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Aren't you just sick of role-playing games? All that staggering around dimly-lit dungeons, slashing baddies and rescuing princesses is enough to wear down even the hardiest adventurer. Then there are all those hit tables and spells to worry about. Well, here's a dungeons 'n dragons adventure which does away with all that and offers you some fun instead.

Legends Of Valour drops you into the middle of a living, breathing metropolis where people go to work, visit the theatre and hang around in bars ripping each other's heads off. The major difference is that Mitteldorf is a mythical city set on the island of Wolfbrood and it's entirely populated by characters from a Tolkien novel - elves, humans, goblins and trolls and just four of the species competing for space, fame and money in this city.

You play a humble pig-rearer (chortle) whose cousin Sven has run off to Mitteldorf in search of a fortune of his own. Unfortunately, no-one's heard from Sven in quite a while, and your family are beginning to get worried. As a brave adventurer with a taste for the low-life, you volunteer to set off for Mitteldorf in search of your missing cousin. You also have to find the three magic items which can help you "win" the game.

Your first priority when you arrive is to get yourself somewhere to stay. Mitteldorf is dotted with taverns and hostels offering food, drink and a bed - sleeping on the streets is not an option unless you want to be arrested or savaged by a blood-hungry werewolf. Taverns are also good places for picking up information about the town's activities or for finding the work to keep you in bugburders and ale. Running errands for people is actually one of the best way of exploring the city - it's like being paid to be a tourist.

As you wander around the city - completely forgetting about Sven if you have any sense - you discover all kinds of places. For a start there's a zoo near the Main Gate which is filled with all the nasties that populate Mitteldorf's dungeon levels - this is the only opportunity you're going to get to poke a Cyclops in the eye without being disembowelled first.

There are also plenty of temples, shops and houses to explore. The shops are useful in Mitteldorf's six commodities - ore, spices, pelts, gems, hide and tar. You simply buy as many as you can as cheaply as you can at one end of town and flog them off for a profit at the other. All the extra money you make can be spent on extra weapons, potions, going to the theatre or a few life-enhancing weapons courses. The temples, howwever, enable you to develop much-needed magic and priest spells by becoming a member of a religious cult. They're also useful for diagnosing the many ailments and mishaps which can befall you on your travels and healers can offer a cute for a small fee.

Most importantly, you're going to have to track down Mitteldorf's five secret societies if you're to make any progress as an adventurer - the Men at Arms, the Fellowship of Asegeir, the Brotherhood of Loki, the Mercenary or Thieves guilds all have a range of special skills on offer and even pay you a regular salary once you satisfy the initiation rites and become a member. However, some guilds have an acrimonious attitude towards members of rival organisations and you could find yourself being barred from membership or cudgeled in the street for giving the wrong funny handshake. Still, it beats being a member of the Pig-Rearer's Fun Club though.

When you play Legends Of Valour it's like taking part in a parallel universe. Shops open and close, it gets dark, people rip you off. You're struck as you wander around by how realistic it all is. You don't even have to do any adventuring if you don't want to. The game's programmers - Dimension Creative Designs - originally intended it to be a real life simulation where you just wandered around doing whatever you fancied. There wasn't even going to be an ending. Thankfully, the game hasn't been too loused up by the inclusions of insignificant matters, like a plot, and you can spend your whole time staggering in and out of bars drinking copious amounts of gin - providing your vision and bank balance can stand it.

There are plenty of humorous touches too - the insults hurled at you by the other members of Mitteldorf range from the abusive "you look like a wimp" to the hilarious "you smell like a Satyr's armpit" and you get to insult them back. It's all highly reminiscent of Monkey Island. You can't help laughing when you're attacked by dwarves either, since they're scarecely able to poke their heads over the top of the game screen.

Unfortunately, the game's let down by some shoddy combat sequences. Instead of the sheer terror you get fighting mummies in Dungeon Master, you're left hurling the odd punch or badly-aimed hack at your opponent - it's all a bit arbitrary and not very convincing. To show you how low on the list of priorities fighting comes, you can even give your ST the chance to do it for you by activating the Auto Combat option. Hardly the stuff real adventure games are made of.

The only other major fault with the game lies in the sheer size of it. The majority of the buildings you explore are completely deserted, except for an odd wooden table or the occasional visitor. Consequently, you don't really feel there's enough to get your teeth into and it's a bit unsatisfying. If the programmers had halved the size of the city and filled the buildings with more activity, the experience could have been more intense - saying "It's a real life sim, and in real life things are a bit boring" doesn't really excuse things. You want to play games which take you away from real life, not just remind you of the mundanity of it.

Like most role-playing games, Legends Of Valour is controlled entirely by your ST's mouse and features a point-and-click icon system. This makes selecting objects and picking options a doddle, but the mouse really comes into its own when you forget on-screen movements icons and steer yourself around by wiggling your mouse around the desk - if you've ever played racing sims like Vroom or No Second Prize, you know how well this method works - you just press the left mouse button to move forwards and move the mouse from side to side to vary your direction. Combine this with the ability to change the game screen size and you end up with a very fast and very smooth scrolling system, even if it does take a while to get used to.

Another radical departure comes with the use of 3D texture-mapped graphics. This means the walls and floors of Mitteldorf's dwellings actually look like parts of real buildings, not bald blocks of colour - this is especially noticeable in some of the dungeons where the rocks look so real you can almost feel them grazing your skin as you bump into them. The quality of the graphics makes the whole game a virtual reality experience and you can't help but be impressed by the constantly changing scenery and the sight of hundreds of in-game characters all moving about independently. It's a shame the same can't be said for the sound effects which consist of a few chip effects and the odd muffled yelp.

Legends Of Valour is not so much a role-playing game, more a virtual reality experience. There are no princesses to rescue or hit points to calculate - you just wade in there and explore the sprawling mass that is Mitteldorf. With hundreds of locations to wander round and visit, and thousands of beings to meet, the game pulls you in deeper and deeper until you suddenly realise you're hooked.

The combat sequences and sound effects are disappointing and you can find yourself wandering aimlessly around empty rooms, waiting for something exciting to happen - see, it's more like life than you realise. Legends Of Valour is an original variation on a well-worn theme, it's a good game, but not quite a classic.

1. Virtual Reality on your ST. A wild goose chase with lots of surprises.

1. The combat sequences aren't much cop and all that wandering around gets really boring.