TUNNELS & TROLLS: CRUSADERS OF KHAZAN

 TUNNELS & TROLLS: CRUSADERS OF KHAZAN, from New World Computing and Electronic
Arts, is a very lengthy role-playing game. Unfortunately, its very standard
story, unbalanced combats, poor character developments, and general lack of
interesting puzzles make the game a severe test of patience, as well. (This
review is based on the IBM-PC version.)

 A long time ago, in a place called the Dragon Continent, a war broke out
between the Wizard Khazan (he's the good guy) and the infamous pair, Lerotra'hh
and Khara Kang (the Ultimate Bad Guys in this game). Wishing to stop the
bloodshed and the slaughtering of the innocent, Khazan proposed a truce to
Lerotra'hh: Khazan would go into exile in exchange for a promise that the pair
would allow humankind and monsterkind to coexist peacefully. Lerotra'hh accepted
the proposal and Khazan was never heard from again. As the game begins,
Lerotra'hh has gone back on her word. She is gathering large armies of monsters
in order to destroy all of humankind. Your quest is to defeat Lerotra'hh and
bring Khazan back to this world to enforce the truce and guard against future
attacks.

 You go adventuring with a maximum of four characters. There are four races
(human, elf, dwarf, and hobb) and three classes (warrior, rogue, and wizard) to
choose from. You can generate all of your characters, or generate just one and
recruit the rest of your team from the various cities. You can also dismiss any
member(s) of your party, and recruit new members in the cities, although I
couldn't find any reason why you'd want or need to do that.

 Each character has eight attributes: strength, intelligence, luck,
constitution, dexterity, charisma, speed, and "combat adds" (which determines
extra damage the character can inflict during combat). These attributes have
effects similar to those in other popular role-playing games, with some minor
exceptions. Experience points are gained through combats and encounters of
special events. When a character advances to the next level, you are shown the
current values of all the attributes, as well as the new values that they can
increase to; however, you're allowed to increase only one attribute per level.
When you're injured, you lose constitution, but it can be recovered by resting.
Food is required once every 24 hours of game time, and you will want to stock up
on it as early in the game as possible.

 Various languages are spoken by different races. Some of the encounters have
subtle variations, depending on whether your team has the ability to speak the
proper language. Languages can be learned in some of the cities, and through
certain encounters.

 Aside from combats and encounters, I discovered certain places where you could
gain lots of experience points simply by walking around. I don't know why this
is so, and cannot say if it was intended by the designers, but I advanced my
characters six levels in about 30 minutes (of real time) in the Naked Doom
dungeon. As it turned out, it was not as big an advantage as I had originally
thought. (I'll discuss this in greater detail later.)

 Magic spells can be cast by wizards and rogues. Spells require minimum
intelligence points to learn, and they deplete strength when cast. Wizards can
learn spells from wizard guilds, while rogues can learn them from rogue guilds.
Interestingly enough, wizards can also teach spells to the rogues, provided they
have learned the Teach spell themselves. Spells can be boosted during casting by
using more strength points, a feature also found in the more recent BANE OF THE
COSMIC FORGE. There are 11 levels of magic, totaling 63 spells. I am _ashamed_
to say that I finished the game using only eight of the 63 spells. I would
probably have experimented more if the combats had been more challenging.

 Moving, resting, and combats all use up certain amounts of time. An onscreen
calendar is constantly updated to help you keep track of time, although I could
find only one instance in the whole game where it was needed. There are
different modes of movement. You can choose to Walk, Slow, Run, or Climb up.
Certain city and dungeon areas can only be reached if you choose the right mode.
When you are outdoors, you can also choose Horse, if you purchase horses. The
only advantage I can find with horses is that they use up less time, and
consequently less food, when you are looking for encounters.

 Certain outdoor terrains are harmful to your characters. You lose constitution
with every step in the deserts and swamps. Mountains can only be travelled by
Climbing up. Needless to say, you need a boat to traverse the seas. The entire
Dragon Continent is divided into 24 16x16 grids. Automapping remembers every
step you take, and will display the current grid that you're on with a single
keystroke or mouse click. I can truly say that manual mapping is not necessary,
except perhaps on the first level of the final dungeon. Included with the game
is a very beautiful, full-color paper map of the gameworld. Gamers who have
played the MIGHT AND MAGIC series will immediately recognize and appreciate the
outstanding work put into this map.

 Combats are carried out in the ULTIMA tradition. All combats take place in a
7x7 grid. Sometimes, certain tiles represent obstacles or hazard areas that need
to be avoided. Characters and monsters take turns, depending on their speeds.
During each turn, a character can move a certain number of squares in any
direction, and then carry out an action command. The choices of commands are
Attack, Cast, Use, Shoot, Push, and Block. The command is performed immediately,
and then it is the next monster's or character's turn. At the beginning of each
round, you also have the option to Run Away or Autocombat. During Autocombat,
your characters will only Move, Attack, Push, or Block.

 In general, combat sequences are fast and uncomplicated. Unfortunately, they
are also boring, and serve no particular purpose. 95% of the monsters will miss
with every single attack. And when a monster does connect, the damage it does
generally kills your character in one round. You have no way of knowing
beforehand which monster is likely to be able to land its blows. A rat can be
just as deadly as an elemental. Armor protection does not appear to make a whole
lot of difference. Some monsters have the ability to shoot arrows and
projectiles. The amazing thing is that these'll hit almost every time, and do
much more damage than Attacks. On the other hand, offensive magic spells work on
every monster except Lerotra'hh and Khara Kang. The most effective and quick way
to dispatch the monsters is to simply move up close and hack away, have the
wizard(s) cast offensive spell every turn, and take your chances.

 Another strange thing about combat is that you can quite easily obtain certain
weapons that'll do an incredible amount of damage. In fact, my rogue (through a
rather devious method) obtained a hero sword early in the game, and he and the
wizard became awesome killing machines. They actually spent most of the game
protecting my two wimpy warriors! This is the first game I've played where I
would send a thief and a mage to the front line and leave the fighters at home.

 After discovering a strange way to boost my characters by six levels, I thought
I'd have a definite advantage in subsequent combats. It turned out that the game
simply increased the monster strengths to compensate for the advancement. Rats
and roaches that had a mere 10 or 15 constitution points now suddenly became
super-insects with over 100 points. Instead of doing a few points of damage when
their attacks had been successful, they could now inflict 30 to 50 points of
damage, and had multiple attacks per round. The monster abilities appear to
change only with advancements in your characters, instead of getting tougher as
you approach the end of the game. Since there are no skills or skill points in
this game, the only reason I can see for working to advance my characters is to
gain an edge in combat: This design completely eliminates the fun of developing
your characters at all.

 The experience you get with each combat is ridiculously low: The average combat
yields about 300 points. Obviously, advancement is not going to be achieved by
fighting. And since any new improvement in attributes is immediately negated by
faster and stronger monsters, I have to say that the combats are dull and
unenjoyable. Fortunately, they don't occur as frequently as in other CRPGs.
Throughout your exploration of the gameworld, you'll meet a lot of non-playing
characters and special events. In most cases, you are presented with _very
lengthy_ descriptions of what you see, and then you're given a list of choices.
Some of these are just common sense. (You may: 1. Explore the cave. 2. Leave.
Oh...I think I'll explore it. What the heck....) For others, you may have
obtained a clue from someone or somewhere to assist you in your selection. Then
there are those about which you have no idea what the right choice would be.
Still, it is a simple matter to save the game and try all the choices. The
puzzles do get more interesting toward the end, and you'll certainly need more
than just brawn and muscle to defeat Lerotra'hh.

 There is a Use option, but it is mainly for using objects to cast spells during
combats. Manipulation of objects is really unnecessary until you are in the
final dungeon. Even then, the game tells you exactly which objects to use and
when. As long as you have been thorough in your quest, the endgame is really
rather simple and straightforward.

 TUNNELS & TROLLS employs an overhead view for both indoors and outdoors.
Portions of the surroundings that are not in your line of sight are blacked out,
similar to the earlier ULTIMA games. Even in EGA mode (VGA is not supported),
the graphics are not spectacular by today's standards. I found the outdoor
scenery graphics to be especially irritating. When travelling next to a desert,
I couldn't tell just how close I was, or whether my next step would cause damage
to my characters. And when I sailed on a ship, I could sail right through the
middle of some of the islands. The only animations in the game occur during
combat scenes: The characters and monsters animate briefly when they fight or
are attacked.

 There is no music in the game and sound cards are not supported. There are
sound effects for movements and attacks -- pretty standard clicks and beeps that
don't add to, or subtract from, the game.

 You can have up to five different saved games, and games can be saved at any
time, except during combats and encounters. Restoring a game does not require
exiting and rebooting. In fact, restoring a game is quick and painless,
definitely one of the best features in this game.

 The interface is icon-driven and designed to be best used with a mouse.
Keyboard play is done by entering single letter commands. Under most
circumstances, you simply enter the first letter of a command. However, in the
character and items menus, this is not the case. For example, instead of
entering U for use, V for view, and E for equip, you are required to enter X for
use, U for view, and V for equip. This makes no sense to me, so I played the
entire game via mouse.

 TUNNELS & TROLLS requires 640K of RAM, and supports CGA (including B&W) and
EGA/Tandy graphics. If you wish to play the game from floppies, you'll need
_two_ floppy drives; any combination of 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" drives works. Hard
disk installation is supported. The game comes on six 5-1/4" disks. The 3-1/2"
format is also available separately. Copy protection is achieved via manual
look-up; you have two chances to get it right before being booted out to DOS.

 There isn't a lot I can recommend about this game. The graphics and sounds are
obviously outdated. The story is stale. The combats are boring and poorly
balanced. Some of the encounters are quite interesting, but none is what I would
call a thinking person's puzzle. My advice is to skip this one.

 TUNNELS & TROLLS is published by New World Computing and distributed by
Electronic Arts.

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