PILGRIM

                  Reviewed by Peter Clark

The year is 1208. A Knight Templar brings a mysterious manuscript
back from the crusades and a dreadful plot is hatched. In agreeing
to hand on this document to a friend of his father, Simon de
Lancrois thought he was simply fulfilling the last wish of a dying
man. Now he finds himself on the road to Compostella pursued by
Diego d'Osma, the inquisitor of Pope Innocent III. Superstition
reigns all around, with both angels and demons poised to take part
in the struggle.

The game starts with Simon being briefed by his dying father to go
to Toulouse, find his friend Petrus and give him the manuscript.
The manuscript is hidden in the Library and, as you would expect,
Simon's father leaves this world before he can tell him where to
find it. Discovering the hidden manuscript is a bit tricky but
having acquired it, your pilgrimage really begins. You find
yourself on a riverbank where a travelling circus type of show is
parked. The problem is that a cart is stuck on the bridge having
lost a wheel and one of the barrels has fallen off into the water.
Your next tasks are to retrieve the barrel and find a way to get
the cart across the bridge. You will need the help of the
travelling show to accomplish this.

Once this has been done you find yourself outside the gates of
Toulouse. The guard won't allow you in, as you have no money so
you will have to find a way of getting some before you can enter.
This done, you are free to wander into the Market and talk to the
traders. There are quite a few of them and it is necessary to talk
to all of them to find out just what each of them wants and what
they can do to help you. Some of them will need to be questioned
more than once. The moneychanger will give you one of the first
mathematical puzzles of the game involving some scales and
weights. Even when you complete this, he will not change your
money until you answer a riddle.

While in Toulouse, you will have to pay a visit to one of the
local houses and the Abbey. It is here that you come across
several more puzzles involving doors, dungeons, gratings, spikes
and platforms. None of these are particularly difficult but still
need a little thought. If you have a Bible handy it is here that
you will need it, as you have to solve a mural puzzle.  There are
pictures depicting the Ten Commandments and the Ten Plaques of
Egypt. They must be put into the correct order before you can
proceed further and go to the Reception that the market traders
were all talking about. There is a puzzle here involving a dragon
that is quite difficult.

From here you go to a Tower to learn more about your quest and
from here to a cliff scene with Petrus where yet more of the plot
is revealed to you. Now you go on to Roncevaux Abbey. Among other
tasks here, you will have to find a sword called Durandal. An
encounter with Hades on a bridge is the next problem and you must
dispose of him before you can go on. Now you must enter a hamlet
and talk to the inhabitants about a haunted house. Your quest here
is to rid the house of the ghost of a witch. From here you go to a
Church and have to solve puzzles with bells and windows. Now you
find yourself at the Fortress where you must free Diego and Marc
from the cells. Next, you progress to the house of Belibaste.
There is a maze to negotiate here and more puzzles involving
Kings, Knights and Ghosts. Hades makes an appearance here at the
Cathedral. You must play chess with him and win to escape his
clutches.

You are now in the final part of the game. You face the three
Judges who will all question you about what you have learned of
The Tradition. The answers are all contained in the game and, as
there is an encyclopaedia that keeps track of all the information
that has been revealed to you during the game, you can always look
up the appropriate answers. If you answer the questions correctly
you enter the closing video clip where you are invited to join The
Tradition.

I enjoyed this game a lot. The puzzles, although tricky, were not
so difficult as to make you want to give up. There is quite a lot
of talking to the other characters which some times got a little
boring but this is necessary in order to find out everything for
the interrogation at the end. I found no bugs and the game played
perfectly on a PC with Pentium 3 700Mhz processor running Windows
Me. My only criticism is the end sequence. I felt that after all
that puzzling, the ending deserved to be better than it was.
However, the game is still worth playing and I would recommend it
to those liking the mathematical and mechanical type of puzzle.














                              - o -