The City of 'Ehdollah

Micro Adventurer

SC

'EH, LAD - NOT MUCH COP MICRO: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £9.95 FORMAT: Cassette SUPPLIER: Dorling Kindersley Software, [redacted] The city of 'Ehdollah is a first attempt by Goldstar to break into the lucrative adventure market with what could be quite an interesting package. It is supplied in a sturdy plastic box with foam packaging and even includes a manual similar to some of the up-market adventures currently available. The storyline is plausible. You find yourself in the vicinity of the lost City of the Toggalids, which is now under the control of an evil sorcerer, and have heard tales of the fabled Great Ruby from which power can be gained. Many others before you have attempted to attain this prize but you, naturally, are going to succeed. It is once you begin your attempt that you run into problems. The adventure has obviously been well storyboarded but it suffers from a serious lack of vocabulary and a very badly written database. The manufacturers say that they doubt anyone will be able to complete the quest in one sitting. This does not surprise me as the whole system relies heavily on an element of chance. I have found that in many instances simply your choice of direction is enough to get you killed. For example: walking north in the garden will result in falling off a cliff whose existence had not even been hinted at and if you go west through the hole in the wall into the giant bats lair you find yourself unable to return to the garden with no explanation offered as to why. A commendable attempt has been made to include a combat system but, unfortunately, it does not come up to scratch. A normal combat system (as used in the Fantasy Role Playing Games, which I am sure many of us are familiar with) takes into account the Strength, Stamina, Dexterity and weapons of the player character to determine the amount of damage suffered by either combatant. Unfortunately the Goldstar version relies far too heavily on a purely random hit or miss factor. In one area I came upon a relatively weak monster with a stamina of only six compared to my 20 yet I took 14 points of damage before finally killing it. You may only eat six times and each meal restores four points. I'm sure you can see this gives you very little chance of survival. I would, in all seriousness, advise Goldstar to withdraw this package immediately and enlist some help to rewrite the whole system as well as debugging the adventure.