The Walls of Bratock
               (RPG on SynTax PD 738 for PC)

                  Reviewed by Paul Johnson

The Walls of Bratock is a fantasy role-playing game, ie we are in
the land of Troll and Elf. You start the game as always selecting
your character from the list of races ie: Dwarves, Elves etc. The
various races have modifiers to the statistics, eg Dwarves are
tougher but cannot be magic users.

At first you get only one character, you collect the rest of the
party as you go along.

The main screen shows four main boxes, top left is the picture
area, top right the party, below that your command input area and
stretching below the computer's response area for talking. Despite
the program blurb of stunning VGA graphics what you get are block
graphics which remind me of the type my Spectrum graphical
adventures used to use.

Movement is by the arrows and as you move the map moves with you
displaying the area around. After a while you notice that the area
you can see is reducing indicating night is approaching and it is
time to kip. To do anything other than move you enter a single
letter in the command area, examples are:-

     O : Open a door or chest
     K : Climb a ladder
     T : Talk to another person
     I : Inventory
     L : Look at an object

When you enter the letter a flashing square appears around you,
move this to the object you require the action to be performed on
and press enter. Thus press O, move the flashing square onto the
door graphic and press enter, the door graphic disappears and you
can go through.


The talk command, again despite the blurb, is very limited, you
are given the base command words ie: Name, Job. and then you pick
out the relevant word from the reply you get. An example of this
is the enthralling conversation you get upon meeting a city guard.
"Hello Stranger"
Name
"My name is not relevant, I am a guard."
Job
"My job is to guard against strangers."
Strangers
"Thieves, goat-men, animals"

Anything else you ask him is answered by "I cannot help you on
that". Even the characters who are supposed to give you
information are as tedious, it is like pulling teeth.

Combat is again of the Spectrum class, block graphics appear and
you move up to the enemy and press A. You hit or miss, but you get
no real feel from this, no sense of urgency or reward from picking
the right tactics.

Leaving the city is simple, move to the edge of the map and a
scroll appears, answer "yes" and off you go. You meet the
occasional wandering monster and then seeing a city graphic move
onto it and press E. Simple enough?

I was very disappointed in this game on the PC, had I been
playing on the Spectrum I would have thought it reasonable, after
all 48K is not a lot. On the PC with the standard other games
are reaching on the shareware scene this game is sadly lacking. It
tries to combine text and graphics and fails miserably, the best
games decide which way they are going and go for it.  To use a
commercial example, the Zork games and Eye of the Beholder.

But like any review, it is a matter of personal choice and another
person may like it. My final comment on this game was to use the
deltree command and recover some disc space.


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