Spirit of Excalibur and Vengeance of Excalibur
        Virgin Games RRP œ29.99-œ34.99 (for each game)
     (Mouse, keyboard and joystick controlled RPG for ST, PC
          and Amiga, 1 meg needed minimum on ST)

                   Reviewed on ST by Alan Beer

Excalibur, remember that film? Great wasn't it, it had that bloke
in it you know the one, what was his name? And the guy who
played Merlin with the silver metal head-piece. Great stuff.
What has all this got to do with Spirit and Vengeance of
Excalibur (or S.E. and V.E. from now on)?  Well, the answer to
that is nothing whatsoever - I was just reminiscing.  Anyway back
to the plots.

Let's start off with the first saga 'Spirit of Excalibur'.  S.E.
comes with three disks, a colour map and of course the manual.
Based on fictional and historical literature, Spirit places you
as the Crown Regent, Lord Constantine at the beginning of the
dark age.

The year is 539 in Arthurian England and you have just been
informed that King Arthur has been killed at the battle of
Camlann.  As King Arthur's successor and leader of the Round
Table, you must initially return to Camelot to take the reins of
power and ultimately protect the crown and your people.

S.E. is played over five episodes of increasing tension and
complexity (put you off yet?) with episode one starting in York.
You must travel to Camelot to claim the throne, along the way you
will meet many different people, some of which may ask you for
help or just offer advice, but all of whom can be interacted
with.  The following episodes have you persuading Lancelot to
rejoin the realm and help to destroy the Saxon armies and so on
and so on.

In Vengeance of Excalibur you get your manual and a black and
white map, but this time you get five disks with it.  Now this is
something I haven't come across before, out of the five disks
three are language disks, you know, English, French and German.
You just insert the language you wish to use as disk one and away
you go.  I don't know why they have done it this way, but at
least you've got two disks to reuse for your money.

Apparently V.E. is set in a period of time that was frequently
overlooked in the history books and events depicted in the game
could have occurred around the year 1000 A.D. (well you learn
something new every day).  The now King Constantine has been
turned into a stone statue by a shadowy demon who has also
kidnapped the court sorceress and stolen many treasures.  Amongst
the treasures are King Arthur's helmet and shield, Excalibur and
even the Holy Grail, all of which seem to have been taken to
Spain.

At the very start of the game you are at Portsmouth where you
have to decide which four of the seven knights will accompany you
to Bayonne (Spain) to search for the stolen items (it's worth
noting that you can import four extra knights from S.E. that are
not included in V.E., giving you eleven to chose from, well

that's what it states in the manual, however I haven't worked out
how it's done as yet).

V.E. is again played over episodes much the same as S.E. but this
time you have seven episodes and as before each one increases in
difficulty as you progress.  Episode one starts just as you
arrive at Bayonne, the main task here is to find some bloke, kill
him and recover an item or two (not giving too much away am I ?).
But of course it's not as easy as that, you have to fight off
rogues and such-like roaming the countryside, and to do this you
need mercenaries and to do this you need funds to finance it all.
I don't know it's just one problem after another, anyway that
should give you a idea of what's going on.

The following paragraphs apply to both S.E. and V.E. as both are
almost identical graphically and in the way the controls work.
So if you have already played either game you might as well skip
the next few paragraphs and go straight to the verdict.


Graphically you have three screen displays to play over.  The Map
Level screen is a detailed overview map of southern England in
S.E. and an overview map of Spain and Portugal in V.E.  The map
itself is actually bigger then the screen and can be scrolled in
any direction to reveal other sections just by moving the cursor
to any edge.  This view is used to deploy your forces, monitor
enemy progress and all that stuff.

Next you have the Scene Level screen which is a side-on animation
view, where all the interactive sequences take place.  On this
level you can talk, trade, attack and do magic among other
things.  You can also go in and out of rooms in castles and such
like.

Finally you get the Army Combat screen, during which time a small
graphic screen of the battle field will appear with the forces
viewed in miniature.

If any of the combat situations are about to occur (be it one-to-
one or on the battle field) and you are not present, you will be
informed of the  forthcoming battle and then given several
options.  You can then decide to ignore the battle and hear the
results later or you can watch the event and if you think you can
do any better just take over the controls of your side.

While on the subject of control, this, as the review heading will
suggest, can be done by any of the three methods, the keyboard
being used mostly as a substitute for clicking on an icon with
the mouse.  At the top right hand corner of the screen is a set
of icons which differ depending on which screen level you are on,
for example on the Map Level there is an unrolled scroll icon
which gives the save & load option, then there is an hourglass
icon for selecting one of the three game speeds.  Also on this
level there are shields moving around on the map which represent
parties or army forces and if clicked upon will identify their
owners.  On the Scene Level screen you get a similar set of
icons, like the action icon which enables you to pick up, drop,
use and that type of stuff.


As with almost all RPGs you have a character status screen (which
is accessed via the status icon, obviously).  This is much the
same as most, with hit points, amongst others.  However S.E. and
V.E. also have Nobility and Faith which are both affected by the
way a character behaves.  The way this works is, let's say you
retreat from a battle, this may reduce the Faith level, while
doing a good deed like rescuing maidens will increase the
Nobility level.

Verdict: The graphics in both are very nice, detailed and
colourful (they're not excellent, I've seen better and I've seen
a lot worse, but they do the job).  The animation is a bit on the
slow side at times, (reminds me of War in Middle Earth in a way)
but then again this isn't the sort of game that would have fast
animation in it.  On the sound FX side of things, well there
isn't much in the way of sound FX, just music being played almost
all time when you are on the Map Level, which is a bit
reminiscent of Rocket Ranger (the music part that is) and you may
find yourself reaching for the volume control before long.

Both are easy to get into, the controls being very user friendly,
and have in fact been improved in V.E., even though both are
very enjoyable they do suffer from a lot of disk accessing and
swapping, (V.E. being the worst offender) which slows things down
no end.  Both instruction manuals state that the program will use
a second disk drive if you have one, unfortunately this is not
the case (at least not on my system), it also states that they
can be installed onto a hard drive, if this works, all the
better.  There is one other problem however and that is with
V.E., although the packaging states a minimum memory of 1 Mb, it
doesn't seen to run if you have anything over this (I have 4 Mb
by the way), to get over this you will need to run one of those
programs that makes your machine think it has less memory than
installed.

Back onto the subject of manuals, one thing I did enjoy was
reading the manual from S.E., apart from the usual stuff, plot,
instructions and so on there is background information on the
myths and facts of King Arthur, I just couldn't put it down until
I was finished reading it (I rarely finish a complete manual).

I picked up both games at a local cash and carry for only œ5.86
each. I wouldn't pay full price for either game, however if you
can pick up a copy at a bargain price you'll have a fairly good
game that should take some time to finish.  It's difficult to say
which game I preferred, on one hand S.E. plays well and doesn't
access the disk drive as much, then on the other hand V.E. has an
improved control system and there seem to be more people to
interact with.  I think if I had a hard drive I would go for V.E.
but if you can pick up them up for a similar price why not get
both as I did.

P.S. A forthcoming Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one
and all.