Storyline would be an irrelevance if the game was solid and, with due credit to the level designers, some of the puzzles are excellent. Others rely on possessing unique magical powers, but with such huge levels there are times when you can't help feeling that, true or not, you're stuck because you've missed or misused something you need to progress. Assuming you get this far, without the combat putting you off.

You see, even the simplest monsters are capable of instantaneous, four-yard sideways leaps to avoid your attacks. Annoying? And then some. Get over the fact that, no, this isn't a glitch, and you're left with either rattling off all your precious spells in a blanket-bombing salvo, or dodging and following the enemy's animations so closely that you can spot the quarter-second window when it's unable to move. Too much tactical correctness is expected in firing cheesy homing shots or exploiting the
blast radius of a fireball, and spacing the monsters so that you only face one or two at a time is a cheap way of balancing their toughness.

Wheel of Time's flipside is its multiplayer citadel game, and this is where things look up. Owing more than a little to the Dungeon Keeper series, the idea of this capture-the-flag match is to hide Seals within your castle and protect them by setting traps and deploying troops, all achieved from a first-person perspective.

This mode would work, too, were it not beset by the same shortcomings. Avoiding attack, enemy Trollocs will suddenly become airborne, not only dodging your fireballs but also clearing tactically-placed pits to land behind your troops. There's no denying the sheer thrill of running around your own castle, barricading corridors and smithereening marauders, but when the implementation continuously undermines your best-laid strategies, the novelty soon wears off.

This needed to make better use of its strategic citadel game to stand out. Up against Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and System Shock 2, Wheel of Time is also, sadly, Out of Time.