ISHAR 3:The Seven Gates Of Infinity - Silmarils/Daze RRP œ39.99
                (RPG for ST, PC and Amiga)

          ST version reviewed by James Jillians

Anyone who knows anything at all about the ST games scene will
have heard of the Ishar series. The games were a whole new
experience in RPGing thanks to their atmospheric graphics with
more than the average crop of colours (don't ask me exactly how
many), recognizable sound effects (a first for the ST!) and
progressive storyline. That and the fact that they were the only
RPGs to have been recently released for our sadly neglected
computer, of course.

For those ignorant few who haven't a clue what I am jabbering on
about, here is the story so far... (The rest of you, skip straight
to the review section - the plot makes for a very long and boring
read!)

Once upon a time, Morgoth, Lord of Evil and Chaos invaded the
peaceful land of Arborea with an army of evil creatures. Jarel,
Prince of the Elves, hired a crew of brave and hardy souls to find
ancient elven crystals with which Morgoth could be destroyed.
After his victory, Jarel renamed the land Kendoria and settled
down for a reign of peace and prosperity.

Years later, after Jarel's death, chaos again erupted in Kendoria.
An evil lord called Krogh took advantage of the confusion caused
by the prince's death and built himself a formidable fortress,
known in the Elven tongue as Ishar. He began to marshal the forces
of darkness for a second time.  Once more, from within the ranks
of the fearful commoners, a band of heroes emerged. They sought
out Krogh and succeeded in killing him in a cataclysmic battle of
sword and sorcery deep inside his fortress. Ishar soon became the
cultural centre for all of Kendoria and once more peace was
restored to the land.

Soon a huge city was built on one of the six islands surrounding
the mainland of Kendoria and it was named after Zach, one of
Jarel's old companions. A few years passed and a monk of chaos,
known only as Shandar, started drug-trafficking amidst the hussle
and bussle of city life. Slowly and surely, he began to enslave
the population with his hallucinogenic potions. Then, (you guessed
it!) voila, more heroes who extinguish this evil trade. However,
although Shandar is dead in a physical sense, his spirit still
lives on, waiting for a chance for revenge...

And on that note the last game, Ishar 2, ended. Having exhausted
all the barely plausible plots, the French programmers Silmarils
decided to feature in the climax to their epic saga that most
valued device of sequel-writers - time travel.

According to ancient legend, there will soon be a conjunction of
planets in Kendoria's solar system. At this time of high magic,
the fabric of reality will split causing portals to alternative
times and dimensions to open. Evil sorcerers from all over the
cosmos will flock to Kendoria to create havoc, and this includes
the immortal essence of Shandar. This turn of events must be
prevented at all costs. It looks like it's a job for the mighty
SynTax reader and his band of companions (getting a bit tedious
this, isn't?)

         * * * BORING PLOT DESCRIPTION ENDS HERE! * * *

Well, now I have bumped up my contribution ratings with that
little lot, I'll get on with telling you about the game-play.

The first thing to do in Ishar 3 is to design your own team of 5
heroes. Alternatives to this are importing a set from the previous
Ishar games or simply recruiting a load in the game's inns.
Designing your own team is fun (if you can do it before the game
crashes), but you soon discover that they don't have quite as high
ability scores as the ones found in the game. There is a huge
range of character classes to choose from - warriors, barbarians,
wizards, scholars, priest, rangers, thieves, beggars (?!?),
paladins, hypnotists, arcane monks, knights, dwarves, orcs, elves,
lizard men, brain surgeons - you name it, it's here.  The
profession you choose affects the screens of mind-numbing

statistics, but other than that, it doesn't really matter who you
have as long as you get a few chaps who can cast decent spells.

You start off in the huge city of Koren Bahnir, once called Zach's
Island (they like renaming things, these Kendorians!).  The city
consists of miles and miles of winding streets (loads of disk
accesses) with shops, inns and special locations dotted around.
Fortunately, you are given a map - but it is the only place for
which you have this luxury, so have that squared paper at the
ready! There is only one location marked on your map, an
astronomer's laboratory, and after a few moments of deep thought
an experienced adventurer might realise that this would be a good
place to start his/her quest.

The game requires you to follow a trail of clues, uncovering parts
of the story as you go. However, the task at hand is to turn your
ragamuffin band of sorry-looking brigands into a fighting force to
be reckoned with. You do this by practising your combat skills
with the bands of assassins who roam the town, and by buying
weapons, armour and spell ingredients in the sixteen or so shops.
If your lads get injured, run out of puff, or simply want a place
to cower from their foes, they can go one of Koren Bahnir's
fifteen inns. As well as wining and dining, it is here that you
can pick up handy titbits of information or recruit characters.
There are about fifty recruitable men, women and other beings
dotted around, most are veterans of the previous Ishar games.

A few puzzles into the game and you will discover your first
portal to another time - this one leads into a huge but
featureless forest. There are 7 of these portals in all, leading
to a variety of places, such as jungles, mountains, dungeons and
castles. Changing something in the past alters the present which
in turn affects the future. A few of the puzzles are solved by
doing something in one location and then looking for the change in
another place further on in time.

There are all sorts of different puzzles. A lot involve using the
right object in the right place, but most time is spent wandering
around trying to actually find the right place. You have to be a
good explorer and map-maker to play this game - there are massive
expanses of empty landscape with very little in them except the
odd monster. At one point I made a huge map that went onto three
different sheets of squared paper only to discover that there was
but one person to be spoken to in the whole place.

The game is hard, as befits the last game of a series. You are
given blatant clues for some puzzles, but in others you don't know
where to start. An example of a near-impossible puzzle is when you
have to find the ingredients for a certain magic potion.  You find
the magic flask you needed to mix them up in a house which also
contains a pendant (which, of course, I didn't notice the first
time!). You also need an ingredient called Kelonia Powder, but you
do not have it in your inventory. So where is it?  No clue
whatsoever is given, so you explore the huge playing area once
more. The answer is that you have to enter a certain one of the 15
inns (which you have already previously explored to check there's
nothing of value) but this time wearing the pendant. Even the
official solution is wrong in this respect, giving you the wrong
inn name - it took me ages to work this out!  (Oh, ea-sy! I hear
you experienced adventurers cry!)

The challenge of the game, as with all RPGs, is not only in the
puzzle solving, but in the development of a strategy for fighting,
the selection of the most efficient team and in arming them with
the best weapons available for someone of such limited funds. In
the Ishar series you also have character alignment to worry about.
The heroes all have given feelings for one another and this
affects votes for recruitment and dismissal. Characters will also
refuse to do first aid on one another if they do not like each
other. If a character is well liked, the only way to expel him
from your party is to murder him, and this can cause the person
who does the deed to be murdered in turn by a companion who had a
lot of sympathy for the original victim. This is a nice idea and
adds an extra dimension to the RPG playing.

One fault of the game is the speed of game-play. There is loads
and loads and loads and loads of disk accessing (the game comes on
five of the blighters!). You even have to change disks when you
want to go into a shop or inn. Moving about is a slow and
laborious process, especially since there's so much to be
traversed with nothing interactive in it. There is an added
incentive against dying - it takes such a long time to reload!
The game is sure to induce a yawn or five, unless of course you
are one of those lucky people who owns a hard drive or accelerator
chip. The game is, perhaps, a little too complex for the humble ST
- you need a really sexy PC to be able to play something like this
with any semblance of speed.

The graphics are, as promised, excellent. An innovation of the
programmers was to scan in photographs of real people and then
animate them, so interaction with the NPCs is very realistic
although they did go somewhat over the top with the facial
gestures.

The sound effects retain the frequency and quality of the previous
games. No expense has been spared on the presentation.  Music has
been added for the shops, inns and special locations which is
quite pleasant but is probably partly responsible for the sluggish
pace.

There are a few bugs. Occasionally, when you are in a shop the
mouse-pointer stops working. Also, you cannot design characters
with the music on. You can use a second disk-drive with this game,
but I'll be damned if I can work out in which drive to put which
disks to stop the game crashing!

ROUND-UP

Ishar 3 is bigger, harder and graphically more impressive than its
predecessors. The speed of the game has gone from bad to worse
however, and a lot of patience is needed to play. I recommend it
only to people who found the other Ishar games very enjoyable.
Those who have not yet played Ishar 2 should get that because it
is better.

                      FUN FACTOR : 6/10



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