ISHAR I - ADVENTURE OR SHOPPING TRIP
     (RPG from Silmarils for ST, PC and Amiga RRP œ29.99)

      A personal view of the ST version by Peter Hague
              Author of THE OBSCURE NATURALIST

It was my birthday at the end of September so I thought I would
take a couple of days off and play ISHAR. I didn't expect to
complete the whole thing, but decided to see how far I could get.
However, a semi-frustrating week and a half later I found myself,
somewhat unexpectedly, at the end, which, if you read on you will
see what an anti-climax it was (although I won't spoil it for
those who have not yet been there).

I bought Ishar when it first came out about a year ago and
although I had not found time to play it, I had resisted the
temptation to read any hints, tips or reviews, so I came totally
fresh to it.

I began, as is the norm, by wandering about and seeing what's
what, gathering a few extra people and building up their levels
and strength for the long slog ahead.

The first thing I noticed, which annoyed me, was that you had to
pay 1000 gold pieces every time you wanted to save the game. As
one who hates back-tracking too far or starting again, I thought
this was a little harsh at first. However I later realised how
effective it was in curbing cheating by saving too much, which can
spoil a game by making it too easy.  In fact, after a while, if I
lost a character here and there, I simply let them go and
recruited someone else. This felt rather natural, actually even
though it seemed a waste of time and money building them up.

Which brings me to my next point. The most annoying part of the
game play was the amount of shopping I had to do in order to
actually get anywhere in the game. I found this very frustrating
and the price of things, such as the best equipment and spells,
was far too high, making it necessary to repeat one's self in
killing the same baddies over and over in order to build a decent
bank balance - this is not adventuring, this is boredom.  For
instance, the average reward for a successful defence is about 800
GP. Kill a whole town's worth of baddies later on and you might
get 7000 GP. In comparison, the price for some spell potions is
900-1300 GP (of which three of four are needed) and 12,000-30,000
GP for some spells! Occasionally, you find a chest of money worth
perhaps 6000 GP, or perhaps a number of them, but I found I had to
spend something like 80,000 GP+ on building up some characters,
not to mention food and sleep. There is the option to shop around
as prices differ, but so what? I want adventure.

Another annoying feature is that parts of the game insist you dump
some of your people, which can be quite a blow if you've have
spent your time doing nothing more than getting their levels up.

The worst part of the game for me was the programming. In my
opinion, for a top commercial game it is surprisingly poor and
ruined the game play totally - it is what I would call a very
'sticky' program - especially when you're in a tight corner -
nothing happens fast enough. Also, when you move from zone to zone
the disk accessing is very wearing indeed.  Sometimes you go from
one zone to another and have to wait for the disk to whirr, then
you decide you want to go back (because there are no obvious
borders) and have to wait again.  Then you simply turn left or
right and have to wait yet again.  All this adds up to great
frustration and I must say, for this reason alone I nearly gave up
on the game - (hard disk users on PC or Macintosh get off lightly,
but I could not get it to install on my ST hard drive).

On the whole, this might seem an unfair gripe for a game that
contains such pleasant graphics and obviously has the problem of
shifting them. But, when you consider that disk accessing seems to
take up maybe 2% of time, then every hundred hours you spend on
the game means two hours watching the disk light glowing - a
frightening thought !

So, did I like it or hate it? Well, I almost liked it. I certainly
loved it in places. It's just that the balance between adventuring
and shopping was not resolved satisfactorily. In fact, most of the
actual adventuring was about nothing more than finding money with
which to enhance your characters, which is all too much like going
to work really. The game also contains the most illiterate clue
I've ever seen.

Overall, I liked the atmosphere very much (which was spoiled by
the mechanics) but a comparison with Dungeon Master would leave
this game looking very poorly indeed.

About the ending, then. Not long before I reached it I had been
forced to recruit some new characters and had built them up into
veritable superpersons because I estimated there was at least
another third of the way to go, but it was all over and done with
in moments. Okay, the very final part was tricky, and this was
where all my shopping came in handy, but I brushed most of the
climax aside without much difficulty only to be shown a pretty,
animated (for a while) picture, which I had to assume was the end
since there were no words of confirmation. Then, pressing the keys
in desperation the animation stuck fast and I was played some
music, leaving me sitting there simultaneously wondering where the
rest of the game was but really knowing there wasn't any.

I must say I like things to be obvious. When a person has won,
they should be told so and showered with congratulations - or at
least given the nod. Still, it all adds up to a weak ending to a
sadly wishy-washy game. I hope Ishar II is better.

Score: Graphics 9. Sound 8. Atmosphere 9. Gameplay 4.
Overall impression 60%

Some tips for your sanity:

Don't built up your male characters too much until you have
rescued the obnoxious kidnapped daughter.

Don't bother with a wizard. One sneaks off in the night and the
other upsets everybody else. Besides, he's no good. What you need
is a witch (see the pig de-transformation spell).

Recruit a Cleric from the big town - he looks boring but does many
of the spells.

Leave one space empty for those odd characters you just HAVE to
pick up.

Don't spend too much money on attribute training. The higher they
get, the more money you'll have to pour into them - and believe
me, it's phenomenal! Anything past eighteen or twenty is a total
waste of time.