BETRAYAL IN ANTARA

                 Reviewed by Carolyn Brown

'Betrayal in Antara' will be easily recognised by anyone who has
played 'Betrayal at Krondor', as the interface is much the same,
just smartened up a bit. The game world is not the Midkemia of the
Raymond Feist novels which 'Krondor' was based on but it is very
similar.

The game comes on three CDs and runs through Windows 3.1x or
Windows 95. It needs as minimum a P75, 16 MB Ram, and quad speed
CD ROM drive.

You play with two or three characters, depending on which part of
the game you are in, and you can't choose them. You can, however,
adjust the skills which you want them to learn and the rate at
which they learn them, or you can leave it to the computer to do
it all for you.

At the start you have just one character, a young man called Aren,
who rescues another chap, William, from death at the claws of a
flying monster. William's task is to reach a certain nobleman and
to warn him that he is in danger from a terrorist group known as
'The Shepherds'. Aren joins him, and the story continues with
their attempts to find the nobleman who has a habit of getting
himself spirited away every time they get close to tracking him
down. The game is divided into 'chapters' which each start and
finish with a 'story book' sequence of the kind which will be
familiar to Krondor players.  These sequences can be replayed at
any time if you need reminding of the plot.

The first thing to do once you have control of William and Aren is
to find Aren's house so that you can tell his parents that you are
going off with William. Unfortunately, if you don't find the house
quickly it starts to get dark, then you run out of food, then you
get set upon by bandits etc. etc. At the start you have hardly any
weapons or armour and even with combat set at 'easy' the party is
continually dying. Also, the speed with which the game days pass
means that you only play for about five minutes before night sets
in and you have to rest.  You can carry on using torches or light
spells, but before long you get an irritating message that the
party is tired and must rest. This keeps appearing, so that in
desperation you simply have to stop. It isn't so bad while you are
on the road as you can just pull over onto the grass and camp, but
my party was recently in a walled town with room at only one inn,
and the game wouldn't let them rest anywhere except this one inn,
so that I was continually having to interrupt the game in order to
take them back to this inn for the night. It was really annoying.

I have to admit to using some of the cheats which were published
in the January edition of 'SynTax', because I was getting so
frustrated at being continually defeated.  Pressing Ctrl Shift Z
and typing 'Supermarket for the rich' gives you some decent armour
and weapons, and is a good place to store items which won't fit
into the inventory. 'Some call me Tim' kills all the enemies
(although I haven't used that a lot as I don't want to cheat too
much) and 'Man does my leg hurt' cures everyone.  There are
several more cheats which I haven't used - see Issue 52 of Syntax
for full details.

There is a rich story element in the game, and the interaction
between the characters is extremely well done. As with 'Krondor',
you travel in first person mode seeing the countryside through
your own eyes, but when you encounter enemies the view changes so
that you see all of the combatants, including your own party. You
can control the fight yourself, or let the computer do it for you.
I find that the combat element of the game is rather a let down,
especially after having just finished 'Daggerfall'.  Fighting,
being turn based, seems unnatural with people just standing around
waiting to be hit, and there is a disappointing lack of blood and
gore. Nevertheless, it is all too easy to be badly wounded and
full healing is only to be gained from staying at inns for endless
days, or buying healing at temples, both very costly. Hence, the
usefulness of the healing cheat.

Graphically, it is an attractive game, and the landscape and
little villages and towns which you pass through are pretty and
look vaguely Italian. To enter a building you click on a door and
see the interior as a beautifully drawn picture with interactive
'hot spots'. The music is lovely and atmospheric, but I don't
think there is enough of it.  Puzzles are of the standard find a
person, do him a favour in return for more info sort of thing.
There are also puzzle chests scattered around the countryside -
the familiar lever chests of 'Krondor' and some new, fiendishly
difficult 'Bead' puzzle chests (or at least, being rather thick, I
find them difficult to open and have only managed a couple).

Apart from minor quibbles I am enjoying this game and would
wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed 'Betrayal at
Krondor' and who doesn't mind if a game doesn't contain loads of
gore, severed limbs etc., but simply tells a good story.







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