One thing that strikes you as you search about the dungeons is the large amount of detail that has gone into the graphics. Each room has been carefully crafted with bits of rubbish and rubble strewn about in the least frequented rooms while the barrack rooms have beds and clutter you would expect to see in an occupied area. The shame however is that there are few of these props that you can actually interact with. Apart from the odd chest, cabinet and barrel the majority is just eye candy.

The graphics do have a serious flaw in that characters can disappear behind walls and worse still monsters can almost be impossible to discern in some circumstances when they are hard up against doors. They only become apparent as you glide your cursor over the area you suspect they are in. On the plus the animation of the monsters is done very well, with some of the larger ones swinging large clubs that you can almost feel when they connect.

When combat is joined a set of icons appear at the top of the screen showing each party member and monster in the order of initiative. It is here where some of your initial choices on weapons and attributes can come home to haunt you. This is a great system of handling initiative and fits well in the turn based combat system. Each character or monster takes their desired action in the order they appear at the top of the screen.

Combat is not easy. The game is certainly not a dungeon romp with a lot of thought required in each combat to ensure you come out in the right side of the ledger. The AI can be incredibly tough when playing the more intelligent monsters. They will send some of their team tumbling through your front ranks (risking opportunity hits) to get at the soft targets of your spell casters before they do any big damage. In contrast the missile troops will hold back and try to pick off spell casters in the hope of disrupting their casting. You will consequently find yourself reloading and saving games often.

Tip: Initial combat positions are critical for success. Avoid rushing into a room but rather hold door ways and corridors where you can channel and restrict the numbers of opponents you are up against.

There is quite a variety of monsters that you will come against and it is here that new players may find the going tough. Seasoned dungeon delvers will know the benefits of turning undead, and silver and magic weapons against certain monsters while new players may be left wondering why they don't seem to be damaging some monsters. The inclusion of a player bestiary would have been a great help here.

One nice feature is that players and monsters don't just die when their hit points get to zero but like the table top game they drop unconscious and continue to take damage until stabilized or drop below minus ten in which case they are truly dead.

Tip: Monsters in deeper levels of the dungeon regenerate and it can be advisable to have one of your characters on 'combat finishing' duty as soon as possible when the dust settles to ensure no monster rises up for a second round.

As you progress deeper and on your many trips back to town you have the opportunity to pick up some side quests. Unfortunately some of these have not been engineered particularly well and are impossible to complete. Atari are aware of this problem and a patch is promised in the very near future to rectify the situation.

One other quirk we found is that when you rent a room at the local swill house, you can pay for only one night but stay for weeks on end. This is useful for when characters are diseased or badly injured and need a fair bit of bed rest however this is another of the small errors that lets the game down.

The audio is good and fits well within the game environment. You can determine what voices will be used for each of your party members and some of these can be quite amusing. The monster sounds are utilitarian at best and it would have been nice to have a larger more comprehensive library of monster sounds to round off the game atmosphere.