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Dungeon crawler genre games aren't renowned for being very prolific in 8-Bits gaming in general, even more so for the Amstrad CPC, in particular. But it was no problem, for this “Dream Team” of homebrew programmers, most of them French, who bring to us this amazing, deep, complex and refined game for all the fans of this kind of game style and more specifically for Amstrad CPC users in general. The Shadows of Sergoth is, as I said, a dungeon crawler in a subjective view, which takes the Amstrad to the top of its capacity, in a game that is hard to believe that is running on a CPC.

The game takes us to the Kingdom of Chrisandia, in the south of Marak peninsula. After a tough war against the evil emperor Sul Rakin, times of peace and happiness are installed now and nobody remembers the dark past years. You take the role of an adventurer who, while in Cedicus, the capital city of the Kingdom, children and cattle have been disappearing in a mysterious way, so to find out why, you enter the dungeons of the castle of Sergorth uncovering a frightening situation. What evil lurks in the shadows? Will you have the courage to take up this challenge and save your kingdom?

When you start the game, just after having selected one of three languages - English, French or Spanish, you can then choose one of the three difficulty levels (adventurer, warrior or champion). Then you must decide on one of the five types of adventurer you can play a game as. You can select the gender and the race be it a Human, Elf, Dwarf, HalfOrc or a Human-Lizard. Each one has different 'stats' and 'specific bonuses'. You can check them all them all out in the great player's guide of 28 pages which can be downloaded with the game for free.

The character has three primary stats (strength, dexterity and mind) which will be the ones that we choose to upgrade every time we rise a new level (up to twenty) when we have earned enough experience points. There are also four secondary stats (attack bonus, defence bonus, health points and spell points). You can use keys and controller to control the adventurer, but you'll need so many more commands than the usual move and attack, so I highly recommend you use keyboard. You have up to thirteen keys to use for moves, move besides, use map, use inventory, view stats, drop items, etc etc. You'll need some training if you are not used to playing this kind of game, because, as its controls are more complex than the usual 8Bit game. But not to fear, as in a few minutes, having the guide close to your side, you'll be able to explore the dungeons of Sergoth quite easily.

Taking a look at the map, you can see how massive this game can be. Every of its sixteen levels is massive, full of rooms, locks, items, traps, puzzles and enemies. The main screen shows us the stage, compass, stats, minimap, bag, equipment and health and mana bars. We have a dialogue box, too. So many things for an Amstrad game, it seems impossible. We can check the map in full screen and full detailed stats by pushing different keys.

When we move, we can see fluid movement forward, and to the sides. This makes the exploration experience easier, because we can move relatively fast through the dungeon. We have to click many switches, a find keys and magic portals to get into all the rooms of each level. In the rooms, in addition to enemies, we'll find several types of items: equipment to rise the character stats (helmets, coats, shoes, etc), food to recover HP, different kinds of potions (antidote, HP and SP), weapons and shields and more as well as certain keys to open doors. We have to take care, because we can find pits where we can fall if we don't realise we are passing through it. We can find banners too (20 of them), to be destroyed in our adventure as a side mission.

The adventurer also can cast spells, there are twenty four different spells to learn of cure, attack, defence or others as levitation and teleportation. We'll need to find first the book of magic, which we'll find in the first level.

Good Dungeon Crawler games have lots of enemy killing and this is no different as you are required to defeat so many kinds of monsters through your adventure. The game rules are based in Microlite20, that is an extreme simplification of the Advanced Dungeon & Dragons. The combat is turn based, move or attack each turn, so we have to choose what to do, which weapon or attack spell to use every moment according to the enemy you are fighting. We can recover health and mana by eating food or drinking potions during the combat. Once finished the combat we can recover all the HP and SP by resting if there aren't enemies nearby.

You can save the game which is great because it is such a huge game, you won't be able to complete it in 10 minutes, you will have to play so many hours to rise to the last level. To discover new levels, we have to solve some puzzles too, this is what makes the game deeper, complex and much more funnier that most other RPG games of its type.

I have to say that the first time I played this game in a real Amstrad CPC, It was hard to believe to me that it wasn't an Atari ST. It's incredible how these guys have made true such ambitious project for a CPC with such playable results. I have to say that if you are an RPG dungeon crawler fan, this game in the context of a 8-bit game, is the best option right now. Good graphics, big maps, many levels and enemies, all the ingredients for a wonderful RPG game, impossible to imagine it twenty five years ago. A 3D RPG dungeon crawler that actually moves with smoothness and speed with just 128kb. A good selection of different characters to choose from with varying abilities, good to see they have included female characters.

If I have to say something, it has no music in game (128k, is easy to understand why) only simple sound effects, but has got a beautiful music in the main menu. But it has minimum impact on the global result of this great game. It's such a huge and very long game, so be prepared and have time to play it.

As an RPG fan I could say this is one of the best games that you can play on a CPC right now. It's incredible how polished it is in every detail. I was totally mesmerised right from the moment I typed RUN"DISC. The graphics, the title music and gameplay are all unbelievable. The humorous messages that inform the player you can't be fought because you only have 64kb of memory and the animation of that lightning bolt in the loading screen at the start, and everything after is just so cool. I have to say after playing this game for most of 2018, in my opinion this is world class 8-Bit coding. I was having a conversation with a friend on facebook not so long ago and he stated that the CPC was the bridge between 8 and 16 bit machines. I now understand what he means by that after playing and seeing the awesomeness of, The Shadows Of Sergoth!