"Even if you get a million gold, you STILL have three daunting dungeons to map."

Questron, being licensed by Richard Garriott but produced by SSI, has a definite Ultima I feel to it. Like Ultima I, it's a solo RPG, you have sixteen icons for the outerworld, towns that fit entirely on one screen when you enter them, and black-and-white dungeons in perspective. However, Questron is considerably tougher and better drawn, featuring not only white, green and black but also orange, blue and red, even if it doesn't sprawl quite as much. Questron still suffers from a lack of logical cohesion, though, which is a sadder similarity.

In the game you are a serf who seeks to overturn the evil wizard Mantor, from the Land of Evil to the north, who happens to be destroying your home land of Questron with a powerful machine. As the game keeps track of real time, you may find that a certain town is evacuated after a certain point, which helps move the plot along. Between having to buy food(if it runs out, you die--dying replaces you on a random spot on the map and puts you back to your original HP, gold and food, with your weapons gone too) and keeping hit points up and buying better weapons and armor, you need to scout the country for clues and experience and gold. There are temples that may help you with some statistics(as an aside, you have strength, intelligence, stamina, charisma, and dexterity, but improvements are disappointingly hard-coded, and the attributes all start at fifteen each, so you're basically thrown out there without really getting to shape your character, although even after finishing the game I'm none too clear on what the attributes are really good for. Even stamina is strange; with 15 stamina your maximum hit point total is 500, but with 40 the maximum becomes 20000. Questron's too rigid in this respect.) Eventually, you will be called to the castle, which takes some serious time to find. Mesron the wizard will tell you the first part of your quest--as it turns out, you need to beat up all the guards in the castle in order to find five keys. Then you need to steal something else and talk to the king. Actually, the king won't talk to you unless you leave first, but when you come back he raises your attributes because you are worthy to fight Mesron. Although to a certain extent, it's logical that you should beat up guards who hit you for sixty hit points if you actually try to talk, the king must really be desperate for a hero! From there, you need to find one dungeon in the Land of Evil, where you find an item that lets you in another one, where you find an item that lets you in the final one, where you must descend seventeen levels of 11x11 grids to map before what I must admit is an exciting conclusion--if you've remembered a certain item.

The controls are a bit shoddy in Questron. I mean, it's nice they have a joystick feature, and the arrows move you as you'd expect while you're above ground, but that aside, the lettering's rather strange; (P)ick and (U)se spell, along with (S)teal and (A)rm a weapon and (W)ear armor and (F)ight, are different from other games and don't seem logical. Compounding this is that that there's no way to get out of a move when you push a bad key. If you're in a dungeon, and you're facing several monsters(two can attack you at once, even in a crowded hallway--yes, it's nice that it tells you WHERE they're attacking from, but the text at the bottom of the screen scrolls off too quickly) this can hurt you a lot. Another compulsory control, X to examine the space in front of you, is more busy work than anything. If you don't look ahead, you can get nailed for up to 1500 hit points, very inconvenient when the maximum is 20000. Although there are some neat ideas like having to (A)rm rope and hooks to climb down a shaft without damage or climb up a shaft, they are details. The main part is flawed, especially when hitting a key just before the program's timer decides you should pass means your move isn't registered. I found myself hitting a bogus command that would freeze the action while I got my bearings, as there was no pause key. This also cost me a move. Add the dungeon commands to very different counterparts outdoors(for instance, spells aren't allowed outdoors,) and the controls help to derail the plot a bit.

There are even two video games of sorts thrown in; they fare better than the usual inserts. One is a skeet-shooting that adjusts your dexterity based on your final score, and once you get your timing down, you'll do OK, even if the shooting's a bit long. The other is a thinking game that adjusts your intelligence. Four tiles of four possible colors are placed on six squares. You have eight guesses to find out the pattern; with each guess, you're given a white peg if you have placed one color for each correct color on the correct square and a grey peg for each correct color on the wrong square. This is actually in low-resolution graphics, and yes, it's done before, but basing a person's character's intelligence on his own thinking skill is a clever stroke of realism. As a bit of irony, if you have an emulator, there's a way to cheat and show some VERY practical intelligence.

But overall there is a distressing dilemma in Questron: go too slowly, get the controls right most of the time, and get bored, or go too slowly and lose a lot more hit points than you should. I tended just to stick with what I knew to see if I could get past monsters repeatedly--in fact, I used a slightly artificial method to get through all the dungeons. I'd just map out levels and not care about dying. When I did(which froze the program. Gee, should I be grateful it doesn't auto-save when you die?) I just restarted, planning out the shortest way down to where I was. But there's just too much strange stuff, like the trained eagle that flies two squares instead of one, no matter what you do.

The game has other ways to be harsh on the player. In a dungeon, tripping a trap gives the message ''YOU GOT CARELESS'' or going through a wall gives ''STAY OUT OF WALLS.'' A bit laconic there. I've mentioned food going to zero, but can't they just start reducing hit points instead? Something like a guard attacking you from a diagonal square in the 2-d castles is acceptable and in fact makes an interesting challenge(how to goad the guards into fighting one-on-one?) but the dungeons just become fireball fling-fests, and even aboveground, encounters in the wilderness are awkward. For instance, if you run in one direction and meet a monster, running at it may cause the computer to think you're fleeing--which can do you damage, especially if you want or need to fight to gain experience. Yes, you can pay very close attention, but it's hard to. The dungeon system also doesn't allow you to run at a monster and attack it in one move, although it allows them that luxury--how 'bout that home field advantage? Even if you have a bow or a spell, you don't need the unfairness. Although you can move backwards to face an enemy attacking from behind or try to run past a monster, the combat system in the dungeons will be enervating. There's also a nuisance of exploding coffins(regular ones give you hit points) near the bottom of Mantor's dungeon, which, after fourteen levels of mapping, just isn't funny. There's a line between being an adventurer in a computer game and a rat running through a memory maze subject to random illogical stimuli, and I'm not sure which side of the line my trusty Sir Bub was on. In town is strange, too; you'd expect to be attacked by guards if you try to steal something, but for talking to a prisoner without bribing the guards? Or winning too much when you gamble? There are a few bizarre logical jumps here, and they make you wonder whether Evil Has Already Subtly Infiltrated Questron With Its Henchman Drudgery.

The graphics acquit themselves admirably on the whole. Many of the people in castles look like football linemen waiting for the ball to be snapped, and the King looks sorta wimpy, but at the Apple's resolution you really have to find humor in some of the smaller drawings. The vector-drawn monsters(dungeons are still black and white) are far better than Ultima I once you learn that an object's not really in front of you 'til it's in your face, and the outside icons use the extent of the Apple colors. The king's castle is probably the real treat here, although all the towns have clever designs, not bad for being only thirty by twenty. For a basic game, the visual effect is pretty good; the scrolling text at the bottom seems irritating now, but I'll cut the programmers some slack. They probably did the right thing in making simple text views in BASIC for the food, armor, weapon and magic shops(the gambling halls too.) Credit is also due when I mention place and shop names--they're clever. ''Wimp Cave'' is the sort of silliness you can get away with once, and the establishments have different names in every town. Good stuff there. The sound has some weird blaring that would probably have been extra-cool with strobe-lights or a disco ball, but you can turn it off. But please note that it does make the end more exciting.

Overall, the plot is as generic as you might sadly expect from a game named Questron, even if the monster names are clever(Albino Leach and Dirt Weird are examples,) and although the graphics are a clear step above Ultima I, there's not enough really to recommend Questron. It's not even an easy game to cheat on--the programmers worked hard on this. I wasn't able to byte-edit it, but even when I found a fun way to get a million gold(which broke the bank at the gambling establishment,) I was still limited. There are only a few ways to cut short bumbling about by discovering a marginal racket, and you'll probably want them after a while. Then it becomes a matter of stockpiling items(spells, armor that acid traps or monsters destroy, or weapons that monsters can destroy) and crossing your fingers when you go into a dungeon. Despite the conclusion being worth it(I won't even quibble about how you can probably BUY the gift you receive in the end) I'm in no hurry to play the game again. Perhaps if you want a game that will tax your mapping skills this is a strong test.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/18/01, Updated 06/18/01