Reality used to be a friend of mine. PM Dawn once sung that line in a song of theirs and even though they look quite stupid they were, in fact, correct. Reality is something we game reviewers don't get a taste of very often.
I know this opening sounds a bit deep and you're thinking that I've flipped my lid or been experimenting with funny smelling cigarettes, but I haven't, so stick with it!

Game reviewers are more lucky than most other games players because we get to play every game that comes out on the market and we get them all for free. I can hear your punters searing under your breath even as I write this, and all I can say is "ha!".

Don't be disheartened though because we have to play everything including all the bad games and struggling through those is not a pleasant experience.
Disorientation is also a major problem. In one day you may find yourself flying a spaceship through the outer reaches of the galaxy shooting down waves of nasty alien beasties from the Planet X.

Ten minutes later you're a cutesy, happy-go-lucky dragon blowing bubbles at minions of evil in a world full of platforms, then you're playing football, the commanding a tank platoon, then flying a top secret government Stealth fighter, then you're a secret agent, then a terrorist, thena clown, then a superb (yes, I think we get the idea - Ed).

Whatever you are, all these games are enough to give you a bad case of shizophrenia. One of the best types of games for you to lose yourself in is an adventure - see, told you I'd get there in the end. Here you can take the form of a warrior, wizard or whatever takes your fancy. Forget about modern day life and lose yourself in worlds of wonder and lands of fantasy. Last year Silmarils released Ishar and it received critical acclaim from games players and reviewers alike.

In my best Jackanory story-telling voice I will present you with a short tale. After the defeat of Krogh and his Citadel of Evil the land of Ishar has entered a new golden age of peace and prosperity.

This is an adventure game though, so the golden age doesn't last very long. It wouldn't be much of an adventure if all you had to do was run around in fields, drink wine and be happy!
Anyway, news reaches you of a new evil demonic figure, who is incidentally the head of a spider-like network of malevolence.

Based on the islands surrounding Ishar, this evil organisation is supplying addictive mind-controlling drugs to the locals with the direct aim of unopposed power and conquest.

Once again you must strap on your sword, brush up on your spellcraft and pack your sandwiches as you head for the islands with a brand new and sparkling team of heroes.

Like its predecessor, Ishar 2 is entirely controlled via the mouse. The left-hand button is used to select and the right-hand can be used to cancel the current operation and also close the menus selected. Most adventurers I know, like myself, prefer to use a combination between the mouse and the keyboard and Ishar 2 lets you do exactly this. Thus the numeric pad emulates the movements of the mouse. Various other keys can be used instead of the left and right hand mouse buttons.

As you wander around the world of Kendoria you will meet many people and your first job is to recruit a team. This consists of a maximum of five characters, all of which have their own weaknesses and strengths. If you were lucky enough to play the first Ishar game and if you can still find your save disk, then you can re-use an old team from the game.

The characters will retain their characteristics but they will lose their possessions and magic spells. Sometimes the characters' experience levels will be slightly altered to suit those present in Ishar 2.

I won't spend my time explaining every little detail about what you can do and how to control everything because it'll get very boring, plus I'll leave you to find out yourself which will generate hours of fun for you, err probably. I'll go over a few of the basics, though, in a short but informative manner.

The first things you need to learn is how to survive in the world of Kendoria, and this involves a quick lesson in the ancient art of fighting. Fights in Ishar 2 take place in real time. The fight panel groups together the fight icons of each player with their active weapon. These icons are arranged in a quincunx - a very big and posh word which basically means that four of them are placed at the corners of a square with one in its centre.

These fight icons represent the five characters in the team, each identified by their own Roman numeral. To make a team member strike an enemy all you have to do is click on the corresponding fight icon.

Hits that the enemy gives to your team are represented on the picture by a small patch of blood showing the damage points that your victim has lost. The damage depends on several parameters, the power of the weapon, strength, agility, skill in weaponry and your enemy's constitution.

Other features include options to enroll, dismiss and even assassinate members of your team. You can also give first aid to a person if they are badly injured.

To get around the world you have a compass positioned at the top of the screen, but what every decent adventurer never leaves home without is a map. In Ishar 2 a map of the whole archipelago appears on the screen. By selecting one of the islands, you will obtain a detailed map of it showing your actual position represented ya flashing dot. At the start of the game the map is incomplete, but as you you progress throughout the world it will slowly become more complete.

In the world there are several different places that you can visit. First are the shops which there are three different kinds, animal traders, arms dealers and general merchants.

Inns play a major part in the game - they're where you pick up information, eat food and sleep. Houses are also dotted arbout and you can expect to meet other people who will give you valuable information or suggest missions to you. If you're lucky you might even find a few objects in there. To get from island to island you must find a harbour. Here you will find a boatsman. He will then take you to a ship where you can select other harbours to journey to.

There are a whole wealth of options that I've not even bothered to tell you about due to lack of space, but no doubt you'll find all about them when you by the game yourself.

Oops, in one cunning swoop I've just told you my opinion of it. Yes, I'm afraid to say that Ishar 2 is a must-buy and should get to the top of every decent gamer's hopping list. The graphics are luscious and beat every other adventure game of this ilk down to the ground. Some of the later levels are a sight to behold and the sprites are just as fantastic. The music is not too bad - quite atmospheric - and what sound effects you hear are more than adequate.

I can't fault Ishar 2 on the playability and addiction front. The control and icon systems work brilliantly and even the most inadequate gamer will be adventuring before you know it. Technically it beats all its competitors up with a big stick, but it is getting a very old and tired format, one of which I'm personally getting a bit sick of.

You could compare it to Dungeon Master and you wouldn't find much difference apart form the improvements in the graphics and sound departments. I wouldn't mind seeing something a little different the next time around, possibly something as original as when Dungeon Master first came out.

Apart from that little quibble, Ishar 2 really is a winner and previous owners of Ishar are probably placing advance orders even as we speak. If you want a little adventure and excitement in your life, you'd do no wrong by getting to grips with this.

Sequels. Are they just cash-ins or stronger structures built on the bricks of an earlier success? Are they nothing more than the same old game engine with a few different bits of scenery lobbed in?

Sequels have picked up a bad name over the years to the likes of Jaws III, Rocky IV, True Grit II, and WWF European Rampage. Slush and rubbish.

But on the other hand there were the good times, as represented by Speedball 2, Eye of the Beholder 2, East of Ealing, Batman Returns and Aladin Sane. The most important thing about sequels is that they should add something to the original and that they shouldn't detract from the charm and special qualities of the first.

Oh, it's all so complicated philosophically. You just bet that Barry Normal and Harv 'n' Hank (or whatever the hell those Americans who only lasted half a series on Channel 4 were called) worry about this kind of thing all the time. And with the Amiga games industry coming out of its childhood and emerging into its early adolescence, you are going to be confronted by more and more of these sequels.

Here's a funny thing... we had a laugh getting a review copy of Ishar 2 that wasn't in French or German. It appears that our European cousins adore this kind of RPG romp through an historical hotch-potch of impressionistically painted back-drops more than we do, because getting an English version took weeks. And even then we ended up with a copy that still had the odd errant French word floating around the place ('Ouille!' leaps out at you when you press on the Eye icon). Still, we are reliably informed that this is the finished version, so allonz-y mes enfants!

Mything you already
So off we go. What's the rich, kinda medieval, legendary story what underlies your journeying and a-tasking? Who cares frankly, it's quest, fight, quest, fight, run away, sleep, eat, fight, run away, sail a bit and quest some more in a heroic, but you could be chaotic good, sort of manner after recruiting a few mates for the fighting and magic bits.

There is actually a tale of evil and heroism, of intrigue and myth, underlying this whole thing, but details really are irrelevant. In fact, the details are so irrelevant, you wonder why the programmers didn't just tell you to wander around for a while, being irritated by people who just stand in front of you, in a sort of painted way that was all too familiar from third year art students, who were called Carl and into Bauhaus, "like imaginatory art like those Yes covers" and books called Revenge of Arzugard (now that's what you call a sense!). That's not to say that Carl couldn't paint a little bit (you should have seen the back of his denim jacket) he could, and so could the bloke who paints all the atmospheric backdrops and non-player characters in Ishar 2. It's just that the word that springs to mind is 'static'.

Believe me, the in-game graphics are stupendously gorgeous when compared to the amateurish daubings that (dis)grace the flimsy manual. Have these people not heard of screenshots?

Maybe it's having played Hired Guns of late or maybe it's having played Eye Of The Beholder a while ago, or maybe it's having played Dungeon Master years ago that leads you to expect that a game should have moved on. A little bit more movement or a little bit more fluid movement would be appreciated.

Arrete a bit tough. This doesn't mean that Ishar 2 is a creaking old pile of cack. Far from it. The people who played and enjoyed the first one, will adore it, and new adventure types (such as my good self) will appreciate the fact that you can kill loads and loads of beings, lob in some really quite elegantly worked out spells and still save the game to come back and do it all again after tea.

Control yourself
Actually one extraordinarily neat point about Ishar 2 is that, aside from the fact that you can use teams from the earlier game, you can see the entire team blitzed around you and then nip off to the pub to collect some more suckers for a bit more fun.

OK, so you know people will want to know what the game looks like, look at the screenshots, dammit! And for that realistic effect don't move your copy of Amiga Format at all. Just hold in front of you with really stiff arms. Now you have to imagine that the screen in the middle goes forward and from side to side, only stopping occasionally to load more scenery from disk.

It's all very EOTB except you don't click on the screen, you move your mouse pointer to the right of the screen and up on to the direction arrows. Hell, it's a control system. In fact a great deal goes on to the right of the screen. You get to order your party, you get to hit things with your sword/bow and row/fist, plus you get to move.

The real interesting stuff happens at the bottom of the screen though. This is where your characters' faces appear, which by the way, you can't name, so bang goes Eric Elf and Dave Dwarf. But what we're interested in is the auto-mapping - one of the most wonderful inventions ever to grace the modern-day adventure game, and this particular auto-mapping function is easy to use, and clear enough not to put you off the general flow of the game. Nice one lads.

Also below the mugs are several icons that enable you to scrap (as in fight with) members of your own party, meet and greet other people in the game world, and lose members of your own party. All very simple, all very compact, all very reasonable.

That's not all. You can even explore your characters, maybe not in any kind of in-depth bonding sort of way, but you can dress them, feed them, check on the experience points, vitality and all of the other RPG-style facts and figures. You can swap which hand you want your weapon in, you can even swap equipment between your characters with ease. This element of the game is fluid enough and raises Ishar 2 into the ranks of the quite pleasantly adequate RPG.

Another pleasing aspect of Ishar 2 is the number of sound effects that litter the aural outlands. If there's one thing you can say about the French as game makers, it's that they love the campy overkill. The babble when you walk into the tavern is gigglingly good, the sound of snoring when you rest the party is of Terry and June like intensity (Terry used to snore heaps) - turn it up loads and leave it running for a few hours to give some snoring partner, friend or casual acquaintance an idea of just how deeply irritating they are. The sounds of slash (well thump) and agonised cry, the screech of seagull and buzz of swamp insect pump up the atmosphere.

Nice place
Generally, Ishar 2 serves its purpose as an RPG with workmanlike honour. There's nothing that really forces you to step back and exclaim "Mon dieu! C'est la premier joue de la epoch d'Amiga ma cherie!" But neither are there elements that would have you screaming "Mon Dieu! C'est un grand boite de froid blanchmange avec cert chien flop!"

As sequels go Ishar 2 will keep the faithful pleased without casting any new light on teir fave adventure, and it wouldn't disappoint anyone new to the genre. Nice is the word that sums it up, as in the adjective, not the exotic and exciting southern French resort. Bon joue mes amis.

Ishar is, without a doubt, one of my favourite adventure games of all time. There was something fresh and exciting about the idea of taking control of a bunch of individual characters rather than actually role-playing a single one.

The clever use of psychology within the party, mixed with the wonderful graphics, made it one of the most original RPGs yet seen, so you can understand why my hand shot up faster and higher than anyone else's when our beloved Ed asked who would like to review it.

SIMPLE MINDS
Since Ishar, the island itself has become a cultural and intellectual centre for the archipelago or Arborea (as first seen in Crystals Of Arborea). The people have become settled and the entire group of islands is as pleasant and fertile an environment as you could wish for. This kind of tranquil setting does not make for an exiting game, however, so enter the bad guy.

An evil wizard has created a very powerful hallucinogenic drug, which he has used to poison the population of Arborea. The aim behind this is a simple one: rather than try to take the people by force, he can just twist their minds so that they accept him as ruler without question. Clever, huh?

Or at least it would be, but he obviously didn't reckon on you stepping into the breach. Take control of your party once more - your original Ishar crew, or start anew within the game, the choice is yours - and set out to vanquish the Wizard by working your way across the seven islands slaying beasts, rescuing people and living it up whenever possible.

Yes, you did read it correctly, there are seven islands for you to work across, and you can't move to the next one until you've solved all the puzzles for the one that you are currently standing upon - the reason for this being that the guards on the harbour won't let you board your boat until you have completed any tasks set. Bullies.

DIFF'RENT STROKES
Of course, the first thing you'll want to know are the differences between this and the original. The biggest change of all is the rearrangement of the control panel. At first glance you might not see much difference, but notice how the attack icons have moved to the right-hand side of the screen.

Although the benefits of this aren't immediately apparent, you soon notice the improvement when you enter combat and start rolling off atomic attacks at the enemy. With this new system, the speed of your attacks increase to such a point that you can get five complete hits in under a second!

SMALL AND NEAT
The large compass has been removed from the screen and replaced with a small, unobtrusive indicator. In fact, the only large icons on screen are the ones you would most commonly use or that you would want to get in a hurry, such as the movement icons.

Each character now has three or four sub-menus, depending on class, rather than the two employed originally. The first shows what they are carrying, the second shows their health statistics and the third opens up a character information screen, showing the various statistics for that character. The optional submenu, denoted by a red light, shows the collection of spells that a character can cast, if any.

ACTION STATIONS
The action menu has been reduced to five options: recruit, dismiss, murder, first aid/heal and map. The others, such as orientation, were dropped simply because they just weren't necessary. In the case of orientation, that has been superseded by the new improved map - something that will please anyone who has been playing Ishar for any length of time.

GET LOST, BUDDY!
The biggest problem with Ishar was that it was too easy to get lost. Although the game had a map, it had no marker to show you where you where, so it was more or less useless. In situations where a character would tell you to head in a westerly direction to reach a town, you could walk for miles without finding what you were looking for. The new map shows you in detail where you have been, roughly where you are going and exactly where you are - a real boost for getting around. With this new system you can get back to n exact spot with no trouble at all - try doing it in Ishar!

Ishar 2 is a very cleverly scripted and designed game. The storyline unfolds beautifully as you walk through the game collecting information. Almost everything everyone tells you has value, even if it appears to mean nothing at the time, so it's worth making notes of what you hear. You begin knowing very little about what's happening, but before long you'll find yourself on the right track, free of frustration.

WORLD ASSOCIATION
The psychology of the first game has really been explored in this package, and it works remarkably well. I felt that the individual characters in Ishar were a little underplayed, but they shine in this. As you hire your party, you really do need to note the characters you take on board, because a bad mix means poor team spirit, which can lead to all sorts of disasters.

For example, at one stage I had an excellent thief who was a wizard with a dagger. Unfortunately, no-one in the party liked him. He got seriously hurt in combat, but no-one would perform first-aid on him, claiming they just hated him. As a result he died and I lost a good fighter. That taught me to be more careful.

The presentation is simply incredible. The graphics are among the most breathtaking seen on the Amiga - the view from the city gates over the harbour is awesome - and they have been massively upgraded since the original Ishar. To think this is just the 32 version! The impressive of height created when climbing the mountains is indescribable. These, mixed with the non-stop background of sound effects and music make this one of the most atmospheric adventures around.

Ishar 2 is a must buy. If you like adventures, you will happily remove your own limbs for this.

Wwith Krogh vanquished, the land of Kendoria has returned to a fragile peace under your command. However, rumours have reached you than an evil group is poisoning the minds of your subjects, threatening the security of your kingdom.

Cue a great deal of wandering around, smacking baddies about the head with swords and rescuing curvaceous blondes with mysterious amulets, Ishar 2 is the latest incarnation of Silmarils' highly successful RPG series and has proved to be by far the most playable and graphically gorgeous of the lot. With six times the playing area and an improved character control system, it was really hard to fault what was basically an exquisite adventure game.

But failt it we did. There was still far too much disk-accessing during play - which slowed things-up considerably - and the strictly-linear plot included bouts of extreme boredom in virtually everyone who played it.

The A1200 version does nothing to overcome these problems, but offers you eve more gorgeous graphics and sound effects instead. For a game that already scores highly an atmospherics, this enchanced version is even more enthralling to play - the way the sun rises and sets over the swampy wastes of Akeer's Island is enough to make you come over all warm and glowy inside... until some evil git starts using your head as a dartboard, that is.

The presence of the AGA chipset also makes the game run slightly faster and the disk accessing is less prominent.

If you've just got yourself an A1200 you really must get a copy of this. Flawed it may be, but Ishar 2 is still one of the most atmospheric and involving RPGs you're ever going to play in your life.