Legend of Djel - Tomahawk RRP œ24.95

A long time ago, there was was a beautiful valley ruled by a
chief called Hokram. Hokram had led his people to the valley and
they had settled there. The land was fertile and life was good
for a time. But one day, there was a terrific earthquake and the
land was torn apart by gaping chasms that sent lava into the air
and the surrounding mountains dropped ash all over the land. From
that time the land was known as the Kingdom of the Ashes.

Hokram's people blamed him for the disaster and he was banished
from the kingdom. But, little did the people know that Hokram was
in fact a powerful wizard!

Many years passed and the land gradually recovered. The story of
the origin of the name of the kingdom was only told in stories
passed on from generation to generation and in time the people
believed it was just a legend.


One day, several centuries later, a man entered the valley - it
was Hokram! In the time that he had been away from the valley, he
had travelled widely, gaining more knowledge. He settled in a
small shack where, much to the villagers' dismay, he practised
his art in the company of a small gnome, Petroy. Eventually, he
built a strange device, the Great Alambic (sic), which could be 
used to create gold coins from other specific items.

Hokram married a witch, Esabelle, and they had a son - Djel the
magician - and taught him everything they knew. Hokram's final
creation was an horned, eagle-headed statue which Djel could use
to travel through many surrounding lands as a spirit.

Petroy took young Djel around the neighbouring lands where he saw
many fabulous sights and leant important facts that the gnome
passed on to him, many of which he felt would be useful when he
was older. He met several other wizards and witches. One was
Azeulisse who ruled the Land of 100 Countries, and Djel fell in
love with her beautiful daughter. Another was the wealthy
magician Theros, a third was Kal the Pauper.

Time passed and Djel's parents died, their dying wish being that
Djel should once more win back the love of the people. But, the
deaths of the two powerful enchanters was followed by a series of
misfortunes; famine struck, any survivors caught an incurable
plague and no more babies were born. The people were at first
inclined to blame Djel as they had blamed his father before him
but discovered that the misfortunes had been visited on them by
the three magicians mentioned before.

The babies weren't being born because Azeulisse had cast a spell
in despair because her daughter had been kidnapped. Theros had
been struck down by an illness which had, in turn, affected the
Kingdom and Kal's people were starving and were stealing the
crops grown by the people of the Kingdom of the Ashes. The
Council of Sages begged Djel to solve the problems troubling the
enchanters so that the troubles in the Kingdom would also be
solved. Remembering his father's dying wish, Djel agreed.


You take the part of Djel in this 3-disk French adventure as you
seek to help the three characters and thus your own people. You
start the game in your home which contains the eagle-headed
statue which allows you to travel between the lands, though not
all are available to you at once. A map on the wall shows the
ones you can currently visit.

Also in the room is a crystal ball which brings you messages from
the other characters, a dragon's brain in a jar which will enable
you to refresh your memory about the state of your quests and
also check your inventory, a container of special solution which
will increase your powers and a candle which represents your
strength. A window in one wall will occasionally show something
useful outside and in the next room is a library containing the
Great Alambic (for making gold from bats and lead crystal). Over
the whole hut, an owl presides and will glow with an eerie blue
light if there is an intruder.

At the start of the game, only Azeulisse and Kal will contact 
you with their demands and each will leave you an object which 
you must use to travel to their kingdoms. Azeulisse gives you a
statuette and Kal a jar. An enemy intruder will attempt to steal
one of these objects and though you can recover it, it will be 
very costly to you. Theros will be in touch after you have been
playing for a while.

Initially, you can only visit The Land of the Rivers of Fire.
There, you will meet Atrem (if you can work out how to summon
him) and gain some useful information. This then opens up two
more lands to you and, in each, you will be asked to perform a
service or solve a puzzle before you will receive more help or
advice.

Thus the game progresses as you attempt to overcome the problems
set. At various times, you will be called upon to fight evil. 
This can be done in one of two ways, by force or by mind. Both 
of these take the form of arcade sequences.

In confrontation by force, you and your opponent become dragons
and attempt to destroy each other. The rules are similar to the
old paper/scissors/stone game but, in this case, the elements of
fire, water and earth are involved. Fire destroys earth, earth
soaks up water and water extinguishes fire. By changing from one
form of dragon to another and catching your opponent at a
disadvantage, you can strike and injure him. However, the rules
controlling how you effect this change are fairly complicated....

Confrontation by mind is somewhat simpler. You play on a grid
and, each round, must move your symbol one square and also block
in one square, aiming to trap your opponent into a space from
which he cannot move whilst evading capture yourself.

There is a further arcade sequence where you must shoot down bats
to get one of the ingredients to use in the Alambic.
Unfortunately, your ammunition is very limited and the flight of
your prey very erratic so they are pretty hard to hit.

The whole game is mouse controlled so great emphasis is placed on
the graphics of the game and I must say, they are terrific. There
is a lot of animation and sound effects, though simple, are used
to good advantage. The loading sequence of a face with glowing
eyes which gradually transforms into a grinning skull and the
opening sequence in the hut as the eagle-headed statue spits a
sphere of flame across the room to strike and activate the map
are especially effective. Haggling is also well done as the coins
fly through the air and drop into a money bag as you count them
out ready to make your deal.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of disadvantages to the game which
mar it.

Firstly, loading. The game uses all three disks in a very
protracted loading sequence, and there seems to be no way to
bypass it. In the middle is a copy-protection check involving
the input of a colour code from the biggest chart I have ever seen
(921 codes, each with four colours, one of which must be
chosen!) There is also a fair amount of disk-swapping during
play.


Next, the translation from French to English. Okay, I'll be fair,
I couldn't translate an English game into perfect French - but I
would find someone who could do it properly for me! So we have
such errors as "responsable", "candels", "Alambic", "could'nt" 
plus some quite unintelligible sentences. There are also a few 
silly mistakes. At one stage of the game, you shoot bees but 
they end up in your inventory as bats and the container of 
solution that increases your powers is called a test-tube 
whereas it is in fact a retort.

I could put up with these problems (at a pinch) but what is even
more damning is the fact that you can't save and restore your
game - you can't even quit - so if you want to restart, you have
to reboot and go through that interminable loading sequence. I
found it especially frustrating that after finally winning one of
the mind or strength confrontations, I couldn't take advantage of
my success by saving my position.

I would also recommend that anyone intending to play this game on
a tv thinks again. The text is written in colour in a box on the
lower part of the screen. The text and background colours change
from one location to another and in one place, the library, it is
in red on grey which I found impossible to read. The only way it
was at all legible was if I took the side panel off the tv, tuned
it out a bit, turned down the contrast and colour and switched
off the light! I could then make out a percentage of the text and
had to guess the rest.

As a final comment, I'll just say that I have never come across
another adventure that crashes on you when you lose!!

                                            Sue