Producer: Infogrames
Retail Price: £9.95

You know, when you've spent some time in the reviewing business you begin to sense good or bad things about a game the moment you load up, or in some cases, even earlier as you start to plough your way through the instructions. As a rule, if the instructions are overly complex or garbled then the game will turn out to be difficult to play and, more annoyingly, not worth playing in any case.

Mandragore is one of those games where the overly involved instructions are a sign of confusion over where the game begins and where it is going, if anywhere. Perhaps some of the fault lies in the translation as INFOGRAMES are a French outfit (hence the ' chateaux' in the instructions) but this can only be part of the excuse as the instructions are readable. It's just that they are constructed in a way as to make reading them at least three times a must before any proper attempt can be made at the game.

The player's attempts to come to terms with the game's complexities are further frustrated by the mixing of Commodore, Amstrad, Apple and MSX instructions (including disc information) with those for the little old Spectrum. Throw in one or two other major irritations like characters that disappear on screen because they have parts that are the same colour as the background (surely unforgivable) and an ending to the game which is so messy that the first indication is that on checking your characters they would all appear to have expired, and you have a game that goes out of its way to annoy and perplex rather than engage and entertain.

That said, I somehow mustered the patience to get somewhere with this one and discovered an adventure heavily based upon Dungeons and Dragons. The structure of the game is novel, what with its main game code on one cassette and data relating to each one of ten chateaux on another. When the data pertaining to a chateaux is needed, signalled by a prompt on the screen, this data is then loaded from its position on the other cassette.

Syrela's Adventure is the first of three options offered at the start, the other two being Your Adventure, where you form your own team via a questionnaire which appears on screen, and Old Adventure which is the option to allow a saved game to be resumed (restarting a game left off in a chateaux involves reloading the castle you were in at the end of the previous game). Syrela's Adventure is recommended for the novice, as here a previously selected team of four characters is offered already ascribed names, races, occupations, gender and characteristics. These last are the familiar D&D labels or pseudonyms Constitution, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity and Appearance. D&D aficionados will quickly equate this game's Knowledge with DSO's Intelligence, and similarly, Appearance with Charisma. These are given values between 5 and 20 and never exceed 80 in total. In addition, each team member begins with 50 life points, 20 food points, 50 money points and no experience. The Level, which starts at one, is an indication of the maturity where a higher level signifies a more invincible character who is better able to undertake hazardous and difficult deeds.

The choice of race shows the greatest deviation from D&D with the non-standard Mi-Orc and Obbit along with the more familiar Dwarf, Elf and Human. Occupations are more in line with D&D terminology with Warrior, Ranger (Strength must be above 15). Wizard (Intelligence above 15), Cleric (high Wisdom), and Thief (high Dexterity needed). Minstrel is thrown in for good measure and this occupation involves an Appearance above that magic figure of fifteen. The Strength of a Ranger, the Dexterity of a Thief, and the Intelligence of a Wizard can have a great bearing on a game we are told, but I defy anyone to keep awake long enough to find out if this is true.

Games play centres around the screen map which is the localised version of a full map in the middle of the instruction booklet. Crude character block scrolling is the order of the day and the graphics depicting the monotonous stretches of plains, forests, hills, swamps and mountains are uninspiring to say the least. Your team is represented by a solitary figure who resolutely stays in the centre of the map as all scrolls about him. This Map Mode, as the instructions call it. is used primarily to move from one chateaux or village to the other.

Before long the next mode, Wandering Monsters, is called upon as you bump into your assailants while innocently hiking around the map. The trouble with this mode are the pictures of the monsters which are teletext resolution and often so poor it's impossible to say what exactly is attacking you (is it a bird? is it a fish?' kind of thing). Destroying the monster you can return to map mode or you can skip the whole boring thing, return directly to map mode and forfeit 10 life points for each character.

The villages and chateaux form the third major mode with the villages providing an opportunity to buy (or steal) weapons, torches and food or to sell thins found in the course of expeditions inside the chateaux. The ten chateaux contain about 30 rooms and dungeons each concealing a mystery to be solved and monster traps to avoid.

The way in which the game makes use of abbreviations and one touch entry is clever but marred by the fact that the instructions do not distinguish between CAPS SHIFT and SYMBOL SHIFT. Where the instructions say that SHIFT 0 brings up the name, experience points and life points tally of each character onto the right flank of the screen it is here referring to SYMBOL SHIFT. Where they refer to SHIFT and cursor arrows they mean the CAPS SHIFT. To be honest, if you were to struggle through the instructions to this stage as I did, this state of affairs would not surprise you as most of the early part of getting to know this game consists of pressing keys at random, so confusing are the instructions! But to give credit where credit is due the input system, once mastered, is quite fun.

Pressing 1 - 4 brings down a character name, pressing the first two letters of a verb (from a kindly supplied list) brings this down next to it while pressing A - D from the status list down the right flank of the screen completes your input. (A - D normally consist of one monster and one or more objects). There is one major proviso in using the verbs from the lists supplied: certain verbs are occupation specific for instance, only a Cleric can CURE and a Wizard TELEPORT while other verbs are location specific so you must be in a village in order to STEAL, BUY or BARTER. For these reasons early inputs seem to more often than not end with the word 'Impossible' as the program's only retort. When the input system is finally sussed things can still be tricky, like when trying to buy equipment in the villages when everything seems priced well above the starting 50 monies of each character.

Mandragore is an adventure which clearly has had a lot of hard work put into its inception. Like any D&D clone it has a depth and complexity way beyond the normal microcomputer game. The garbled and hotch-potch instructions are infuriating the last thing an already complex game needs as an introduction. However, I think that once the player gets over this hurdle the game proves to have a great deal to offer and those interested in role-playing games on the Spectrum should certainly take the time to get to know and enjoy this one.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: poor instructions necessitate a slow start
Graphics: poor
Presentation: average
Input facility: novel and highly effective
Response: fast

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Label: Infogram
Author: In house
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Gary Rook

Mandragore is a French game, which has necessitated translation of a rather different sort than is usual in computer programs. Unfortunately, it might have been better had it been left in the obscurity of a foreign language.

It's not that the game is bad, it's just that it's dull and old fashioned - it may well be a couple of years old, for all I know. Mandragore is a computerised role-playing game in which you control the destiny of a party of four adventurers.

First choose your team. For each character you are given 80 points to divide between Constitution. Strength, intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity and Appearance. Anyone who has played Dungeons and Dragons may recognise something here.

Then you choose race: dwarf, elf, mi-orc, hobbit and human. As far as I can see, what race you choose has little effect on the game.

Next you have to decide on an occupation for each of the four characters you are creating. Options are warrior, ranger, wizard, cleric, thief and minstrel.

Finally you have to decide on sex (an easy choice - male or female) and name. Sex is important because in certain situations you get pictures of your characters: female ones have bulges and head scarves - even the dwarves.

If you don't want to go through the rigmarole of creating new characters the first time you play, you can use a preset team, led by a female human called Syrella. There is also a short story accompanying the game detailing Syrella's attempts to recruit some adventurers to help her find her father's lost temple with the magic flame located on a volcano ...

Once you have your team, you enter the land of Mandragore. There are two modes to the game: one when you are journeying around the countryside, the other when you enter villages or chateaux. In map mode, you move square by square: terrain features include plains, forests, hills, swamps, sea and mountains. You move about by typing in the direction you wish to travel: n, s, e, w. Every so often, you get a random encounter with some sort of monster. You can run away, but there are penalties; otherwise, you have to fight.

On meeting a monster, you get a really rather dreadful graphics sequence which depicts the members of your party (head scarves and all) and the monsters as a series of blocks. If one of your party attacks the enemy, the appropriate graphic zips across the screen and then back again. All very terrible. What's more, if one of your people has part of his/her body the same colour as the background, they both disappear.

If you land on a square containing a village or a chateau symbol, you can enter it. In village or chateau mode you have the awful graphics all the time. Instead of moving square by square, you change screens, each one being a room or corridor. While the village information is contained in the main program, if you want to enter a chateau - there are 10 - you have to find the right place on the chateaux tape and load it in. Very tedious.

When in villages or chateaux there are a wide variety of instructions you can give your characters. To give you a very quick idea of the way it works: hit 1-4 to choose a character who is going to do something; type in two letters for a particular action; type a, b, c or d to choose an object or monster you want to do something to. So 1 at a will be translated by the program as "Syrella attacks the wyvern". In that case it will then add "with:" you hit 1 to 4 again to choose one of the four objects Syrella is carrying.

While the list of possible actions is comprehensive, the whole business is very repetitive and I really couldn't be that bothered. It's also very difficult to actually get anywhere at the start if you create your own team. Each of your characters has 50 gold pieces, for a total of 200 gold and that's hardly enough to buy one little dagger. A bow costs 220 pieces! Maybe you're meant to bargain. I tried stealing everything - it worked fine with the thief in the pre-generated team who was able to nick everything in sight that wasn't nailed down, but when I tried with the thief I'd created he was instantly caught and fined all his money.

If you can't get hold of any weapons you're going to be in deep trouble in the wilderness, as you'll have to use your bare hands or magic. You can kill things by punching them, but it takes an awful long time and your characters are going to get hurt in the process. Magic works well, but after a certain number of magical attacks, your magician blows out, rather like a light bulb, and is dead.

Death is not a pleasant thing: it basically means you are without that character, and as far as I can work out from the game and the instructions, you cannot recruit new characters to fill the gap.

I can't see this being any sort of success, it's just too old-fashioned. It's also too slow. I certainly can't get excited over spending ages killing something that looks like an evil jellyfish but which the program assures me is an owlbear.

SUPPLIER: Infogrames
MACHINE: Spectrum, C64m Amstrad, MSX
PRICE: £9.95

So this is the great French adventure from the biggest software company in Europe (the French Connection, C+VG August 86) it is more like D&D, and Phantasie than a true adventure.

Unless you settle for the bunch of characters already provided, you start off by building four of your own characters. You assign their attributes up to a total of 80 points each.

Pressing any key winds the points up for an attribute until RETURN is pressed, when it is entered. Then the next on the list takes its turn.

If at any time you exceed the points remaining available, instead of an error message with the facility to edit your previous entries, the whole lot is blanked out, and you have to start in again.

Name, race, occupation and sex ("yes please" is NOT accepted!) are then entered, and here is an inconsistency. You type in your name in the normal way. But next, race is required, and the screen does not react unless you hit the initial letter of one of the races in the game, at which time, the whole word is displayed.

Once your four characters are created, off you go to the map of Mandragore, about which you can traverse by use of the N, S, E, and W keys. This action is quite smooth and effective.

Then comes the thrilling bit! When you come across one, you can enter a chateau!

You can command a member of your party to do something. The characters, each assigned a number one to four, are listed down the right hand side of the screen, together with experience and life points. At the bottom is a box with lines A - D, and if any objects are present in the room, they will be shown here.

To save typing, or, more likely, to save providing a parser or icon-driven command system, the commands go like this: Character number (to be commanded), verb, object letter. The verb list is provided in the instructions, and the first one or two letters of the verb are typed. The whole word is then displayed in the input area, at the bottom of the screen.

So, "Supremo attack Tickel' is entered thus: 1 AT B, for example. The picture of Supremo then flies alarmingly about the screen in the general vicinity of Tickel, for a moment or two.

It is said that there is a problem in each of the nine chateaux. I was lucky. I played a disk version on the Commodore 64. Each chateau must be loaded separately. On disk, this is almost transparent to the player. But on tape, the correct position for the appropriate chateau must first be found, and the instructions recommend that before starting to use the game, you run through the cassette, noting the tape counter positions.

A more clumsy way to load (from tape) and enter commands, I haven't seen in a long time!

The graphics aren't bad, but there seems little depth in the game itself.