Bane of the Cosmic Forge (Wizardry VI) - US Gold RRP œ37.99
                  (RPG for PC and Amiga)

                  Reviewed by Brian Burke

I have to say that I was looking forward to this game. The recent
adverts for the Wizardry Bundle (5, 6 & 7) have all manner of
accolades for the latter two adventures. Game of the year and all
that. By and large it's a good bet that given an RPG I'd play it
quite happily and derive much pleasure from it when others would
have a different point of view.

It was with great anticipation therefore that I booted up Bane and
created my characters after due consultation with the manual. With
trepidation I entered the Castle level and had my first encounter
with the Rats. Needless to say the majority of my party died. I
restarted and set off again. This time I managed to find the
regenerative fountains and some useful gear in a couple of chests.

All went fairly well until I came across a character called
Captain Matey. Some pal he was! He kicked the living daylights out
of my little band. I left him in peace. Each encounter on this
level left me bereft of a character or two. Eventually I
discovered that the Amulet of Life restored these broken beings
and on I went again till I met The Big Fat Rat and his henchmen.

Now I don't mind a fight or two but absolute obliteration every
time is a pain. Licking my wounds I retired back to level one and
sought out combat encounters with the lesser beings till I'd moved
up a level or two. Naturally this took some time but more of that
later.

Eventually the Fat Rat and the objectionable Captain Matey were
history. I progressed fairly well through various stair puzzle
situations until I had another tough encounter with a pair of
Trolls. This wasn't too bad. I learnt to zap the weaker guy first
and then take on his terrible twin. Three or four goes and I was
through.

Into now what I believe is the Pyramid level. I fought a few
battles with the Page Three version of Bane Baddies and then met
my nemesis.  These are known as Pharaohs of Phyre. Met singly,
that is in a single row, they are defeatable, but get more than
one row and your party is chicken feed. My guys are level 10 and I
tried for days to get past the head honcho - a fellow called
Amen-Tut-Butt, and I mean days. I was level 9 when I started.
Yeah, yeah, I know that's the point of an RPG otherwise how do you
progress BUT the battles are ridiculously long.

Am I enjoying this game? Am I H*ll. In other RPG games the number
of encounters usually diminish as you progress up the levels and
wipe out the opposition leaving you free to solve a puzzle or
three and take a breather. The Gold Box SSI games eventually lost
all the monsters as you defeated them. Not Bane though. Try and
rest to recover health and spell points and you are incessantly
interrupted which usually results in the need to revert to an
earlier save game. At present I'm having a fight and, in the few
instances that my band survive, saving the game then praying I can
rest long enough to carry on.

Bane the Pain makes you appreciate the real time RPGs like Black
Crypt or Eye of the Beholder. The beauty of those games is that
you can see the baddies, even if they're just round a corner. YOU
make the choice as to whether you're ready to take them on or not.
As mentioned above the length of the battles is a killer,
particularly if at the conclusion most of your team are dead. You
can speed these battles up by accelerating the length of time a
message stays on screen. At least with Blade of Destiny you can
admire the programming and graphic skills while the fight
progresses and see just who each character is taking on. In Bane
you haven't a clue unless an enemy has been put to sleep in which
case a successful blow will wake them up again.

Make no mistake though, Bane is a big game. There's lots of to-ing
and fro-ing to find which key fits where and there's lots of
ground to cover.  Pound for hour there's lots of value here.
You'll need to make notes 'cos there are many text messages that
unravel the plot. In addition note the text relative to locked
doors as this gives a guide to the type of key required.

Mapping is routine although there's one section where dark rooms
make this a difficult but not impossible task as long as you keep
remembering to cast Direction spells.

The amusing thing about this game is that whilst I'm hating it,
and only playing it now out of cussedness (I actually have time
whilst the battles rage to read all manner of material whilst I'm
waiting), I've talked to other folks who've loved it. One guy
even intends to go again using different characters. Just goes to
show that one man's meat is another man's etc etc. Ron Rainbird
tells me that the Hint Book to Bane is the best he's ever seen
(With any luck it'll arrive in the post this week - thanks, Ron).

Anyone who's game enough to buy the Wizardry Trilogy should be
prepared to blink out of sight till Christmas. You can be sure I
won't be one of them.


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