Gateway to the Savage Frontier

                 Reviewed by Julian Gregory

This game comes from the same CD of AD&D games which have been
keeping me very busy for the last few months.

It is the first in a trilogy, the others being Treasures of the
Savage Frontier and Pools of Darkness.

Gateway is a relatively small game for an RPG. The storyline is
that your group of adventurers have just finished successfully
guarding a caravan from marauding orcs. You spend your first night
feasting and revelling. Unfortunately when you wake up the next
morning everything is gone except for spell books and a bag of
coins hidden in the room under a pillow.

As with all these types of games there are various towns to
explore and to remove the nasties.

Being the first game in the series means that you start with very
few hit points or experience. Your first task is therefore to
build up both as quickly as possible.

The game features new (at least to me) enemies, Owlbears, Gnolls
and Frogs to name only a few.

Most of the combat situations are quite easy to win. There only
seem to be 4 or 5 serious confrontations.

Likewise the choice between towns is well managed in that you are
told where to go next, just as long as you explore each town
properly.

I liked the concept of the Vaults. You could deposit as much of
your hard won money and it was available to withdraw at any other
town with a similar vault. This means that you do not have to hump
around great lumps of money, thereby restricting your movement in
combat.

My only real criticism is that my computer made a whistling noise
with each step taken. There were also noises during battles which
seemed to slow everything down, so that fights could take some
minutes to win. This is the first one of these games which has
done this, so I hope that the other two don't suffer from this as
well.

Overall 45%. It would have been more without the sound problems.











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