The Phantom's Revenge

The Good
Game contains a large playing area, full of dozens of locations which are all individually described. Once you overcome a simple task in a prison cell where you are being kept at the beginning of the game, you can explore vast areas of the map without really having to solve any problems.

The interface of the game is very good, with the current location listed in the top left corner, & your score & goes in the top left. The events just scroll down the screen as you do them. White writing on black background makes everything easy to read.

Directions are on the whole straight forward, with no idiotic ones like going east, then returning east as in some adventures. The parser recognises abbreviations for all the directions which helps. You can also save the game as you go.

The Bad
The parser is quite limited in what it understands, & I am sorry, I don't know what you mean, will feature prominently throughout. There is no search/examine in game, & the descriptions are mainly there for show. Although the puzzles on the whole make sense, you are not always sure why you have done something, as there is no help except explaining the dynamics of the game. There is only one save & this overrides the main game, so when you start again it starts with the save.

The Bottom Line
This is basically an old fashioned treasure hunt, set in a haunted prison. Temple Software seem to have made a few of these text adventures, which seem to be large, atmospheric, & probably quite impressive for their time. On first glance it looks very Infocom in appearance, but when you look closely, the limited parser & lack of depth show its weaknesses. All in all a good game for its time, but not one to hold your interest for long, & certainly not solve it.