Swords of Xeen Reviewed by Sue My favourite RPGs are, without doubt, the Might and Magic series, especially the earlier ones, up to M&M5, which used step-by-step movement. Now they may look rather primitive compared to later games in the series and the likes of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. The graphics are more humorous and cartoon-like than realistic, but for me the games always won hands down in terms of atmosphere with a large number of sub-quests, some of which had several stages, great monsters and an easy-to-understand magic system. Games 4 and 5 linked together to form World of Xeen and when M&M6 came out, a CD was released which contained 1 to 5 plus a bonus game, Swords of Xeen. I was thrilled! A Xeen game I hadn't played! I immediately went out and bought it, despite already having played 3 to 5. The initial storyline of the game is minimal. As with other early games in the series, you can play as an adventurer or a warrior - the adventurer game has fewer baddies. You start in the city of Grey Haven being greeted by a servant of the Dragon Pharaoh. After the battle to destroy Lord Xeen few heroes remain - except you. You must go through the portal and prevent all that is beyond it from threatening Xeen. A bit of exploration leads you to a pyramid which is the aforementioned portal to the land of Havec. There you meet the ghost of the Paladin Jonah. He tells you that monsters now roam this once prosperous world. One creature pretended to be a friend and guardian but in fact wanted to rule Havec completely. Monsters attacked the cities and destroyed the Great Castle. If you can defeat the monsters and, more importantly, their master, you will be proclaimed Lords of Havec. Sounds good to me. Swords of Xeen, like the other early games, uses step-by-step movement and the area covered, while not vast, is very varied. There's an area of snow and ice to the southeast, temperate forest and grassland southwest and to the north. Desert lies to the east, and the land is divided in half by a mountain range which is split by two passes. I have always found the Xeen games very atmospheric and Swords is no exception, despite certain drawbacks which I'll mention later. As you explore, more of the story will unfold. You learn of six heroes, now dead, who wielded marvellous weapons. These have been lost and it's up to you to recover them. You won't be able to defeat the Ultimate Bad Guy, who turns out to be called Source, or his minions without them. You have six adventurers in your party. A built in group is provided but I'm sure you'll want to create your own. The creation process is simple and quick. Certain spells and supplies can be bought in Gray Haven, then it's off to Havec! Havec has cities too - there are three in all, quite widely spaced so it takes some time to travel from one to another unless you use the Town Portal spell. Because of the activities of the monsters, all the towns are, at first, in their hands. Not until you clear them, and the surrounding areas, will people start to move back into the towns, reopening their shops, temples, smithies etc. Unfortunately I soon hit a problem. The guild where you buy spells in the first Havec town, Hart, never opened. Since at that point I couldn't return to Gray Haven I couldn't buy any more spells. Disaster! I restarted and bought all the spells I could safely afford before going through the portal. That helped a bit but eventually I got to a stage when I just couldn't progress because I needed better spells. More than that, my characters were just too weak in comparison to the monsters. I met some giants who flattened me immediately. I tried using teleport so that they were in my sights but couldn't attack me, fired off a few spells, teleported away before they got close to me, then repeated. It took ages. Then I met some in an enclosed space without room to teleport away. Hopeless. Disheartened, I shelved the game and went on to something else but it niggled at me that I hadn't finished the game. A year passed. A few months ago, I was looking for something to play and remembered Swords. At the time, I thought that it was something I'd done - or not done - which had stopped the guild appearing, so I thought I'd have another go. When STILL it didn't appear, in desperation I trawled the Net for a solution. I found one which said the game was full of mistakes and bugs (I'd already noticed some very dodgy spelling and grammar, even in the scene-setting at the beginning) and that due to the guild not appearing (ha!) and the strong monsters, the only way to play the game and enjoy it was to ... cheat! My initial reaction was "Never!" Then I realized that I'd had two frustrating stabs at a game I really wanted to play but had given up on because I just couldn't manage it. So I followed the instructions in the hint file, downloaded a hex editor, HEdit, loaded in my first save with my own characters and started hacking. The instructions given were brief, vague and not completely accurate but I muddled through and found the relevant offsets for each of my six characters and bumped their stats up to a high level. I didn't change the starting quantities of gold or gems, then I restarted the game. I met my first Gremlin, hit him and pow - he was dead! Dark wolves dropped like flies. Even Havec's monster flies dropped like flies. I met a giant ... this time my "Davids" had a real edge and won. A bit of me thought - this is too easy. But then I met a minotaur and had real problems with him, so I knew that I hadn't hacked my characters too high. In fact at the end of the game, even my souped-up characters, which by now were up to 700-900HP each, weren't strong enough to defeat the monsters. These came in waves, first singly, then in twos and threes, some hit up to 12 times per round, magic didn't affect them and only every 10th blow of mine hit. I couldn't use Lloyd's Beacon to set a teleport point within the final section, or Town Portal to leave it. I couldn't use magic spells at all within its boundaries. It was time for more hacking. I put their stats up so high that they could destroy these final monsters with one blow and thank goodness I did because I hadn't realized just how intense this final bit was. I would be surprised if anyone could finish it without cheating and if you were so dedicated that you plugged away and did it without help, I think it would probably put you off RPGs for life. It certainly would have for me. At the end of the day, did I enjoy the game? Yes, but I wouldn't have done it without hacking. The M&M games have always been the best, in my opinion, when it comes to devising quests. They are even more weird in Swords than in previous games, with some very strange items to collect and transport from one area or person to another. The graphics aren't state of the art, the controls are a bit clunky, but to me that doesn't matter. I got completely engrossed in the game and was sorry when I finished it. To know how I hacked into my save, see the hint file in this issue. If you want to do the same, HEdit is on this issue's disk. It is the unregistered version so will only work for a limited time. - o -