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Swords Of Twilight's instruction manual promises quite a lot. It's not just a game, it seems. It offers you "freedom of action in a world of wonder... short of first degree burns, this is as close as you can get to a dragon's breath or a wizard's fireball". Sounds pretty amazing, doesn't it? But what you actually end up with is a slow version of Gauntlet mixed with a poor clone of Times Of Lore.

As usual, an evil force has taken over the land. You are the only one who can save the world from its dark oppressors - that is you and two other brave warriors, both of whom can be controlled by computer or another player. Characters are chosen from a cast list of thirty-one warriors, all with different strengths and abilities. It's down to you to find a successful mix that will enable you to have both the physical strength to endure the wilderness, and the mental agility to overcome the obstacles and puzzles.

The game is played as a top view eight-way scroller. In three of the four corners of the screen are the pictures of the three characters in the adventure plus any relevant information. In the fourth corner is a picture of any other characters in the area. It's by using these windows that all the clever manipulation takes pace. Pressing fire brings up a short menu, which in turn leads to others. You can move objects around, talk to people and change your temperament from friendly to wary or hostile. If hostile, you can fight anything that moves. But the real problem with remaining hostile is that not only do bad guys tend to attack you more often, but sensibly enough, your own party spends a lot of time avoiding you.

Talking to people seems to be the real key to success in this game, but having said that, I couldn't help but feel disappointed with the quality of dialogue. Each conversation consists of the bad guys asking who you are, and then you say something like: "I am Nobbin, son of Dobbin, and I am here to right wrongs, can you help us?" The bad guys refuse and then they depart. This is massively time-consuming and adds to the problems caused by the loading system, which seems to load these characters up for no reason at all and then spends ages working our what to do with them. It's all so repetitive and makes the game very dull indeed.

The backdrops are samey and created from a limited set of blocks; the main sprites are equally unvaried, they just vary slightly in colour. The scrolling is slow and jerky and a lot of objects are far from recognisable. The only graphic I found even remotely impressive was the large dragon that guards the gate to the next country.

There is a terrible tune that plays at the start and one or two spot effects; but on the whole the sound is poor. Considering that it doesn't look as if they used too much memory on the graphics, you would have thought they could have used a little bit more on the sound.

On the whole, an uninspired RPG that's too simple to satisfy true role players and too dull to entice arcadesters.