the stolen artifacts, and a number of lesser quests that may be undertaken to complete the episode, or to enhance the powers of the player's knights. Unlike Spirit where the player had many knights under his control, in Vengeance of Excalibur he or she only has a team of four knights which are later joined by the sorceress Nineve and by other characters who temporarily join the player's team – usually to provide troops for large-scale battles. Some of the knights the player can choose from at the beginning are either returning characters from Spirit, like Sir Lancelot or Sir Bors, while the others are new and not necessarily derived from Arthurian mythology. Every character has his strong point when the game begins; for example Lancelot is the most combat-capable starting out, while Bors is the most pious. The player is also presented with the chance to import four characters from Spirit of Excalibur, bringing the total number of knights that can be chosen up to sixteen. These imported characters (which can include Lancelot and Bors) are translated into the game with most of their statistics and items intact from Spirit, which can make the game easier if they were significantly developed in the previous game. Vengeance of Excalibur has some important differences that set it apart from that of its predecessor. The first difference relates to individual combat, which now allows for 3-versus-3 fights, as opposed to the 1-vs.-1 battles of the original game. In addition, the player can no longer manually control his fighter: there are now however three different combat styles that the player can choose for every character who is fighting (reckless/full offense, normal, and cautious/full defense). The second difference is the size of the locations the player can travel to. In Spirit of Excalibur every location usually had a few scenes, like the outside and the inside of a castle, from which the characters could move to and from. In Vengeance locations often have more than two scenes, and the characters can be directed to more than one direction in each scene. This effectively creates a larger environment for the player to explore, and it makes in-game mazes and labyrinths possible. Reception Computer Gaming World stated that Vengeances story was inferior to its predecessor and the final battle was disappointing, but liked the audio. See also Darklands References External links 1991 video games Amiga games