Dragonsphere - MicroProse RRP œ39.99/œ35.99
         (Graphic adventure for CD-ROM and PC floppy)

                  Reviewed by The Grue!

At first Dragonsphere seems normal fair for a graphic adventure,
with a seemingly standard plot. I was to be pleasantly surprised,
as Dragonsphere is a cut above most graphic adventures.

The plot is basically this ... the evil sorcerer Sanwe came to
your world over a hundred years ago, transporting himself from
another dimension of strange magic and strange machinery.  His
pattern is to stay for one year, burning lands and slaying
inhabitants, and then to demand a tribute from the ruling clan.
After he receives his tribute, he leaves and does not return for
twenty years.

Luckily the last time he came he was imprisoned by the spells of
the court wizard, Ner-Tom.  Sanwe was trapped but vowed he would
break free in twenty years and take his revenge. Now twenty years
later, your father has died, leaving you in command.  Sanwe is
beginning to break free, you know this because the spell that
Ner-Tom created was called the Dragonsphere.  This is basically a
small crystal sphere with a dragon inside, the dragon represents
Sanwe and the crystal around it represents the spell that keeps
Sanwe trapped. As long as the sphere remains complete all are safe
from the evil of Sanwe, but now the Dragonsphere is starting to
crack and it is up to you to defeat him.

As I said, this all seems pretty standard fair but you will find
that once you have managed to defeat Sanwe, certain things will be
revealed about you and your quest, and the game takes a quite
unexpected twist.  I wouldn't like to spoil the game for anyone so
I won't say any more.  What we have almost is two parts cleverly
linked to provide an excellent story.

To succeed in your quest you will have to talk to everyone you
meet and listen to them very carefully as there is an immense
amount of text/speech to the game.  Oddly for a CD-ROM game you
have the option of only listening to the speech or you can read it
on-screen at the same time. I found I could pick up the clues
better when the text was on screen, although I found myself
reading the text before the speech had finished and clicking the
mouse button to cut the speech short.  You also have the option to
control the speed at which certain locations scroll across the
screen and the room fade effect as you move from one location to
another, depending on the speed and power of your machine.

The manual is well written and the technical/troubleshooting
aspect of it is clear and concise. It even offers you various
config.sys files that you could use as templates if you so wish.
One thing I did particularly like was the thought given to the
game packaging.  Dragonsphere comes in what looks like any normal
hardbacked book, and if you saw it on the shelf in your local
computer store you could well mistake it for just that.

The puzzles are all logical and vary in difficulty and the game
often has you teetering on the brink of frustration but if you
read/listen to everything all the answers are there, and you
always manage to progress.  There are a couple of items that are a
bit easy to miss but at least you will not have to find the pixel.
You will even have to learn and understand a new language if you
wish to be successful.

The graphics are very good, the animation is excellent, especially
when your character has to scale up to Sanwe's tower for the first
time.  MicroProse have really paid attention to detail, for
instance, you have at one point to jump across the top of a series
of stone tree trunks.  You will see that if you do it quickly your
character will sway and teeter on the edge as he tries to regain
his balance, in a way it reminded me of Prince of Persia.  The
speech adds nicely to the realism and only a couple of the voices
are a little iffy.

I also found that in some locations the music became a bit
annoying but you can easily turn it off and just leave the speech
on.  If I had to criticise Dragonsphere in anyway I would suggest
that they could have used some sound effects for certain things
and cut back on the music a little.  This would have added to the
already nice atmosphere the game conveys.

Dragonsphere is a wonderful game and a lesson to other software
houses in the art of story telling, even within the framework of a
graphic game.  If you have a CD-ROM drive don't hesitate in trying
this, you won't be disappointed. This is a totally absorbing
adventure, nice graphics, great puzzles and a superb story, and
one hopes to see a lot more of this from MicroProse.












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