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Phantasie is the latest in US Gold's All-American Adventures series and is a superb role-playing adventure in which you control a whole party of adventurers.

Nominally, your quest is to find and destroy the evil sorcerer Nikademus and his Black Knights but realistically you'll be too busy just staying alive to try such grand adventures.

You begin the game in the town of Pelnor where you can recruit and equip your party. These can be gleaned from the usual stock of humans, elves and dwarves as well as the more exotic breed of adventurers to be found in minotaurs, lizardmen, goblins and trolls and even orcs, pixies and ogres.

Each character as the traditional set of random characteristics that decide the strength, durability, abilities and profession. The standard races can follow the professions of fighters, monks, priests, rangers, thieves and wizards whereas the monsters are restricted to either fighter or thief.

Once you have assembled your party it's off into the wilderness Here the screen display is similar to that of the Ultima games as the party (together) move along the roads or across the deserts, mountains, grasslands and forests that link the towns, inns (where you can rest and recuperate) and dungeons.

Inevitably you will come across trouble in one shape or form. Usually several of a particularly nasty shape just as your party settles down to sleep.

Combat is a direct one-on-one affair between monsters and party members with each character deciding his tactics between each combat round. These can be to either lunge, thrust or attack (resulting in different amounts of damage and chances of hitting), cast a spell, parry (fend off anything that comes your way) or run away. If you survive the conflict then you'll gain some valuable experience points and maybe some treasure.

The game is entirely controlled by joystick and is exceptionally easy to follow while still being a challenging game. Learning how best to use each character is your first problem as well as juggling the wizard's magic points and learnt spells to produce the best support for the party. Then, once you've got some experience and some treasure, you can return to a town and train the character for a higher level that brings more hit points and spell abilities that will allow you to survive a little longer.