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Shard of Spring (Map-Maze Adventure)
Compatibility: 64K Apple II series
Requirements: One disk drive
For centuries the enchanted shard, a piece of the long lost Life Stone, maintained a climate of eternal spring on the island of Ymros. Indeed, it continues to do so; but, now at a heavy cost. The evil sorceress Siriadne has seized the magical sliver; and, with the threat of the Shard's destruction, she extorts ruinous tribute from the people of Ymros.
Years of poverty and roving gangs of the sorceress's monster minions have gradually crushed all thought of resistance. Well, almost all. Even now a few brave young warriors and journeyman wizards have gathered, determined to recover the shard and put an end to Siriadne's tyranny!
SSI's Shard of Spring is an Ultima/Question-type adventure highlighting tactical combat, dungeon exploration, and character development. An active party may have up to five members, each of whom is either a warrior or a wizard. The primary measure of character growth is "level".
Boosts in level increase base hit or base spell points, besides allowing acquisition of new skills. For warriors, the latter includes weapons use skills, armored skin, and karate, among others. Wizards, on the other hand, may obtain access to whole new spell groups and areas of knowledge with skills such as "Fire Runes", "Wind Runes", "Potion Lore", and "Monster Lore". As in "Bard's Tale", a character's level depends upon experience points; but advancement is granted only at warrior or wizard guilds located in just a few towns.
Traveling cross-country or moving in a dungeon, your party is represented by a warrior figure inside a 9x9 scrolling map insert. Whereas towns provide the expected supply, healing, rumor mill, and R&R services; dungeons supply certain key items and information not otherwise obtainable.
Only in a dungeon or the countryside can you encounter monsters, your source of gold and experience points. Encounters lead to combat, whereupon the display shifts to a closeup showing individual party members and monsters. Whether snake, orc, skeleton, evil mage, etc., each monster has attributes which determine its mobility, toughness, and offensive capabilities; and each is rated according to level. Since combat is about as flexible and easy to manage as one might hope and there's no time pressure, effective maneuvering takes surprisingly little practice. (And, if things look really bad, you can always run for an exit.)
Offering the best tactical combat of any major adventure, Shard of Spring also delivers a very fine magic system repleat with spells for attack, defense, healing, and transportation. Production values are a bit weak, as evidenced in the sub-state-of-the-art hires text and such glitches as mislabeling the total gold won in a combat as each player's share.
While the manual is well organized and has an attractive cover, it is grossly incomplete. There is no specific information relating to monsters and nothing is said about being able to walk through some dungeon walls. Still, such miscues are merely bothersome alongside a major problem with pacing. Basically, a player runs out of new things to do, new places to go, etc. long before achieving the experience points required to wrap things up and win.
So, after many enjoyable hours of play, either you spend many additional hours wearing ruts in the maps looking for fights, or you declare yourself "winner" and quit. Hopefully, SSI will seriously consider making the necessary revisions. For now, if too much combat is never enough for you, this is your game
Available from Strategic Simulations: 1046 N. Rengstorff Ave., Mountain View, CA 94043-1716. (415) 964-1353. $39.95
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