Previous Next

Sit ye by the fireside, me fine young lad. I'll spin ye a yarn that ye'll not be believing. It came to be that many moons ago there were kings who... Hey! Come back! Don't you want to hear this?

Sadly, there are many folk who would rather undergo severe physical trauma than play a game about misty warlords and dreaming mountains. And The Final Battle is definitely one of those. You play a small but determined group of travellers who must wander the lands of Anar, looking in castles and down manholes for six mislaid power crystals, with puzzles, traps and false turns at every corner.

When you've completed all these and collected the gems, you progress to level two. Now you're plonked in the Fortress of Anar (ooh, isn't it frightening?). The Final Battle is about to begin and there can only be one victor. Or possibly a couple. It's hard to tell.

No text-inputting is required - all is achieved by clicking to within a pixel of the desired object. If you can master the meaning of the icons, you should progress much more quickly.

Every location has its own picture displaying the characters and objects you can find there. The view is from a 45 degree corner, which takes a little getting used to. The movement never really seems to flow, and the strange angle makes it difficult to keep an accurate mental map of the surroundings.

To utilise, throw or pick up objects you must click or sometimes double-click on the mouse. This is the quirkiest part of the program. The manual doesn't give a very clear introduction to the mechanics of getting your crew of fantasy bods successfully around the castles. As well as battling the nasties of this enchanted land, you must also battle with the ST mouse of doom, trying to avoid the sarcastic comments that appear when you haven't clicked perfectly on something.

The different screens for each location keep you pushing your gang further into the game. You must dispatch indigenous creatures with fists, swords and lumps of timber. The combat occurs in real time, so if you haven't sussed the icon controls, you get wasted.

The graphics aren't stunning, and many screens look the same. The atmosphere is sustained well, though - partly because the text is of the traditional "here be dragons" style, which, if you like the genre, will probably have you writhing in goosebumps. There's no sound, predictably, so midnight wizards won't keep others awake when they play.

The game is complex, with difficult puzzles, but you'll be swearing at the finicky control system rather than the old, shy troll under the drawbridge. If you can master it, however, you can explore the hundreds of locations packed with slippery objects, all with lateral uses. The fate of the Kingdom of Anar is in your hands. Whether you can be bothered with saving it depends on your frustration threshold.