DRAGON LORD

 In its continuing effort to bring a range of European games to the American
market via its budget Spotlight series, Cinemaware has hit upon one of the most
original strategy games to be released in England during 1990. DRAGON LORD
combines a completely unique spell-creating system, a small-scale strategy game,
and a simple but enjoyable arcade sub-game into a gaming experience unlike most
others you'll encounter. There are flaws to the design, but they are far
outweighed by the pleasure and challenge the game presents. (This review is
based on the Amiga version.)

 DRAGON LORD begins with a beautifully-drawn opening landscape shot, replete
with text scrolling from the waters of a fjord, all meant to provide a little
story atmosphere as prelude to the game. The moody stereo background music
builds slowly but surely, and the credits overlaid upon the magician's
five-point star suddenly flash upon the screen.

 A click of the mouse then puts you at the Disk Setup Check Screen. The game
apparently auto-configures for use of an external drive, if available, and asks
for a password from the Spell Book. (Rremember which book to use; it's easy to
forget and use the wrong document, and after three tries there's no recourse
except a reboot).

 Note, however, that here is one of the first bugs in the design: I've never
gotten the external drive to work with the game. If you put disk 2 in DF1:,
it'll attempt to read, and you'll see flashes of red diagonal streaks on the
screen, but the game will essentially lock up (this was true of the original
European version, as well). The problem occurs on an A500 with 1Mb of RAM.
Unfortunately, this means a certain amount of regular disk-swapping will have to
occur during play.

 After the password check, you're sent to the final configuration screen, where
you can choose to play Bachim, Oureod, or Ametrin. Each player starts at a
different location in the game, and can be set to either human or computer
control, thus allowing for either multi-player or multi-character play (it's fun
to choose two human players and gang both of them up against the computer
player). Finally, the game begins.

 DRAGON LORD is controlled by a simple icon system, which gives you access to an
overhead map, dragon chambers, dragon's egg incubators, a library, a
spell-mixing laboratory, and a trading screen. Each of these areas constitutes
one aspect of the game, and functions independently of the others. Let's go
through them one by one:

 1. In the map section, each of the villages in the land is displayed, along
with the three players' main castles; you can click on a magnifying glass to
focus on a particular area of the map in greater detail.

 In the local detail map, you can: scroll around by clicking on the four-way
compass rose; investigate a particular village in close-up by clicking on it
(which loads a nice graphic screen representing the strength of the village by
the number of residences drawn across it); and send dragons on missions. The
last step down brings you to the village level, where spells can be cast on
villages.

 Villages prosper or die, depending on how they're cared for, and their
allegiance to the players can be established by sending dragons out to conquer
and keep them. Villages each have populations of a particular race, and both
industrial and yeoman strength points to indicate their productivity. A village
in a rocky area with high industrial abilities is likely to be a valuable
acquisition, as it's going to be a good producer. A village with high yeomanry
in the same kind of terrain might not be as good a bet. Village population size
can be affected positively by the casting of the right spells, and negatively by
the casting of destructive spells or by dragon raiding. Tax rates can also be
adjusted on those villages allied with the player, and levels of revolt increase
or decrease, depending on whether a dragon's been posted to protect the village,
or the village has been subjected to regular raids, or the tax rates have been
set appropriately.

 When choosing a dragon to go on a mission, you can specify one of three
different zeal levels. This affects the potential success of the mission, as
well as the amount of damage the dragon is likely to suffer. Higher zeal levels
may be necessary when a battle between your dragon and an opponent's takes place
(most likely when you're battling over ownership of a valuable town). You can
also select a "Training" level, which initiates an interesting arcade sub-game
in which you run the dragon across the town, destroying defense systems and
buildings. This arcade game is pretty tough, so beginning players with only one
dragon may want to leave the actual dragon battles to the computer until some
progress has been made in the game. Losing your only dragon early on is a recipe
for guaranteed failure.

 Periodically, due to raids, taxes, successes against opponents' dragons, or
perhaps just plain good will, villages offer you money or other items. These can
all be invaluable when it comes time to hatch eggs and mix spells.

 2. The second icon on the initial screen brings you to the dragon chambers;
there's room in your barn for up to eight dragons. Clicking on doors behind
which a dragon lurks brings up the "dragon investigation screen," where you can
check the dragon's attributes, and cast spells to improve various attributes.
Things like health, wisdom, strength, speed, disease, and even eyesight are
measured by attributes, and the dragon's age is indicated as well.

 3. The third icon leads you to the egg incubators, where up to four of your
initial 20 eggs can be incubated at a time. On the right-hand side of the
screen, the rate of incubation can be controlled by a wheel, which you click on
and turn. Increasing the rate of incubation uses up your cash more quickly;
running out of cash can result in a dragon chick that's dead in the shell.
Spells can also be cast here to improve the dragon's abilities prior to its
hatching. Experimentation will lead to discovery of whether casting spells on a
dragon before or after it's hatched is more effective. Spells cast while the
dragon's still in the egg affect the maximum levels it'll be able to reach once
hatched. Slower incubation delays the release of a new dragon by more turns, but
makes for a more powerful dragon in the long run.

 4. The fourth icon opens the door to the library, where three different books
can be checked. The green book is a record of monthly accounts; it lists how
much you've spent, as well as remaining eggs, dragons, any rewards you might've
garnered that month, remaining cash, and taxes collected, if any. Another
important item reported in this book is a listing of fragments of the Talisman
that you own. One of the goals of DRAGON LORD is to collect and retain all the
pieces of a Talisman; complete guardianship of all three portions of this symbol
results in final victory. Discovery of pieces of the Talisman is dependent on a
dragon's visual abilities, which are brought into play every time a village or
area has been conquered.

 The second book (red) is a chronicle of events in Anrea, the land of DRAGON
LORD. Ongoing battles are the main events reported here. Hostages can also be
taken and rescued, barbarians discovered, and villages mastered or annihilated
over the course of a month. Turning the pages reveals accounts of all these
events. Other discoveries are made here, as well; it turns out that the
different races are busy battling each other while you're fighting with other
dragon lords, and sometimes allied villages can gain new territory for you
without any intervention on their part (depending on their strength and
abilities -- a small hint).

 The last book (purple) documents your alchemical stores. All ingredients
available are presented, with quantities detailed for each. Careful monitoring
of this book is necessary so that you know when trade and/or search for more
ingredients has become crucial.

 5. Hang on there, we haven't even reached the main part of the game! The fifth
icon in the initial set puts you in the alchemist's laboratory, one of the most
original inventions in gamedom. The two shelves at the top of the screen are
stocked with various bottles and jars, containing your magical stores -- plant,
mineral, and liquid. These spell ingredients are documented in the included
spell book (well, for the most part), and have various interesting qualities.
Some ingredients are called "Directors," and have positive effects on the
targeting powers of the spell being mixed. Directors are important for orienting
the spell towards the proper target. Dragons, Eggs, Villages, and even the
player characters are all potential targets for a spell.

 More subtle are the "Affector" ingredients, which have positive and negative
effects on a combination of the seven abilities that a target consists of. Each
ingredient can have a number of combined effects, and those effects can be
changed depending on whether the ingredient is cut, ground, or mixed, then
condensed or heated. Putting a number of ingredients together is necessary to
make a complete and effective spell. You can easily imagine how complex this
process might be, and the side effects of ingredients, as well as their powers,
must be taken into consideration when creating a spell.

 Fortunately, DRAGON LORD includes, as a third document, a spell chart that
outlines the positive and negative effects of each ingredient in each of its
possible states. Post this chart on a wall above your monitor for careful study
and mastery. Learning how to handle ingredients is the most complex aspect of
the game; one person I talked to even put together an Excel spreadsheet to
understand the relations between spell ingredients! Part of the fun of DRAGON
LORD is to become as familiar with, say, Mionacal as you might be in real life
with Tylenol or Menthol. Knowledge of the properties of each ingredient
contributes, over the long term, to the depth of gameplay.

 The apparatus for mixing ingredients set up below the shelves is beautifully
drawn and animated. You can adjust the controls on the condenser and bunsen
burner for different rates of heating and condensing, and can then bring the jar
or bottle of an ingredient to the top of the appropriate grinder, cutter, or
mixer. (There's also a fourth container into which you can just drop an
ingredient straight). The liquid in the jar at the end of the apparatus changes
colors and bubbles at different rates, depending on the mixture and final
potency of the spell being created. Anyone who played with a chemistry set as a
kid will be enchanted with this part of the game; you can have many hours of fun
just trying out different combinations of ingredients, writing recipes down as
you go. (The manual includes a bunch of basic spells to start with, useful for
those who get easily frustrated, but unfortunate in that, like hints for
adventure or CRPG games, they give away one of the most intriguing aspects of
the game.) Once finished mixing a spell, you can click on an icon to choose the
target for casting.

 6. The last choice you can make involves trading with someone at the door. A
pair of red eyes will be apparent on the seventh icon in the initial row if a
trader awaits your pleasure. Trading is a simple process of selecting a number
of items for sale and paying the necessary amounts. First impulses might lead
you to buy up whatever is offered, but careful management of limited cash early
in the game is important; by all means, investigate each trader's wares, but be
conservative in purchases until a bunch of dragons are out hunting down
villages, insuring that taxes will be collected to pay for spell ingredients,
heating for the incubators, and so on.

 Having made all the choices for a turn in each of these six areas, you then
return to the main overhead map screen, where the month and year of the game are
displayed, and hourglass and disk icons are available for ending a turn and
saving the game. Game saves can be made at the beginning of each turn, on a
pre-formatted disk. Fortunately, unlike many European designs, a relatively
standard file requester appears, and more than one game can be saved to a disk.

 Once a turn has been finished, the game animates the actions that all three
players have taken for the turn; you can witness the battles and see text
descriptions of the results before starting the next turn. These messages appear
without any pause option, and sometimes scroll by too fast to catch. Useful and
important information is often presented this way, and it can be quite
frustrating to see a message flash by before you've finished reading it.

 The main flaws in DRAGON LORD have to do with the kinds of problems generally
characteristic of European designs. The game comes on two copy-protected disks
(which fortunately don't need to remain write-enabled), and is additionally
protected with a manual word-lookup scheme. It is clearly designed to work
primarily on minimal Amiga hardware, and makes no use of equipment like extra
RAM, or a hard disk, or external floppy drives (despite clear indications in the
configuration screen that at least an external floppy drive will be recognized).
Both mouse and joystick are supported for different elements in the game, but no
option for keyboard use is implemented. The game runs only on Amiga 1000s, 500s,
and 2000s. The computer opponents' artificial intelligence sometimes seems
flakey, and is hard to comprehend.

 However, despite these problems, DRAGON LORD is a truly enjoyable and original
game. The music, graphics, and sound effects are of very high quality, and the
interface is simple and easy to manage. The spell-creation system is unique in
the world of computer gaming, and the strategy game is challenging and varied.
Towns in the game can be destroyed, and new ones can spring up, making for real
variety in play from game to game. And finally, the option to use the computer
as a mediator among three human players makes DRAGON LORD a real treat for play
with friends. If you can tolerate the problems mentioned above, and you have
enough patience to learn how to manage the difficult initial conditions
presented when the game first starts, you'll find plenty here to think about and
play with.

 DRAGON LORD is published by Cinemaware and distributed by Electronic Arts.

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