Conquests of Camelot - Sierra, now deleted, I think
         (Graphical adventure for ST, PC and Amiga)

                      Reviewed by Sue

Being a sucker for all things Arthurian, I had wanted to play this
golden oldie (it dates back to 1989) for a long time but it was a
struggle to find a mail order company that still had a dusty copy
in stock. The basic story is that of King Arthur's search for the
Holy Grail to heal his troubled kingdom which is cursed because of
the goings-on (ahem) between Queen Gwenhyver and Lancelot. Rivers
have dried up, animals are dying, crops withering and the people
starving.  Several knights have already gone looking for The Grail
and, seemingly, vanished off the face of the Earth so a part of
your quest is to find the missing knights - Galahad, Launcelot and
Gawain. Personally, after Launcelot's dalliance with the queen, I
would have been tempted to leave the rotter where he was but I had
to be chivalrous to stand a chance of finding the Grail since my
score was a mixture of wisdom, skill and soul points.

The game starts in Camelot as you prepare for your trip. You have
to make sure you have everything you need because you initially
have no idea where you'll be travelling, though a ship moored at
Southampton docks hints that you'll be leaving the country and,
once you leave Camelot, the gates are locked behind you so there's
no nipping back for a change of socks.

Outside Camelot, you travel on a basic overhead map of southern
England with places of interest marked. Most of these cannot be
visited at all and your explorations will revolve around the
Forest Perilous, Glastonbury Tor and Ot Moor. Each of these has
its own sneaky puzzles and, horrors, arcade sequences. Now I'd
been warned about these - fighting wild boar, jousting a knight,
crossing thin ice, fighting mad monks etc - and had been told they
were pretty hard. Imagine my surprise to find I did them easily.
Maybe a fast PC helps over the Amiga and ST versions, who knows.

Having completed the English section and rescued two of the
knights, it's off by ship for Gaza and, from there, Jerusalem,
where you're told you can find the Grail and the last knight. En
route you'll have to negotiate a desert, deal with shifty Arabs
and will probably die many, many times before you reach your goal.
Oh yes, there are some more arcade sequences too.

More annoying than the arcade sequences are the copy protection
sections. There are at least 5, so if you haven't got a legitimate
copy, you'll stand no chance of completing the game. There is also
a part where you have to answer five riddles but, again, these
aren't too bad and if you save before starting that section, you
can restore if you can't answer them. I think I restored a few
times before getting 5 I could work out.

Despite being an old game, Conquests of Camelot has pretty good
graphics, slightly less detailed than those of KQ4. The tone
of the game swaps between the slightly twee, with much
congratulatory back-slapping and praise when Arthur does a Good
Deed, and the downright bloodthirsty as someone gets their
come-uppance. Arthur can get hacked into little pieces on more
than one occasion but, later, he lops someone's head off - it's a
strange combination of light and darkness.

Not a difficult game, Conquests of Camelot took me 2 weeks, more
off than on, to complete.  I peeked at the solution twice, in one
case I was caught out by a random element that hadn't yet
appeared.  In the other, I had completely forgotten to enter a
building in Jerusalem; moral, if a door is locked, try knocking!

This game is well worth playing and a good one when you just want
to have fun and not face too much of a challenge.










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