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That Tolkien bloke has got a lot to answer for. If it wasn't for him, nobody would ever have heard of orcs and the hordes of other creatures which are the lifeblood of so many Dungeony Dragon agonies. Realms is yet another game which attempts to take the same basic mythology and plonk you in control of the outcome. To you falls the task of conquering the known world; orcs, dwarves, amazons and all. And you'd better be quick about it.

Realms is mouse-controlled throughout and you get used to bringing up the necessary displays very quickly. There are six displays in all, and each one concentrates on a separate facet of the strategy. The Fortress screen is the overall planning display - it contains a Midwinter style fractal map that can show the position of enemies and the network of tax routes between all your cities. There's also a treasury room with a set of scales that shows the balance of tax income against your armies' pay level. You set the tax rate for your whole realm here, and you can affect the balance drastically. You may even have a revolution on your hands!

Less warlike, though just as crucial as your expensive armies, are the cities you rule. The City screen enables you to visit each one, even those outside your realm, and see how life is for the masses. Just like armies, each population has a morale level, though you can't boost it with back-handers this time. You can help by reducing taxes - but you've got to watch that balance closely. Instead, you can buy grain for future years, expand the city or build walls - but these all cost money that you could be spending on new recruits. A vicious, but lifelike, circle. The most important, but also the most frustrating display is the Playfield. On the previous displays, time is frozen and you can take as long as you need. But on the Playfield display, everything runs in real time - and a realm-withering real-time at that.

Right from the beginning, the enemy hordes are a-coming, and the pause mode doesn't enable you to whizz around the excellent Populous flavour landscape and spot them. You find yourself wishing you could slow down the passage of time, just occasionally, so you'd stand a better chance of acclimatising yourself to your new empire. Sure, you can use the city screen to pop from place to place, but that way it's easy to lose your sense of direction and forget your geographic position.

It's tempting to console yourself with the battles that regularly occur. The Battle screen, where a medieval stand-off takes place, is a Weetabix advert come true, with droves of armed-to-the-teeth diehards lining up in rows to fight. At the top of the screen, flags show which army's had it and which is about to run home whimpering. With this in mind, you must choose from the action buttons very carefully, or you ruin an advantage or make a bad situation worse. You select the formations of each army group as they go in to fight, using wedges for first-strike attacks and Duke of Wellington squares for defence. Cavalary, infantry and specialized long range missile-wielders all need different tactics to work effectively or they get cut to pieces. Once the order to attack has been given, it's quite a task to pinpoint each unit's control flag (especially when they're running), even with a mouse. Real-time is hard work!

Realms is a beautifully-crafted piece of work, almost as seamless as a Lucasfilm effort, except for a few tiny things which affect the gameplay balance. The lack of time to think and check the playfield constrains you too much. The enemies, on the other hand, know in microseconds where all your weak spots are. If you had as much equivalent time as they did, it might be easier to survive.

Another thing which prevents Realms from attaining that Lucas lustre is the basic design of its control functions. They're perfect in every artistic detail except layout and connectivity. You're constantly wasting time on the playfield and the zoom-in icons differ in position from screen to screen. When real-time is as fast as this, even a second can mean an enemy is going to get more of an edge over you which could be crucial.

It's hard not to like Realms - it's got a great intro, powerful graphics and a rare, expert use of the ST sound-chip to create unobtrusive, atmospheric music without samples. It even gets extra brownie points for volume-fading! But as a game it's too much like life - fast, furious and often unfair. But hey! Maybe that in itself is something of a challenge - and if you buy Realms, you'd better be up to one.

1. Runs on all colour STs and STEs
2. Enhanced on 1040s and above
3. Great graphics combine Flames of Freedom fractals and Populous panoramas with a wargame of huge proportions
4. As much cash-crisis management as Railroad Tycoon or Sim City, but with an Orcish flavour
5. A more plausible version of War In Middle Earth but without the hobbits, and with a lot more fighting
6. More detailed battle control than Universal Military Simulator, but not as flexible