rcross@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (Robert Cross) (11/29/90)
*** One teeny little maybe-spoiler further on *** So yesterday I shelled out to get Curse of the Azure Bonds (sequel to Pool of Radiance for those of you who don't know). I haven't had time to REALLY shake it down but here are some initial thoughts: It looks like a port. Big time. Micromagic (of Autoduel, Moebius, etc. "fame") seemed to take it directly from the IBM with NO use of the MAC interface at all. This means no windows you can move (or kill), all buttons are their small rectangle style. Also, the only options on the regular menu bar are Quit and Shutdown. You can't even turn off that silly clip-clop noise as you walk around. AND (this is my big peeve), the character buffer is reduced to one character type-ahead. So you can't have Hogarth make his 9 moves to the left by hitting 4 nine times in a row; you have to wait for each move. Argh! The pictures of your characters are gone. I know they were sexist to the extreme in Pool, but I generally avoided the really offensive combos, and I liked having an idea of what my character LOOKED like. The really strange thing is, there is space for a picture in the stats display. In the same vein, the icons for combat have been squashed to fit into their combat "window" (upper left). The heads for the short characters are almost unrecognizable. The big problem is that they insist on putting little dots for eyes and drawing little noses. Boo! Back to the faceless characters of Pool! At least they didn't look like Lovecraft's nightmares. On the upside, combat is fast. A lot of speed comes from the fact that the window does not show the bad guys moving around unless they started out inside the area that you were looking at. You just see "Killer Dog", watch the movement point counter dropping and here that silly clip-clop. And watch out for these new monsters. I've become a big fan of Charm spells; they can take a lot of pressure off of your overworked 7th level fighter. The documentation is better than in Pool; e.g. spells are listed in a chart with range, area of effect, duration, etc. The journal is on better paper, too. I haven't tried the human change class options or the other character classes yet (Paladin and Ranger [and Magic-user as a viable option for the first time]). The story is VERY dynamic at the beginning; my party has been swept up into a battle between the Thieve's Guild and the Fire-Knives and I can't find the blankety-blank door! We'll see how it progresses, but I don't think there'll be too many complaints on that score (go TSR!). Basically, I thought people might like to know that Curse doesn't seem as polished as Pool. I would recommend the try-before-you-buy strategy. I plan to keep my copy because I think the work put into the story is worth the price (besides, it looks like a lot of fun if you get past the initial awkwardness). Although I would welcome tips on how to change those silly icons and put the pictures back! Bob Cross Ph.D. Student rcross@copper.ucs.indiana.edu Computer Science Dept. rcross@iubacs.BITNET Indiana University