Here is a game of exploration and adventure that has the feel (and some!) of the best features of a role-playing game, combined with the puzzles and game format of an adventure. In the making for over two years, its author, Karl Buckingham, gave up his job to write it, knowing that he had something good. Together with Colin Mongadi and Eugene Messina, he formed Silicon Soft, and has come up with a totally new concept in adventure presentation.

You lead a team of six men, chosen by the king to go forth and search out the magic sword and shield that will save the land of Anar from the evil wizard Shuzar. As the adventure starts, your party is about to be landed on the coast near to where the sword and shield are believed to be hidden. There are three places for a possible landing site, and although all the landing points link up, only time and much playing will eventually resolve whether there is one correct beach on which to be set down, for the strategy varies depending upon where you start.

Once ashore, you lead your party against perils from bands of roaming humanoids, vicious trolls, and dangerous monsters lurking in the forest. The forest land, crossed by the occasional river, is riddled with dark and dangerous tunnels, and has its own local castle and dungeon.

The quest tests your stamina to its limits, and to maintain it, you will need to keep a sharp eye out for anything edible - for you will have to keep yourself and your colleagues fed and watered, to be a match for the terrain and its inhabitants. As you proceed, a candle representing your strength burns lower and lower, only to be replenished after a goodly meal.

The game is played using normal adventure commands, but an icon system allows the player to enter about 80% of these using the computer's mouse. Icons for all directions of movement, are permanently displayed on screen, and many other commands may be entered by touching ACTIONS on the menu bar, and selecting a verb from the list displayed above the fixed icons. Depending upon the verb chosen, further lists relevant to it will then be displayed, and the command entered by clicking on EXECUTE on the menu bar.

Alternatively, the area used to list the word icons can be used to display a graphic map. This unfolds as more locations are visited for the first time, and scrolls smoothly through the window as the player moves. To see a wider view, clicking on the map clears the screen completely, and displays a full-screen version of it, before play is resumed on the default screen.

To the left of the (usual) map are two cameos that constantly change as play proceeds, depicting actions and locations. With fast play, or by using the GOTO command, which takes you to any reachable and previously discovered location, the screen is alive with movement and colour, with changing cameos, scrolling map, and changing highlights showing available exits.

Whilst the parser accepts complex sentences, it isn't quite up to Magnetic Scrolls standards. Nevertheless, it is quite adequate for the job once you get used to the way it works. Puzzles there a-plenty and SCORE will tell you what percentage of puzzles you have solved. This feature had me worried a bit, though, for often when I had achieved something that left me with a smug grin on my face, SCORE had obviously not classed it as a puzzle!

The puzzles are not terribly intricate, but neither are they easy to solve. It pays to LOOK and EXAMINE and SEARCH a lot - in this game SEARCH means something different from EXAMINE! And if you are stuck, there is a good chance that you'll get something useful (never a giveaway, though!) by typing HELP - a feature all too often missing from present day adventures.

There are many alternative ways to play a given situation, and whilst the way you choose may have so good an outcome that satisfies you that you have done the right thing, don't be fooled for one moment! Try it the other way, just to check it out - and easy task using the RAM SAVE or OOPS option. If you can kill the troll easily, and rob his corpse of valuables, why bother to risk not killing him? And perhaps it really pays not to cover your tracks in the troll's tunnels? A real conundrum this, for I still haven't decided which way to play it. Perhaps things would be easier if I could find the password on the SW side of the mist!

There are very few criticisms that can be levelled against this adventure. There is the odd response that comes from some far distant place and time, but they are very few and far between. There is occasional difficulty with vocab - but as I've already said, it's not so much the words as the way they are interpreted, and that is fairly easy to adjust to.

The more you play Legend Of The Sword, the richer it becomes, as more and more hidden delights are revealed. It is a really splendid game. If you have an Amiga, buy a copy as soon as you spot one!