The Curse of Azriel - A.A. Clovell œ3.95
            (Trading game for 1 meg ST only)

               Reviewed by Piotr Tyminski

The game, written by A.A.Covell, is licenceware (costs œ 3.95)
distributed by those nice guys from L.A.P.D.  and comes on two
disks.  As with most of the latest releases 1Mb of memory is
required to play it.

On-disk documentation is superb; consists of two separate .DOC
files, one of which is technical stuff explaining controls,
etc., while the other one is a full story (quite atmospheric one)
serving as an introduction to the game.  I found this one really
nice to read, that's very good the author added that extra bit of
work to write the intro - it certainly helps the player to create
(eer...  in his mind, I mean) his own vision of the gameworld.

So to give you some kind of idea about the whole thing:  action is
set in a mysterious world once brought to prosperity and then
wisely ruled by Lord Azriel.  Unfortunately, since most mortals
seem to be rather short term projects, he died one day leaving his
people really sad and confused.  Things were getting a bit astray
without him and soon the only people living by the rules of the
lord (y'know, be good, nice, honest, work hard, etc. in order to
have your life as damn boring as possible) were monks who settled
on an island named after Azriel.

In desperation (well, I guess it must've been desperation) they
erected a huge statue of the lord so they could worship him even
better than usual.  For some reasons it had eight arms (no wonder
clever lord wanted his people to be honest; he probably pretended
to have only two hands while he must've been busily stealing
around with the remaining six), seven of which wielded huge
swords. Since the whole land and its inhabitants were slowly
getting back to normality after Azriel's death they didn't seem to
care much about spiritual bla-bla-bla and some of them (most
clever ones I think) got really lucrative jobs, i.e.  piracy.  One
night then pirates attacked the monastery, slaughtered most of the
monks and, without much respect for mighty Azriel, they happily
stole the swords, knocking down the statue in the process.  Swords
themselves were so massive that they had to be transported
separately on board of huge salvage ships.

The story goes on and on but it all comes to an inevitable point
where you, the player, are appointed by monks to find those damn
swords and return them to the monastery.  Graphically "Azriel" is
similar to MicroProse's "Pirates". The world out there consists of
dozens of islands with numerous cities scattered here and there.
The whole thing revolves around travelling, trading goods,
fighting pirates and listening to gossip in pubs and taverns. As
usual, it's not easy at the beginning; life's difficult with a
small, poorly armed merchant vessel with a hopeless hold's
capacity.

After docking in the nearest harbour there are a couple of things
to do, i.e.  visiting a mayor of the city.  Rules of Lord Azriel
must've been forgotten since he always demands money for any
important information he gives.  Anyway, swallowing your pride and
paying the dosh you can get the co-ordinates of the nearest port
as well as current price list.  This is quite handy especially
when visiting trading posts (there's one in each city) and filling
holds with goods.  There's enough stuff to keep everybody busy,
you will find cloth, food, minerals, wine, grain, timber, etc. to
buy low and sell high. In case you lack something in the cash
department why not drop into the pub and get rich playing dice?
Then, obviously not being able to carry all those kilos of coins,
you may visit a bank to open an account (watch out there, they
have different interest rates).

For those who manage to crawl a bit up the ladder of trading some
more lucrative jobs are up for grabs.  There's always an idiot or
two in a local guild hall who's ready to pay you a lot for
ferrying his beloved racing horses or carpets (or similar
nonsense).  It's then a matter of getting to proper port (damn,
where's that by the way?  Mayor comes handy here!) and the whole
lot will be unloaded automatically.  It's advisable though to arm
yourself up to your teeth (there are pirates lurking in the dark)
so local armoury is of great usefulness.  They've got plenty of
cannon in stock ranging from small, cheap (and crap) sakers to
monstrous carronades (they have equally devastating effect on your
enemies and your wallet).  Care should be taken when selecting
guns! Each of them has its effective range so it's up to you to
arm your vessel with close range guns, or middle range or long,
etc. They also have different damage factor so think twice before
parting with your hard earned cash.

Being armed does not immediately mean being able to defend
yourself.  Bear it in mind since your crewmen are incredibly bad
gunners at the beginning.  Some cities offer a possibility of
training gun crews - it costs but it pays.  Dear me, those crews!
There are no volunteers so you've got to send your press gangs to
the city; they'll always manage to invite someone to join your
crew (I understand they do that using metal sticks). They are all
so scared of you that they happily work for free so no need to
waste money on wages but still you will have to feed them.
Keeping a proper food stock on board is then vital.  Actually the
only person worth a salary is a surgeon; he's just indispensable
when it comes to saving people's lives when plague strikes, etc.

Fighting pirates in "Azriel" is fun (plus loot if you are lucky)
and requires a bit of skill to score a direct hit.  Battles are
similar to those in "Pirates" but with no options for manoeuvring
the vessel, changing the speed, etc. You just shoot trying to hit
the bad guys until one of you ends up at the bottom of the sea.

There's a clever RAMSAVE option available.  In fact it's not even
called RAMSAVE.  Instead you're equipped with the Eye Of Azriel,
kind of thing which can be recharged in various ports (it costs
lots of money) and in case you get killed one day it will simply
take you back to the place when recently recharged.

The idea of the game is that you should aim for the biggest
possible vessel - there are seven types of them.  Prices for all
of them are different (depending on the city) and they usually
reflect local timber price.  Did I tell you that prices of goods
tend to fluctuate all the time?

Now, how it works overall? What is there is quite OK but, frankly,
it gets repetitive too quickly.  Fighting pirates may be fun,
trading seems to be exciting at the beginning but after some time
you just can't resist thinking "what the hell am I supposed to do
in this game?" Apparently you should find those damn swords but
what about them?  After listening to people in taverns I already
have some idea about where they could be.  But then a horrible
thought came to my mind:  I WILL NEED A SALVAGE VESSEL to lift
them from the sea bottom!  The problem is that to be able to
afford this kind of vessel you'll probably have to play the game
until times when Falcon becomes an ancient machine.  I played it a
lot really, but it seems I would still need ages to collect enough
money for the salvage ship. It looks like the point of the game is
to trade oneself to death.

The world of Azriel is really big with literally dozens of islands
and ports. But just how long can one keep on travelling, trading
and fighting pirates?  The problem is that you'll surely get fed
up with all that somewhere in the middle of your way to the
salvage vessel.  You see, "salvage vessel theory" was developed by
me but somehow I'm sure that if you play the game for some time
you'll inevitably end up with a similar conclusion.  And that's
exactly the reason why I have never finished the game.  Frankly, I
don't even feel like trying again.  It's a real shame for "Azriel"
and a real pity, too, since it looks like lots of effort has been
put into producing the game.  Some sequences and screen redraws
are also horribly slow which may be annoying for impatient ones.
I'm sure "Azriel" could be much improved if only some sub-quests,
or whatever, would be added to break the monotony. It looks like
it could be a great frame for producing a really nice game but at
this stage it just doesn't work.

If you're on a tight budget with no prospect for playing a decent
game for a month or so you may give it a go and still have some
fun.  But I would recommend the game only for extremely patient
players.  If, by chance, you come across "Azriel" and finish it
anyway, drop me a line to SynTax address; who knows, maybe you'll
discover incredible things there.  I don't know - I haven't
finished the game, have I? Maybe it's got a kind of sting in its
tail and you'll have more patience to find it.  But, honestly, I
doubt it.