Reviews

One of the finest RPGs seen on the Speccy: a huge game, with great variety of monsters. None of the puzzles are really anything special, but my set of hand-drawn maps of the whole game still inspire warm nostalgic feelings whenever I find them.

As far as D&D style games go, this is about as good as they got on any 8-bit machine. You choose your team of six characters from various kinds of fighters, magic users and the all-important bard who is vital to the party as your only healer to begin with.

There are a huge number of maps, all quite large, filled with monsters and treasures, and some of the later ones are insanely difficult; designed to frustrate your best attempts at mapping them with spinners and teleports all over the place. As you play, a storyline begins to emerge which eventually leads to a suitably dramatic conclusion.

That said, I'll have to knock a point off as the Spectrum version has lacklustre graphics and no sound making it very much the poor relation of them all. It's also a multi-load from hell, which isn't so bad if you've got the +3 version or are playing it on an emulator, but the tape version isn't for the faint hearted.

Recommended, but only if you've got plenty of time to give it.

It's not my kind of game, but it isn't bad and certainly a lot better than some of the dungeon crawler games I've played lately.

RPG with turn based combat and a quest.
About as good as it got on the Speccy for this sort of thing, along with Bloodwych, maybe.
Just enough to immerse the player and allow filling the gaps with imagination.
No sound - but probably for the best, allowing the player to provide their own soundtrack, and avoid any jarring bleeps or bloops destroying the atmosphere.