Legend of the Sword - Silicon Software/Rainbird RRP œ24.95 (Text/graphics/icon adventure for ST (reviewed), PC and Amiga) Reviewed by Colin "Bronco" Campbell Legend Of The Sword (henceforth to be called LOTS) was first released way back in 1988 and was an attempt to do something different in the graphical adventure market. It attempted to combine colourful graphics and text in a way which hadn't happened before. The plot of the game is the standard sort of thing that you'd expect looking at the title. A brief synopsis: The peaceful, gentle and generally delightful land of Anar has been peaceful, gentle etc. for centuries. However, the nasty, horrid, evil wizard type (called Suzar) has decided, for reasons best known to himself, to change things. More precisely, to change things for the worse! Suzar and his countless hoards of mutant humanoids have invaded Anar which, for some strange reason, has suddenly become vulnerable to attack by wizard types. For countless centuries (if the back of the box is to be believed) the lovable land of Anar was protected by the magical aura given off by The Sword and Shield. The Sword and Shield were supposed to be protected from Suzar and his ilk by the mysterious Corsarians who, for some inexplicable reason, have vanished. It's up to you and your small band of thugs (sorry, "hardened adventurers") to go and get the Sword and Shield and rescue Anar. Simple, isn't it? The game comes on two single-sided disks which are not copy protected and therefore you are able to put the whole game on one disk. This is quite necessary as there is quite a bit of disk accessing. Bundled with the disks is a short novella which is a surprisingly good read and has actually given me a few ideas about puzzles in a future adventure I intend to write! There are also two small booklets, one of which tells you how to operate the mouse-controlled aspects and the other is a machine specific key guide. Upon loading the game you are presented with a screen. Not an ordinary screen, mind you.... The screen looks very busy. On the top is a menu strip containing various operations like loading and saving position. Before loading you must enter a word from the novella which isn't too difficult or annoying as this happens only once in the game. The menu strip also contains a few verbs that players are likely to use often. These verbs are, however, split over two menus and are a bit fiddly to use. As always, everything is mouse controlled. Underneath the menu strip is a large window that either has a nicely drawn overhead map of your position or (if you're using the menu strip to enter commands) a list of verbs, objects, characters etc. To the left of the Map Window is a small pictorial view of your present location. These pictures vary in quality from excellent to "oh dear!". This window updates every time you move to a different location. It sometimes changes to give you a different viewpoint when examining various features in the present room. Directly beneath this is the "Action Cameo Window" which gives a graphical representation of your entered command. The time that this window really makes you smile is when you and the lads club a stupid troll over the head - you see his face contort with pain then the picture cuts to show you standing over the unconscious body. To the right of the Action Window are the movement icons. They take the form of an open door with the words "in" and "out", an exploded compass diagram, and two arrows (pointing "up" and "down"). If there is an exit in the location then its direction will be highlighted in one (or more) of these diagrams. Lastly, on the far right of this part of the screen is a strange-looking candle which shows the current strength of you and the lads. Beneath all of this, occupying about a third of the screen, is the text window. From this all of the responses are echoed and you are also able to type in your commands, thus bypassing the fiddly mouse entry system. The game will run in mono (according to the manual) and that, I suppose, gives more text on the screen at the same time. I wouldn't know, of course, because I haven't got a mono monitor. At the start of the game you are given 3 choices of where you wish to start your epic quest. Each of these leads to an enclosed section of the game and movement between sections is only possible by travelling through a void. This isn't as easy as it sounds because you have to discover the secret password and/or collect certain objects to pass. The text itself can be changed with the TEXTSIZE command. This doesn't actually change the echoed text only the font of the input text. This is, to me, a major flaw in the game system. I don't think that it'd be too much of a programming difficulty to turn off all the graphics, switch to medium resolution and play the game as text-only - but then I'm biased! I also like to be able to see all of the room description at the same time and not have to keep typing "R" (for Redescribe). The colours of everything (including all of the fancy icons) can be changed within the program. This allows you to get rid of the rather awful scheme chosen and play with a soothing blue background and white text. The text responses are quite satisfactory and sometimes can be quite funny. By pressing the previous command entered appears. I wish more adventure systems would allow you to edit your commands as easily as this one! The location descriptions vary from being long and well-written to rather short. With a rather peculiar departure from adventuring protocol you have to type R to get the location description while LOOK draws your attention to important features near you. The game has a lot of exciting features mentioned in the manual which, for 1988, must have been something. You can GO TO and also FIND but I find that I can never remember to use these commands and end up plodding around turn by turn. Character interaction supposedly plays an important role in the game but, so far, I haven't found it too impressive. The manual states that you can ASK for and ASK to but in practise you can't. The response from the lads (namely Daville, Belar, Darius, Pagan and Borgalius) is usually "Belar tells you to do it yourself". I usually resort to violence and punch and kick them to vent my frustration. Other useful commands are OOPS (takes you back a move) and RAM LOAD/SAVE (saves your position to RAM). One strange point to notice is that OOPS can't be used after you get killed. A bit odd that, since that is what I usually use OOPS for! That's enough about the game system but what you're probably asking now is "what about the puzzles?" Well, let's just say that I've been playing for a while now and I've only got 15%. A few of the puzzles have really got me stumped but I won't give up! The puzzles don't really cater for the completely inexperienced player as there isn't much of a "lead in" to the more tricky puzzles. One minute you've just killed a sleeping troll (easy) and the next you've come up against a whopper of a puzzle! However, if you are an experienced player then I can assure you that LOTS will give you a good challenge for many a week. Overall, LOTS is a good adventure and will present you with a strong challenge (unless you are the Adventurer of The Century). The overall presentation is very good though with some areas needing a few tweeks. If you want a quick glance at what the game looks like then check out the Screenshot section where you will notice that Colin and the Lads have come up against the friendly people of Anar again! œ24.95 is quite a lot of money for this game, especially as it can be bought for a ridiculously small amount from the Special Reserve club. And how much do they want for this game? Only œ4.99! With this price in mind, I recommend everybody who doesn't own a copy of this game to rush out (as they say in advert land) and buy it! @~The solution to Legend of the Sword can be found in Issue 3 @~of SynTax with some hints in Issue 2.