Subject: MINI-REVIEW: Legacy of Soracil (demo)
From: [email-masked] (Eyal Teler)
Date: 17 May 1994 17:17:48 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT DETAILS

	This is a mini-review of the demo version of Legacy of Soracil, an
isometric role-playing adventure game ("RPG").  The demo contains one game
level and appears on the coverdisk of the May issue of Amiga Computing
magazine.

REVIEW

	The game loads from the diskette, and reasonably quickly.  You are
greeted with a nice musical score.  It's one of the better ones I've heard in
a game in some time.  Of course, I usually play only demos, so I may be
missing something.  The magazine contains instructions on creating your
characters and starting the game, using the options accessible from the
opening screen.  The music continues to play until the game starts.

	Character generation is done on two separate screens.  The first lets
you select four characters from those available, which are basically
warriors and mages.  The second screen allows you to change the attributes
of the characters by adding up to five points divided among five
attributes.  There are two annoying things here.  The first is that you
don't know the attributes of the characters when selecting them, and you
find this out only in the second screen.  The second thing is that the
characters are not coloured in the modification screen, and so I wasn't sure
which one of them I was changing (some look about the same, apart from their
colours).

	On starting the game, after selecting the destination (which always
brings you to the same place -- it's a demo, after all), you see your
characters in not-so-glorious isometric form.  Each character gets a turn
with a limited number of movement units.  When the character can no longer
move, you should switch to the next one, but it's possible to switch before
this.  I found it rather annoying to have to move each character
individually, especially as the game forces you to switch, so you can't just
explore freely with one character nor in a group.

	The controls also let the game down.  First of all, it's not all
that easy to go where you want.  In one place, where there are narrow
corridors, I found myself going back and forth because I didn't press the
right place on the screen (which was difficult because the screen is
cluttered by walls).  Battles are also not very well done, as you have to
select repeatedly the character you wish to fight.  As it happens, if you
click on your enemy without selecting the 'fight' option, you could move to
a place where you can't attack it (and in any case you lose movement units).

	There are some traps in the game.  Once they are sprung they are
still active, and anyone stepping on them is hit, so beware.  I think that
the only way to avoid this is to find another route.

	When you are in battle, the game gives combat turns to your
enemies.  First an enemy is shown moving on the map, and then a short combat
scene is shown.  This means that the game moves constantly between map
display and game display.

	The graphics in the game are not all that brilliant.  In fact, they
are quite bland.  To let you view things hidden by walls, walls become
ghosted and then turn back to normal, which is quite logical, but not
perfectly executed (although I can't point to the exact fault).  There are
reasonable sound effects, but the music is missing in the demo.  The full
game has the option of selecting either music or effects; I didn't search
for this option in the demo.

CONCLUSION

	This game seems to make all the efforts to slow you down.
Exploration and battles are the meat of RPGs, and the controls of this game
make them a chore.  It's the first isometric RPG I've played, and it just
can't compare to first person perspective RPGs, which I like very much.
Still, it seems that the problem is not the isometric nature of the game,
but the controls.

	Anyway, I might put it occasionally just to listen to the music.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

	This review was written by Eyal Teler.  If you really want to copy
it (why?) then you are free to do it.  Just don't change it.

---

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