(Note: this was one of three "short short" reviews I did for CGW for Xmas '94; the other two are Dragon Lore and Noctropolis)

This one comes from Legend Entertainment, the people who gave us Companions of Xanth. Fortunately, while using the same interface and engine, Death Gate is a better adventure than Xanth.

Centuries ago, the Sartans split the world into five realms: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Nexus. They imprisoned their enemies, the Patryns, in the Nexus, in a nasty construct called "The Labyrinth". Your character is Haplo, a Patryn rescued from the Labyrinth by Lord Xar, who wants to reunite the world. With Haplo's assistance, he might be able to do that.

So Haplo goes off in a magic ship through the Death Gate, the only connection between the realms, to find the four sections of the World Seal. Along the way, he pieces together more of the story of the Sundering, and finds that things are not always as they seem.

The game is very linear. Once Haplo leaves a realm, he can never go back. This makes it vital to pick up every takable item, or you could be stuck in a later realm for lack of an important object and have to replay part of the game (which happened to me on one occasion).

This is not a hard adventure, although some puzzles are tricky. Most of them can be figured out logically; it usually isn't necessary to go through the "try everything" routine if you think about the situation a little.

What set my teeth on edge was the bright and bouncy, "cutesy-funsy" overtone of the game, with its cute but gullible Dwarfs and lovesick princes, among others. The story of Death Gate is too important for that and should have received a more serious treatment.

I had problems with the game crashing in VGA every time I talked to the merchant; switching to SVGA cleared that up. Besides, SVGA graphics are much better; play in that mode if you can.

Of the three games covered in these short articles, Death Gate was the least irritating overall, and the closest to traditional adventuring. If you can put up with the "cute" stuff, you may find this one worth playing.

Just Adventure Assigned Grade: C

System Requirements:

386/33
Graphics 320 × 200 × 256
Disk space 4 MB (5 MB maximum)