Ragnarok (An RPG for the PC on Disk Ref 907) Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx This game is a truly weird game. Not weird to play, but just the first impression it gives the casual observer. When I fist installed this game on the old HDD I thought 'oh no, not another ASCII RPG with graphics', gave it a quick play, killed a couple of gnomes and wiped it off in favour of something else. I completed that something else and reviewed a couple of other RPGs and, finally, the day came where I was left with the dregs of the review software Sue had sent me. I picked this up first and now I've been playing it nearly continuously for the past two days. It's now 11 o'clock at night and I'm still only a quarter of the way through the game... and I'm enjoying it! So, what's this game about? Well, basically you're a young Viking and you have heard of the plight of your Norse Gods and how they will probably be destroyed in the war of Ragnarok unless they can retrieve some weapons, resurrect a lost God and do a few other things. They can't do it themselves and, so, they need a true hero to sort their lives out. Well, being a good Viking type you decide to take on this responsibility yourself, especially as nasty monsters have started to roam the land, destroying your village, because the Gods aren't around to do some wrist slapping. This is a VERY brief synopsis of the first few paragraphs of the game's manual. These opening paragraphs are written just like a book and, from what I know of Norse mythology, it is pretty well researched. This really does make a refreshing change from either the brief 'go kill Xorg' or the lengthy, poorly spelt 'go wiv youre dedly wepon and traverce the fifetey levels and killl Xorgg'. You start the game off in your village with some money and the bare essentials - a few pieces of armour, a weapon and food. Wandering around the village will give you some valuable experience by battling Gnomes and bears and you can get some better items of kit from the local shop keeper. The game then progresses onto a forest where you must kill a giantess and steal her soul, down into a three-level dungeon that can lead to various outside locations, the afterlife and other ethereal places. For those of you who have played games such as Moria, Larn, Hack, DDST and the rest of the ASCII RPGs I've mentioned in my RPG series, you'll know how this game basically plays. For those of you who haven't the foggiest as to what I'm talking about, here is how Ragnarok plays. The main screen is split into five areas. The top half shows you a bird's eye view of the section of the level you are playing on, detailing all the features you've come across so far. (Each level is split into a certain number of segments to allow for easy mapping by the computer). The bottom half contains your character's stats, the message box, an enlarged map that shows your character and everything around him in far more detail (this is where you interact with the world) and the action buttons. Everything (in both maps) is seen from a third person bird's eye view favoured by the early Ultimas etc. You can move around the screen by using the numeric pad and interact with the world using the action buttons (or the equivalent short-cut keys (ie Q to Quaff a potion). Actions range from talking to buying, selling, fighting, digging, searching, running and the more exotic usage of innate abilities (ie spitting acid) and skills collected during the adventure (such as Smithing or Fletchery). All of these allow for quite a detailed level of interaction with the world. Can't get to where you want to in the dungeon? Dig your way there!!! Before you get your hopes up, this game does not involve any brain-taxing puzzles. Judicious reading of the manual will solve most problems (ie how to kill Thokk and trap her soul) and so your little brain cells are left with little to do apart from manage your character. No, this game (despite its natty graphic interface) is, really, just in the same style of Moria in as much as each level is generated randomly on entrance and you must just explore them, collect better pieces of kit and vital artefacts and then kill monsters and key baddies. But because of its graphical interface and added touches, there seems to be a hell of a lot more to the game than just a dungeon delve. For instance, I started off with my character being a male Viking (they're the best characters with which to get started). Through my travels I have now had my gender changed, I was a weed for a few turns (literally - I started sprouting roots) and now I'm an invisible sendiff (a kind of lizard that can spit acid) that keeps on teleporting itself everywhere (much to the annoyance of myself!!). I've reached the top level of Viking-ism, I've become a master Blacksmith and now I'm on the way to become an adept alchemist. This level of tinkering just hasn't been found in these kind of games before, and it is a welcome relief. The graphics look as if they are meant to be in Windows (the game runs from DOS, by the way) and there is the odd screen that crops up to signify entrance into a hitherto unexplored region, and these are pretty damned good - some of the best shareware RPG graphics I've seen. All the monsters have their own distinctive, well sized graphics as do all the items. Sound, on the other hand, is all but a few peeps from the internal speaker. Unfortunately I can find no way in which to turn them off. This would normally be OK, but at the level I'm at now the computer sees fit to continually bombard my character with mind probes that set of a second long high-pitched squeal. The dogs in my neighbourhood are becoming very frenzied! As an example of its genre this is probably the best ASCII RPG I've ever seen. Good graphics, loads of monsters, plenty of things to do, oodles of kit all presented with a rich background and a tough of class that is lacking in lots of other games. I have only one reservation about the game, and that's they way the game handles saved game positions. The game allows you to make a back-up of your position once every 200 turns (not ALL that long when you soon clock up thousands of turns) and allows you to save every time you quit. You can only load by restarting the game from scratch. This is all well and good, but when your character dies the game erases all of his/her saved game positions and just chucks their name onto a scoreboard. The scoreboard's a nice idea, the eradication of the saved files is not. There I was, chuntering along when I died. "That's OK" said I "my 10th level wonder will be restored to his finest fettle in a few brief seconds, just after I've reloaded the game..." How I screamed when I realised that the game harked back to the kamikaze days of 'if your character dies then so does his save positions'... Still, never mind, industrious Jim popped up and came up with a solution. If you do play this game and don't want the true-death option do the following: Run the game through Windows and have the File Manager running too (playing it through Windows also saves the need to print out the manual as you can load a text editor to display the files - quicker and it saves trees, man). Create a new directory in the Ragnarok directory called SAVES. Every time you save a position go to the File Manager (press and to scroll through running applications) and then copy all the , and files to the new folder. You may have to exit the Ragnarok directory and re-enter it to see any new files. If you then die press and then to close the game, copy over the files and then reload. Simple or what? (took me a while to figure it out though...). Other than the saving nonsense this game is top-notch. Maybe not intense enough for the hardened RPGer, but fun for the odd half hour here and there, it also has the elusive 'just one more go' quality that is important for the success of any RPG. Get it today! (Oh, a little warning - sometimes using my cheat saving method makes Windows crash (normally with a blinking cursor in the top left-hand corner) so don't be running any important programs such as your company's annual accounts while doing this...). - o -