Suzar, the evil wizard, has amassed an army of mutated humanoids and plunged the kingdom of Anar into a state of fear. His power grows with every victory he tastes, so that the only way to defeat him is by finding and using the mystical powers of the legendary sword and shield.

You are summoned by King Darius and the High Council of Anar and, together with five loyal followers, are volunteered to find the sword and destroy Suzar before he enslaves the whole of Anar.

My first impression of Legend Of The Sword was one of dismay as I looked at the icons and graphics filling the screen. I should not have been so sceptical: the game has instant appeal and very quickly engulfs you in the plot - game control becomes secondary. Every location or action is displayed graphically in one of two windows to the left of the screen, with a scrolling map of your immediate surroundings to the right. Centre-screen are the icons to control movement, below which scroll the text descriptions.

80% of the game can be finished using the icon system, although for those of us who are hardened text-inputters the whole quest can be played using typed commands. The parser is surprisingly good, incorporating RAMSAVE/LOAD, FIND and GOTO commands and OOPS to back-track your previous input.

I explored the land of Anar for some hours - totally engrossed in the happenings on-screen - before I realised I had scored zero percent for all my efforts. Legend Of The Sword is going to prove tough to complete whilst being fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable to play.

The only real difference I envisage between the Amiga and C64 games is the disk access time.