A straight port of the second book of the Fighting Fantasy line. While the first one (The Warlock of Firetop Mountain) was made into an action game, this one remains true to the source: The player tries to defeat the evil wizard Balthus Dire in CYOA style (with some RPG elements).
An unofficial port exists for the Microbee.
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This is basically as good as a port of a Fighting Fantasy book can be if it weren't for the extremely slow gameplay. What is the point of this slow typewriter style text appearing? Another big problem is inability to cheat the same way as common in the books, of course ;)
Having now actually finished the game for the first time, I revised my original rating. It apparently has at least two fairly critical bugs which make it hard (but not impossible) to complete. Worst of all, the only possible solution left strips the path of one of the major puzzles and relies on luck instead.
Hooray for emulator speed-up :) I guess I'm spoiled at this point, but I'll happily play all my C64 adventures at 300% speed.
And as you say, there's no way the game can replicate that wonderful sensation of having 7 or 8 fingers placed strategically at various sections of the book :)