddy so much.

The medicine making is monotonous - because there's so many things there and you need to mouse over each one.

I couldn't find anything online that listed what everything was (though it might be in the manual so I dug mine up, and it's not even there).

So I made this for myself - and if anyone else can benefit from it - I am going to print it out from work so it's much easier to maneuver through that, rather than mousing over each one, every time I need something.

[Tawmis]

Here's a more printer friendly version (flipped the black and the white background/text so printers don't chew up black ink)

[Tawmis]

Phew. More and more, I am enjoying this game, less and less. I keep running out of time, making the cure for the horse's gas. I am literally mixing the cure - three times now - when I got the, "Well, you took too long" message.

Definitely feel like the timer should stop if you're actively trying to make a cure, because it's such a #$!+ show of how those things are in order, and exactly which things to put in what and mix a specific way. My memory of enjoying this game, is clearly quite incorrect, or I have just grown far less tolerable.

[Tawmis]

Made the formula for the horses as a cheat sheet. Will try this later, to see if it helps me get through it quicker, and in case this benefits anyone else at this frustrating game...

[Tawmis]

Good news, that actually helped.

Now to deal with the snails...

[Tawmis]

For the water cure, if this is of any use to anyone who comes looking for help. Because the mixing of stuff, is easily, one of the worse parts of this game.

I'd rather walk down sixteen screens of stairs in an AGI game, or climb 16 screens of the beanstalk in KQ1.

(This should be correct... about to check now...)

[Tawmis]

You may be thinking... has it been so long that I don't remember what he sounds like? No, don't worry - that voice is me. But it's also not. I thought it'd be fun to PURPOSELY talk with a "twang" since I'd be talking about Freddy Pharkus (a "Western" themed game, if you will) - but on top of that, I used an Application on my PC called VoiceMOD, which one of my D&D players got for me, that will auto-change my voice. So I messed around and found one that enhanced my unusual "twang talk" - and this is the result! (Good news, if you want to skip to the chase - I should be done with Freddy Pharkus this weekend!... Finally...)

[Tawmis]

Finally finished. Splicing and dicing it together now.

If only the whole game were as funny as the "out takes" at the end.

[BBP]

If you were playing the voiced, a fun idea would be playing the unvoiced version as it contains a lot of stuff that was cut out of the original game. When doing the script it surprised me how many jokes I didn't see were in there.

[Tawmis]

If you were playing the voiced, a fun idea would be playing the unvoiced version as it contains a lot of stuff that was cut out of the original game. When doing the script it surprised me how many jokes I didn't see were in there.

I was indeed playing the voice version. I do like everyone's voices in the game. I thought they all did a wonderful job there.

Honestly, it's the timer thing that really bothers me. And the sheer chaos (I am sure it's all tied to the copyright - with how to mix things and what to mix, from the manual) - but that is atrocious. At the very least, timers should be stopped while you're in this screen, mousing over everything freaking bottle to see which one you need. (Which is why I did the above cheat sheets, which became the best idea ever, for me, because it allowed me to fly through the mixtures, once I knew what I needed - I'd figure out what was needed - save the game - quit - look it up in the box - make the image, and view it - and then load the game and go through it much, much, much faster).

The sword fight at the end was also very meh. I was trying to meet all her blows, each time to parry or whatever, since there isn't really a striking thing - it's either up or down. First time, I lasted a minute, but never really gained too much traction. Second time, I tried to match move for move and died in like 10 seconds. Third time, I just viciously clicked in the middle and beat her in like 20 seconds. So there seems to be no real rhyme to how to win that sword fight other than feverishly clicking. (And if there was, I missed it).

The other games, I liked - like when you had the shoot out with the four "brothers"... and the shoot out with your old enemy. Those were actually quite fun. Sword fight was meh and a let down compared to the other "sequence fights."

I _DID_ have to look at one clue - and that was when all the guys start shooting up the place - how to get into the barber's shop to get the thing you need from him.

A secret back entrance.

REALLY?

I do not remember that (obviously), but pretty sure when the wife and I played it when it first came out, we probably used the hintbook for that too (as back then I was collecting hintbooks just because they were Sierra - so pretty sure I have the FFFP hintbook somewhere in my Sierra bins in the garage).

But I really disliked the secret passage. Because as far as I know it's never mentioned or made aware of.

Unless I missed a time where the barber says something like, "Just go out the backdoor, Freddy" or something - which would have been nice to know...

[Tawmis]