MAGIC REALMS: THE SWORD OF KASZA - by James Mallette (1996)
          A text adventure, part of Disk PCPD 1175

                    Review by Bev Truter

Well, another recently written but strangely old-fashioned text
adventure has crossed my path again, via the Internet; and Realms
of Magic turned out to be a real paradox in terms of playing and
reviewing, causing me some angst and dithering in deciding how to
review it. It has left me stuck on the horns of a dilemma, a most
uncomfortable position. The paradox is caused by the following: a)
Realms contains the most appalling grammar, spelling, construction
and syntax I have EVER seen in any computer game that's been
released to the public. (b) In spite of this massive handicap
Realms is a fascinating game to play. And that's the dilemma in a
nutshell - how can one possibly enjoy a game that utterly mangles
the English language so badly? But enjoy it I did, despite the
many flinches and shudders at some of the more mistake-laden
passages.

Realms is a fantasy text adventure set in a typical mediaeval-ish
world in some unspecified time and place. You play the part of a
young village lad summoned to help your King and land in their
hour of need; and before you reach the ultimate quest - to find
and destroy the evil Lord Rerex - you will have to embark on
several minor quests to obtain the various bits and bobs necessary
to defeat him.

The game begins with you receiving a mysterious note asking you to
meet someone at the Horseshoe Tavern in the village of Moon in
Moordale. After travelling for two days you reach the tavern, and
after a hot meal you retire to your room to await the dawn and
your meeting with a stranger who will give you further details
about this urgent summons. However, the messenger you were to meet
is killed in the room next to yours, and you are framed for his
murder and sent to jail. Escaping from jail with the aid of a
strange deaf-mute you are taken to the hideout of the local bandit
chief, who explains that the corrupt magistrate of Moordale was
responsible for the messenger's murder. To clear your name you
will have to enter the magistrate's mansion and find proof of his
evil-doing, then journey to the King in Red Dale with this
evidence.

This is the first of five quests which form the Sword of Kasza -
chapter 1 of Magic Realms. (Chapter 2 is evidently going to be a
graphical adventure game, not text). So off you plunge into this
adventure to find the two shattered pieces of the famed sword of
Kasza - the hilt and the blade. Then you'll have to discover how
to get the sword repaired so you can toddle off to do battle with
the ultimate Baddie - the demon lord, Rerex. After completing each
quest you have to return to Red River Castle in Red Dale to
consult a magic book in the library - it reveals the next quest
for you to embark on and gives hints on how to succeed.

The text file accompanying Magic Realms gives a longish history of
the game's development - Realms began life as a small game on the
C64, and after 5 years ended up as a TADS game, getting enlarged
and altered along the way. Although the author has spent an
amazing amount of time and effort in rewriting Realms in various
formats, it becomes painfully obvious right from the beginning
that he has spent zero time in checking for spelling and
grammatical errors.  The game runs well and works from a purely
mechanical point of view, but surely even the most cursory glance
at Realms by a friend or relative or playtester would have
prevented the hundreds of ridiculous language errors creeping
unchecked through all the various versions of Realms.

Here's a snippet from the REALMS.TXT file to illustrate what I
mean - and bear in mind the game contains about 110 locations,
with at least 2-5 spelling/grammar atrocities per location..."With
TADS, I needed to created 'life' for these character's. And that
too took time to developed. Much of the original script was
remembered, some parts I completely re-wroted. The ending was
completely re-written from it's original." The main problem seemed
to be that the author has no concept of tenses, happily sticking
'-ed' onto the ends of various words to form the past tense - the
bit I liked best was the "hand holds dugged in the sides of the
well", and your attempt to "free them from the Pirate's yolk".
(Makes one suspect there's a jolly band of egg-throwing pirates
lurking somewhere in the game).  The author has decided that
plurals are formed by sticking an apostrophe 's' on the ends of
most words; so there are orc's sitting at a table, pirate's
controlling the waterways, guard's patrolling the corridors, and
various other strange plural words.  But enough moaning about the
mangled English, and on with the review.

So, back to my dilemma of enjoying this game in spite of the
distinct lack of talent shown in the spelling/grammar department.
Realms is entertaining, and holds your interest with a storyline
that starts off by throwing you into the thick of things - you get
the feeling that this is a real world with its own story and life
and events beyond your control, and you are visiting it briefly,
as the 'Chosen One' (actually, it was the 'choosen one' according
to several screensful of writing), sent on a quest to save the
land from imminent all-engulfing Evil. Realms has atmosphere, a
good though cliched plot, and plenty of interesting locations and
exciting quests to fight your way through. The author's actual
writing style is fluent and imaginative, and the ideas underlying
the story managed to overcome most of the spelling/grammar
limitations.

Although Realms is a large game in terms of number of locations,
it is fairly easy to complete. This might be due to the fact that
at least three of the puzzles involving confrontation with various
characters simply require you to be holding the right object, and
then an 'automatic' sequence is triggered where you just have to
wait until the character is defeated, or the problem solved. I
think I would have preferred to use my own inputs and actions a
bit more, rather than just toddle through the problem
automatically, while clutching the necessary item. However, to
counteract this there's a horrible-looking mathematical puzzle to
solve, which ultimately turned out to have a trial-and-error
solution, but which I wasted hours trying to solve by more logical
methods.

One last teensy gripe about Realms was that in one location you
find a carving when you walk around a stalagmite. Fine, I thought.
It must be a carving literally carved into the stone surface of
the stalagmite - examine it and you simply see a short description
of the picture on the carving. But no, this assumption was wrong.
Later on in the game you need to find an object to put into
something else; and yes, you guessed it, the carving turns out to
be portable - not attached to the stalagmite in any way.
Hrrummpphh, a bit unfair?

There is a neat and logical layout to the geography of this
fantasy world, and a similarly neat device to prevent you from
running about fruitlessly in all directions at once. Each 'quest'
is set in a different area of the game, and each area is reached
by a road branching out from a central 'Crossroads' location. You
have to tackle each quest in order before you are given something
or told something that will help you succeed in a subsequent
quest. This 'closed' type of game appeals to the orderly side of
my nature - I detest those games where you can pick up oodles of
things in a few locations, and you are faced with several puzzles
simultaneously; there's too much to do at once and one tends to
rush about getting all hot and bothered and attempting to do
ridiculous things with every object in sight.


Magic Realms is a shareware game, and James Mallette requests that
you send him (US)$5 - $10 if you enjoyed playing it, and adds that
any comments on the game would be appreciated. Hmmm, wonder if
anyone's mentioned the spelling and grammar yet? The total score
is out of 200 points, and completing the endgame and defeating old
Lord Rerex gives a nice feeling of satisfaction - you can sit on
your laurels for a while and bask in the well-deserved glory that
comes from saving your land from a very nasty fate!

   ENJOYMENT         5/10
   ATMOSPHERE      5.5/10
   DIFFICULTY        5/10
   FINAL COMMENT   This could have been a good game instead of
                   merely average, but it's still entertaining to
                   play.




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