Realms - Virgin Games - RRP œ29.99/œ34.99
  (Mouse-controlled Arcade Strategy for ST, PC and Amiga)

            Reviewed on the ST by Alan Beer

The late King's burning funeral ship faded into the distance as
the young heir reflected on the sad events leading to the downfall
of his father and his people, who once were a proud and peaceful
nation.  Famine, poverty and war now divide the world, with each
realm fighting for the ultimate power.

The young heir raised his fist in vengeance, appealing to the gods
for justice.  As if to answer his cries the clouds above gradually
formed the shape of the great god Wotan.  Suddenly a bolt of
living energy shot from the heavens and struck the young heir with
a billion volts burning into his wrist and through his body but
yet he felt no pain.  Then for an instant he had visions of ages
past and every possible future then it faded like a dream.  A
symbol of a serpent materialised and the heir now knew his destiny
was to ultimately rule.

This is the type of story, or should I say the length of story, I
like.  The story in the manual is only a page and a half long and
straight to the point.  I hate having to read pages and pages just
to get to the end and still having no idea of what you have to do.

Realms is another god simulation cum strategy wargame with
elements of other games like (and I hate to say this) Populous,
but only two screens are similar in that it uses a 3D isometric
view with six types of landscape, and the Battle screen is not too
dissimilar to a bit in North and South (in that you control each
unit in your army).

Control is via the mouse with only a handful or so icons on each
of the six screens to use, making it very simple to get into.  You
start at the Inside Fortress screen, which is where you have to
choose which realm you would like to play in that world, or load
up a saved game or pick a new scenario to play from the Disk
Operation screen.  Once this is done you can set the tax rate, see
the tax routes and view both your and the enemies' armies.  All
this is shown on the world map in relief form.  You can also focus
in on any of the cities and armies.

Next on to the Playfield screen which is where most of the action
takes place, where you can order your armies to move around the
world and attack the enemy or even a friendly city.  It's worth
noting that while at this screen time runs and events occur, but
only when this view is employed.  The world is effectively paused
when any other view is in use.

If at any time your armies meet up with the enemy out in the open,
ie not during a siege on a city, you get the option to go to the
Battle screen.  This is where you can control each of the army
units in a full-scale battle.  The armies are shown as groups of
men on foot and on horseback, where you can move your armies in
any direction, change a unit's formation (of which there are
four), rotate the unit and fire missiles.

The final two screens are static screens. Starting at the City
screen, you get a number of options eg to buy grain and land or
to build the city up, also you can build walls around the city.
This is also the place you can recruit your armies and cavalry
(but only if you have 1,000 troops available in that city) in the
Army screen.

Realms has eight worlds (unless you can get hold of one of the
limited edition copies in which case you have two extra
scenarios), the first world is loaded automatically with only two
races present.  On later worlds you get as many as five races to
choose from and fight against, also you get to use ships which are
a must in some of the later worlds.  Also the worlds can be played
in any order or as you finish one world the next is loaded
automatically.

There are lots more things to do that I haven't mentioned like
looting cities and so on but I think that's enough to give you a
taste. The graphics have a mythical feel to them and the animation
is small but nice.  Music is played throughout the game which is
not too bad but sometimes you wish you could turn it off.  You do
get the odd spot-effect but not much.  Realms will run on a 520
but has enhanced features with 1Mb ram (according to the manual)
but what these are I don't know.

This is not a fast game but sometimes you can find things
happening all at once.  The gameplay is good with a wide variety
of scenarios to play, and when you think that you have eight
worlds and on each world you have a different number of races to
choose from, then if you play each race once on each world once
you get something like 30 different scenarios.

One of the ways I like to play new games is to just load it up and
see how much I can play before I have to read the manual and this
is one of those games that doesn't take long to get the hang of
but takes a lot longer to master.

I have only one gripe with Realms but in my books it's a big one.
The manual recommends you make and use a back-up copy of the
Realms data diskette.  Now I have qualms about using master disks
to play with but I'm not keen on using a master disk to save my
game position on to.  This is the only way you can save your
progress as you can't use a blank disk to do any saving.  The
problem is you can't make a back-up in the usual way as per your
ST manual and you can't make a back-up using Fastcopy 3 or using
Romantic Robot Multiface.

In desperation I rang Virgin Games and was told that the only way
to make a back-up was to use a Nibble copier which I could get
from any PD library.  I tried a dozen or more libraries only to be
told that you can only get a Nibble copier on the Amiga.  When I
got back to Virgin I was told no one in the office knew anything
about the Atari ST to give me any advice.  But I was then told
that if I did get any problems with the disk they would replace it
for me.  That's something I suppose.

Anyway I have since found two methods of making a back-up, which
so far seem to work.  The first is from those nice people at ST
Format magazine, they have released on the cover disk of issue 34
a back-up program for backing up their cover disks but it does a
nice job on other disks too. The second is on a desk top accessory
by the name of X-UTILITIES by TS SOFT and as far as I know it is
Public Domain, this has a copy disk facility which according to
the accessory will copy any size disk. This also does a good
job and as yet no problems.

That aside the game itself is very good and will keep you busy for
some time.

Don't forget, making a back up of any software without the
permission of the software company concerned is infringement of
copyright (illegal).