Ishar - Silmarils RRP œ29.99
                  (RPG for ST, Amiga and PC)

              Reviewed on the ST by Alex van Kaam

I don't know if there is ever going to be a game that can beat
Dungeon Master but Ishar is very close to it.

Jarel, the king of Kendoria, has been killed in a hunting accident
and while his successors struggled for power all sorts of people
entered the land of Kendoria.

One of these was Krogh, and he built a temple called Ishar near
the border of Kendoria.  Your mission is to kill Krogh and regain
the throne of Kendoria.

You start the game with one character under your control and as
the game continues you can recruit other characters and dismiss or
kill them if they don't suit you.

The land of Kendoria has been split up into regions and in every
region there is a town or an object to be found.

In the towns or villages there is always a pub where you can rest,
eat, listen to other conversations, and recruit new members to
your party.  There are also guilds where you can undergo a
training course for your strength, agility, intelligence, wisdom
and spells.  Then there are some houses in which you can find some
old friends of King Jarel which will give you some advice.  There
are some houses where you can learn new spells.  And of course
there are shops where you can buy food, weapons, armour and
ingredients for your magic flask.

The object of the game is that you find the following objects:
1 Magic flask
1 Magic helmet which helps you to get
5 Magic rings
5 Rune stones
1 Witch
1 Magic talisman


The graphics of the game are great and probably the best I have
seen on the ST (32 colours at once on the ST screen).  There are
bushes and lots of different types of trees, grass plains with
flowers on them, rocky terrain, and ... well it looks great
throughout the whole game.

The sound is as good as the graphics, when you walk through the
country side you can hear all kinds of birds, near the ocean you
can hear the water and in the dungeons there are all kinds of
creepy sounds.

The atmosphere which is very important for a good RPG/dungeon game
is great. At one time I walked around a corner in a dungeon and my
heart missed a beat when suddenly there was this big giant dragon
and there was an eerie scream at the same time.  The only games
where this also happened was Dungeon Master and the later levels
of Xenomorph.

The playability of the game is okay, sometimes it is a little bit
slow and one subquest really made me angry (after rescuing a
princess and returning her to her father to get the key to a
dungeon all my male characters had other plans and didn't want to
return her so I had to kill them all and find myself some new
characters to play with)

All in all it is a great game and it will come second on my list
(you probably know what is first).  And for the price of œ13.99
from Special Reserve it is great value for money. It took me 4
weeks of constant playing and mapping (the land of Kendoria is
very, very big - 300*90 squares) to finish. So every RPG/dungeon
fan has to buy this game.

I hope we hear a lot more from SILMARILS because it is a long time
since there was such a good RPG/dungeon game on the ST (on the
Amiga there is Eye of the Beholder and a lot more).  And when you
look at this game you can really see what programmers can get out
of the ST.

PS. There is a book from J.R.R. Tolkien which is called
'SILMARILLION' and if you have read the book you know that the
'Silmarillion' are 3 jewels made by Feanor.  So the next time you
boot a disk from Silmarils just look at their symbol.

If this game was distributed by US Gold or Mindscape would the
price still be so low ??????????