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Since its origins in 1977, Dungeons and Dragons has become an institution in itself. Curse Of The Azure Bonds is the next chapter in the "Forgotten Realms" computer game saga, taking the heroes of the Pool Of Radiance and Hillsfar scenarios into ever-deeper perils and adventure filled lands.

The scenario for Curse is a mysterious one - the adventurers of great renown are awakened from a magic sleep only to find themselves in a small inn in the city of Tilverton, not prisoners, but devoid of any memory of recent events.

All their possessions have been taken but in return the party find themselves with a branded with an image of five strange bonds on their sword arms. The bonds have been created with very powerful magic and are strong enough to at times command your actions, often with dangerous results. Unless you find the source of the bonds and the reason behind them, you will forever be subject to their strange power.

In much the same way as Pool, the adventures begin their quest with very little information about the situation to hand. The city of Tilverton is relatively small but contains all the essential shops and services to get your party on the road.

Novice players lacking characters from the previous games must first work their way through the involved character generation system with six races, nine alignments, two genders (how many were you expecting?!) and six basic character classes to choose from. Multi-class characters can also be created if you select cross-breed races - the Half-Elf has a weighty twelve character classes to choose from (including the complex Fighter/Magic-User/Thief class). The addition of not only multi-class but new single class characters (such as the Paladin and Ranger) opens the game up and allows the player more choice and a lot more scope to create a truly mixed band of adventurers, mirroring the original RPG well and giving the players more scope for playing new characters.

Once the party is created, it's out into Tilverton to start exploring. Curse plays much like Pool (if not in an identical manner) with the adventurers using the top left window for movement with the status panel on the right and the commands along the bottom.

Through these commands the adventurers can perform a wide range of actions and tasks from spell-casting to swapping weapons in mid combat. Characters can rest or memorize new spells, the icons of each adventurer can even be physically changed to suit personal taste. The player is given more than enough options to use, in keeping with the immensely complex role playing game, and an involved storyline to match.

When combat inevitably occurs, the screen display changes with half the screen taken up by the status panel, the left half showing the combat in pseudo 3D form. Spells can be cast and ranged weapons used by lining up targets and unleashing the firepower - men move into close combat and the battle begins. Not much in the way of change from Pool in this section, although the monsters are generally a lot better drawn and animated, with Salamanders, Hunting Dogs, dreaded Beholders and very large Black Dragons to roast your halflings!

There are obviously limitations as to what the adventurers can do but like Pool, SSI make maximum use of the C64's memory to squeeze in a mass of locations to explore, people to meet, spells and weapons to use, missions to undertake and foes to defeat.

The ongoing story sees the adventurers take on the mysterious (and very lethal) Fire Knives tribe, confront the King of Cormyr and his princess, rescue Dinswart the Sage, locate three artefacts and explore Dagger Falls in the process. The depth of the game is considerably more than previous SSI RPGs with mini-adventures combining with major adventures, all together under the one big quest to remove the Azure Bonds.

The inevitable climactic battle sees the adventurers take on an old foe literally back from the dead but in the guise of another persons - (Cryptic Hint: Make friends but beware, one of them isn't what they seem, you'll find out in the end).

The city of Tilverton is only a very small part of Curse, there are underground caverns, sewers and outside in the wilds; the Elven Forest, the Keep of Zenthil, Yulash, the citadel at Hap, the Temple of Yulash beckons and many other lethal locations await.

With its intricate plot and superb player interaction Curse creates a very strong atmosphere with authenticity lent to the proceedings by the mass of options and the well-executed tactical combat display.

Admittedly a little of the innovation is lost as the game is a sequel, and £25 could be regarded as quite a high price to pay for something that is remarkably similar in style and techniques to a previous game, even with the demo and neat animated scenes. But when you consider what's to be found within in (and not all of it is at all friendly) Curse certainly proves a worthy sequel to one of the better RPGs around.