REVIEW 1
--------

In your late youth you left home to join the Guild of Enchanters. After years of schooling, you achieved the rank of Apprentice Enchanter. In fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, you were sent to find Krill, an evil warlock who had loosed a pestilence upon the land, and who threatened the very existence of the Circle of Enchanters. Only someone guileless and inexperienced in the ways of magic could slip into Krill's realm unnoticed. By defeating Krill, you earned a seat on the Circle of Enchanters, sitting at the right hand of your mentor, the leader of the Guild, Belboz the Necromancer. Several years have passed, and you have grown very close to Belboz as you studied under his tutelage, learning the ways of magic from one of the world's most learned practitioners. But lately, Belboz has seemed troubled, preoccupied, withdrawn ... small things only a friend would notice. You have even heard frightening noises coming from his chamber, and the cold shivers down your back. Could some evil spirit be at work here? You are sleepless from worry - Belboz is possibly the most powerful Enchanter in the kingdom. If his powers were used by the forces of darkness instead of the forces of light, who knows what would result? And now, unbeknownst to you, Belboz has vanished. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


REVIEW 2
--------

 Author:  Steve Meretzky  
 Released: 1984 
 Genre: Fantasy 
 Difficulty: Advanced 
 
Welcome to the World of the Enchanter saga - a world where magic is commonplace, a world where guilds of professional magic-users spend their lifetimes mastering the intricacies of thaumaturgy, a world where great forces of evil must constantly be held at bay.

In your late youth you left home to join the Guild of Enchanters. After years of schooling, you achieved the rank of Apprentice Enchanter. In fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, you were sent to find Krill, an evil warlock who had loosed a pestilence upon the land, and who threatened the very existence of the Circle of Enchanters. Only someone guileless and inexperienced in the ways of magic could slip into Krill's realm unnoticed. 

By defeating Krill, you earned a seat on the Circle of Enchanters, sitting at the right hand of your mentor, the leader of the Guild, Belboz the Necromancer. Several years have passed, and you have grown very close to Belboz as you studied under his tutelage, learning the ways of magic from one of the world's most learned practitioners.

But lately, Belboz has seemed troubled, preoccupied, withdrawn... small things only a friend would notice. You have even heard frightening noises coming from his chamber, and the voices of conversation when Belboz was supposedly alone. His temper has seemed short the last few days, and the look in his eyes sends cold shivers down your back. Could some evil spirit be at work here? You are sleepless from worry - Belboz is possibly the most powerful Enchanter in the kingdom. If his powers were used by the forces of darkness instead of the forces of light, who knows what would result? 

And now, unbeknownst to you, Belboz has vanished. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


REVIEW 3
--------

Sorcerer is the second game in the Enchanter trilogy. It continues the story of a young enchanter first introduced in the game Enchanter. The game takes place in Frobozz, part of the world of the Zork series. Instead of being a rough and tumble adventurer of the main Zork series, your character in the Enchanter series seeks out spells and potions then uses them to overcome obstacles and adversaries.

Story
As a reward for saving the world from the evil Krill in Enchanter, you are made a member of the Circle of Enchanters, despite your young age and minimal experience. You notice that Belboz, the leader of the circle and your mentor, has been acting peculiar. When Belboz goes missing, it is up to you to find him--largely because everybody else has gone to prepare for the Guild picnic. You soon learn that a powerful, evil daemon named Jeearr is behind Belboz' disappearance. You must search for Belboz through the land of Frobozz and into the Great Underground Empire. Finally, you must face and defeat Jeearr.

Production
Sorcerer is a text only adventure. It uses the standard Infocom engine and a text parser. The location descriptions are very well written. They may be brief, yet they provide a good feel of the locales. The command parser is very flexible and is loaded with synonyms. I did run across one parser problem, though. It did not understand me when I tried to "unlock" Belboz' journal with a key I had found--I had to "open" the journal, instead.

P. Jong: Sorcerer is written by Steve Meretzky. Sorcerer is based on the concept of interactive fiction told through a story interpreter pioneered by Infocom. The Infocom story interpreter is platform independent, and the game themselves are complied for a virtual computer architecture called the Z-Machine. There have been six versions of this game released since 1984 using Version 3 of Z-Machine. The last version is dated 1986. The game supports 84 rooms and 36 objects, with a vocabulary of 1,013 words and 8,963 opcodes.

Gameplay
As in Enchanter, magic is your primary tool to overcome the trials of your quest. Finding scrolls and potions and then using them correctly mostly replaces the standard adventure formula of finding objects and using them in strange or unpredictable ways. The magic doesn't completely replace the more mundane adventuring. The magic is sometimes indirect, leading to some clever and entertaining puzzles.

Sorcerer is basically a dungeon crawl, with little plot beyond the setup and the conclusion. The challenges you face, however, are all part of a consistent world, not arbitrary obstacles thrown in only to slow you down. The puzzles are fun, and several require clever solutions, but none are overly difficult.

However, there are two serious problems in the game design. First, there is a very long dead-end that is very easy to stumble into. You must acquire a particular potion very early in the game, and if you fail to get it you will not be able to come back later to get it, and you will not be able to solve a puzzle that confronts you near the end of the game. You have a very limited time (number of turns) to get this potion initially, but you are not told that you must get it, and it is very easy to use up the allotted time exploring other areas before events lead you towards this potion too late. Fortunately, you will realize what your error soon enough when you are faced with the puzzle that requires this potion. Secondly, there's a dangerous fork in the road. Faced with two paths, if you take the wrong route you blunder into another long dead-end, unable to return to get an object you need to complete the game. In this case the correct path is the easier looking path, so you are less likely to get caught, but more adventurous adventurers should beware.

P. Jong: Sorcerer marks the introduction of magic potions into both the Enchanter and Zork series. Although the use of magic is already part of the gameplay in Enchanter, solutions to puzzles in Sorcerer require the use and assembly of magic potions, of which their effect may be either temporary or permanent with potential deadly consequences ("Uh oh. Your left ear turned into a poisonous toad and ate your brain.").

It should be noted that Enchanter is written by Marc Blank and David Lebling, and not Meretzky. This change in authorship is reflected by the darker and more serious tone in Sorcerer than in Enchanter--most unusual given the legendary humor Meretzky instills into his other Infocom interactive fiction titles. The puzzle design also differs from its predecessor with the inclusion of many red herrings and irrelevant locations not essential for the completion of the game. Such inclusion can present a great challenge to even expert gamers attempting to decipher clues to which there is really no objective.

Highs
The puzzles are entertaining and clever. They play fair. The solutions require insight and don't require brute force thought (except for mapping). The location descriptions are very well written. They are brief yet evocative, and they don't become monotonous.

Lows
Long dead-ends can make the gameplay unforgiving. The missing potion dead-end is, however, acknowledged in the official hints. There is little in the way of developing plot. A lot of the background story is contained in material that comes with the game, but not in the game itself. Some of the missing material is for copy protection purposes, but I would like to have seen most of it appear within the game as well.

P. Jong: As previously noted by Tanguay, the game suffers a fundamental flaw in adventure game design--the "dead-end" fallacy. The dead-end fallacy refers to any situation whereby the player cannot finish a game because a puzzle or an item has been missed which the player now no longer can access. This leads the player down the long path of a dead-end. The player must then restore to an older saved game to replay the key sequences.

Verdict
The originality of the puzzles more than makes up for any design faults. It is fun to wield magic in addition to regular adventuring. Sorcerer is not a great game, but it is a fairly quick, enjoyable romp.
 
 
