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New Verdigris is a mining village. Mining, in fact, is their principle source of income. Imagine the consternation, therefore, when someone strikes upon a secret vault!

After disturbing the ancient vault, quite unpleasant... um... things have appeared. So the mayor of New Verdigris has summoned your party of warriors to flush them out. Nice of him, don't you think?

The game arrives on three disks with an instruction booklet and adventurer's journal. Both booklets include an explanation of the menus, lists of character levels and magic/combat tables as well as a batch of off-line paragraphs that you read when prompted by the game.

The screen menus, contained within a strip along the base of the screen, contain all the necessary commands. The Party Creation/Hall menu, for example, allows you to create and manipulate your party characters. So you can train them, view their stats, modify the party and so on. Within this main menu are several sub-menus that give the characteristic 'tree' menu-form seen in all of SSI's AD&D games. The sub-menus include choices like the View menu, that allows you to look at any items you're carrying, spells you have, items to trade and so forth.

During gameplay, you will encounter three types of view. The initial viewpoint is a first-person perspective which will be very familiar to AD&D veterans and Bard's Tale players and forms the principle adventuring view. You walk into the scenery and the world moves past. The second view is a handy overhead viewpoint that shows where you are in respect to your surroundings - especially useful when you begin to feel a little lost.

The third viewpoint clicks into play when combat is initiated and is one of the main reasons that combat is so much more satisfying in SSI's AD&D games than other first-person perspective games such as Bard's Tale or Dungeon Master on the Amiga. You see all of the characters involved in the fight (yours and the enemy's) in a side-on, but slightly elevated viewpoint.

This is an excellent way to treat combat in a RPG as it allows you to implement tactical movements (i.e. attacking from the side and the rear).

I must admit, I have never been a big fan of SSI's AD&D system. It is far too combat oriented for my liking with little or no puzzles and not enough emphasis on the ideal of 'role-playing' which is, after all, the name of the game. Yet, to be fair, many role-players still like that style of RPG. If you are the class of player who enjoys a good hack then the AD&D system will have been very enjoyable - so far.

However, even you AD&D diehard will be disconcerted with Silver Blades. Because, apart from the slight graphical enhancements and the introduction of an extra few levels, the game offers nothing new. The commands and the menus present in the game are exactly the same as the others, the magic and combat system is the same, the screen layout is the same. The game structure is the same. The gameplay is the same. The plot? Okay, that's different - but come on, big deal, eh?

C64 owners have come to expect high standards from their software and rightly so. Yes, the graphics are nice, as is the sound, but as the gameplay is unchanged Silver Blades feels old before its time. SSI should, instead of succumbing to the urge to produce 16,000 AD&D games per year, sit back and plan a smaller number of impressive blockbusters. As it is, Secret Of The Silver Blades should be banished to the Forgotten Realms. It'll do very well there.