Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

The Good
Westwood reached out to brilliance with their Eye of the Beholder games while working under SSI's surveillance, and soon after they became independent game developer on their own, they decided to give it baby one more try! Aha! And this time with noone but their own team, and hence Lands of Lore was born. Superior to EotB in everything but nostalgic factor, this game casted vast outdoors as well as indoors upon the player. The detail level was simply amazing, and you could now hop through shots or slide to create more real movement feeling. Frank Klepacki did brilliant soundtrack to emphasize the atmosphere of this game, whose only lack was it that it wasn't released as soundtrack itself as well. But hey, at least we got one for the sequel, so woo-jolly-hoo!

Unlike the floppy version (haven't seen that one, but I think there was one), CD-ROM version featured full voice-acting, and not only that, this game was the prelude to Westwood's later known actor acting in various C&C games, and for this one they picked none other but Jean-Luc Picard... or should I say, Patrick Stewart who did the voice of King of Gladstone, and the one to set you on this quest to face the evil old hag, Scotia... who I just happen to like for some peculiar and unknown reason. Must be 'cos she made me laugh a couple of times... and I really loved the sequel, where you play her son, DUN DUN!!

This game is long, has a huge variety of settings, music for each place, lots of characters, and even some neat and unexpected twists and turns in the plot. If I should judge it by how quality this game looks and feels, there'd be none of its kind to match its strength. It's a solid overture to EotB and a first in a proud trilogy to experience. And forget not, this game has a fully automated mapping system, so no more sketching yer own maps.

The Bad
As much as this game really was something, I can't say it was that fun to play, because let's face it, games in EotB style are not fun to play... to me, anyway. Especially when this long. But on the quality level, nothing beats it, and all those beautiful cinematics you'll encounter, it's a real jewel, I don't think there are two games of its kind, so this one's rather unique.

The Bottom Line
First in the trilogy, doesn't boost up the story, but shows you how it all began, creates a certain universe so you can easier take on the sequels, and has one helluva soundtrack. A part of what is probably the best RPG franchise ever created.

The Good
I don't have this game anymore and I've been yearning to play it again. I only get that yearning with quality games, and this is one. This may be the first game with an automap, or at least a good automap. As much fun as carrying reams of graph paper around is, the automap is very convenient. The graphics are terrific and this game passes the test of time. Still fun today for any adventure/rpg fan. I liked the midi music as well. It is tinny and midi-sounding, and repetitive, but you can always turn it off if you're tired of it.

The Bad
There's not much not to like. This is good stuff. Its reach didn't exceed its grasp the way subsequent games in the series did (LOL3 is an outright embarrassment and never should have been released by Westwood).

The Bottom Line
It is a DOS game, which means it may or may not work on XP. Keep a copy of Win98 around on an old machine just to be sure.

The Good
The team who developed it is the same who did the eye of the beholder series, so the same graphical detail is applied here but this time with much better ingame animations and animated cutscenes compared to the EOB series. The game is rich in cutscenes and plot changes through the game and sometimes it reminds me of an epic adventure game rather than a typical dungeon crawling RPG. That's a great plus!

Being able not only to crawl through dungeons but moving in a palace, through woods, visiting inns and a great variety of places like a city, a swamp, some mines or a castle, buying or selling stuff or clicking on things and see what happens makes it's world quite more interesting and varied than older games of it's kind. There are a lot of surprises and new stuff to discover each time you play it again from the start.

The music is also much better than in the EOB series. There is a different MIDI tune for each dungeon out there, some of which are quite good and remind me of music from other Westwood titles. Although, some of the musics kinda destroy the atmosphere in certain places, which the EOB series implied with their pure silence.

The Bad
It seems that the gameplay and RPG rules were simplified to the extreme point, maybe because the designers wanted to make the game far too easy for anyone who hasn't played an RPG before.

• First of all there are no D&D rules but that's ok for me since an RPG is allowed to carry it's own preferred rules.

• There is no character creation, you just choose from four faces who bear different characteristics as might, speed or magic. The characters can be both fighters, cast magic and have rogue skills at a different rate according to the character you choose.

• There are some extreme oversimplifications that totally kills the feeling that this is an RPG where you are actually challenged to survive. If one character loses all of his energy then you can either use the healing spell or drink a healing potion to revive him. There is no such a thing as truly dead that needs to be raised by a cleric or something. The game only ends if all two or three characters have lost their energy. Also if a character is poisoned, you just wait till he loses all energy by poison and healing him would also make all the effects from poison disappear.

• Automap is good. But not when it automatically reveals you all switches you might have not seen and secret walls you might have not passed through. Just move in a room and bring on the automap and you can see blocks marked with a big S for secret walls. But what is the point of secret walls if the automap reveals them to you before you happen to hit air trying to bump into an illusionary wall?

• Using a bow or throwing stars, they come with unlimited ammo that you never have to pick up from the ground. I know that in other RPGs like eye of the beholder it was truly annoying to have to pick up all projectiles you have used after every small or big fight but what is happening in lands of lore kills all realism and so the atmosphere.

Except from the rules, other things that I didn't like is how fast some monsters are killing you, also that there are no clues of where some special objects are needed to be used (like in certain areas on monsters that cannot be killed otherwise or how to bean the final witch).

The Bottom Line
Some people describe it as what Eye of the Beholder 3 should be. It's not exactly that. While it's much better visually than the EOB series and while it's more varied in places and plot, there is something wrong with it's gameplay and roleplaying rules. It's maybe the fact that the developers tried to cut-off and simplify the gameplay for people who haven't played an RPG before. Which might be disappointing for those who have played the EOB series or any other D&D based games. Several simplifications in the gameplay kill the atmosphere too. Great visually, not so great in terms of gameplay.

The Good
Since "Lands of Lore" basically introduced me to gaming, this is going to be a tough review, for as with all things which got nostalgic value and remind one of one's childhood, it's hard to not be completely biased. Moreover, I played this game so many times that it's become more and more difficult to pin down the "bare facts" of why I like it so much. Since this is then a special situation, I shall leave my usual reviewing routine of moving from technical aspects to content and tackle things vice versa.

At its soul, "Lands of Lore" strikes a fine balance between two genres which are very much acquainted and yet not the same thing: fantasy (derived more or less from "The Lord of the Rings" and similar stories) and fairy-tale (derived from the "Brothers Grimm" or other folk tales). Within its more or less simple story one may find numerous elements of both, a sort-of medieval town, mine-shafts, amazons and two sizes of orcs on the fantasy side, a haggard, evil witch vs. a beautiful, good witch, an abducted king who is "in need of a champion", solving a riddle to find a cure for a mysterious poison and the land waning away when the king has gone on the fairy-tale side. This balance might not seem particularly important at first, after all, these genre boundaries are elusive as they are, and even more so between highly related fantasy and fairy-tale. However, "Lands of Lore" gets a kind of freedom out of its finely combining those two which other more regular fantasy games don't have. While it contains darkness and violence, while it sends the player into dreadful dungeons, where ratmen hunt down humans to devour them, while it's got quite a lot of tense and hard combat which may even border on survival-horror at times (White Tower, Level 3 - Everybody who played this game knows what I mean) it never even runs close to losing its light-hearted cheerfulness. In "Lands of Lore" one faces a grim looking minotaur just after having had combat with a bunch of one-eyed, flying chickens (which are hilarious) and one fights a tough, worm-like Lharkon after trading goods and news with some rather comical looking swamp people for whom one has to eliminate "living sticks"...serious and not so serious elements are always a split second away from each other, and still this game appears extremely unified and "harmonic".

This is all tied together by the game's story. While it has enough drama to be taken seriously (at times) and several bucket-loads of heart and warmth it's sort of a wonderful swashbucklers' tale. Never does the hero waver from the path of justice, true to king and country he'll seek out evil wherever it may lurk - and, of course, we're talking of a "he" here, there is no female character to choose from. Maybe it really wouldn't have fitted the amount of classical yarn-spinning employed by this game to be able to play a woman, however, "Lands of Lore" is far from being sexist, it just sticks to the fairy-tale rule that the swashbuckler is a guy (be he four-armed Thomgog or lizard-like Dracoid) and the lovely sorceress a girl. Even the story's pathos, which may approach enormous levels at times, is a pathos of "The Dark Army is upon us, to arms!", it's deliberately unreal, tongue-in-cheek, fairy-tale's heroes' pathos - "Lands of Lore" is indeed a game where the victory of the (clearly identifiable) good over the bad is evident from the start.

This division between a darker fantasy side and a light-hearted, fairy-tale basis is manifest in every technical and gameplay aspect as well. The dialogue of this game is wonderfully written, always treading along the aforementioned thin line between seriousness and humour. Voice acting is very good, even for today (though, of course, somewhat lacking in technical quality), the actors seem to be completely "in tune" with the game's approach. One example: In the City of Yvel one encounters some guy in a local tavern who really gives the player the history lesson of his life, it simply takes ages. When he has finally finished and thanks one for having been so attentive, the player's answer is that he must be going because he has "a kingdom to save and a Scotia to kill" (Scotia being the game's evil witch) - what a slogan, that's truly the "Monkey Island"-level of good ol' swashbucklery! And the voice actor's cadence is completely in line with the "camp factor" of the sentence (at least Michael's and Kieran's actors are), yet he'll go for full-fledged seriousness once more a minute later.

All other technical aspects reflect the game's philosophy as well. Music can be dark and ambient at times, yet mostly consists of catchy tunes, with up-tempo rhythms and highly hummable melodies (clearly one of Frank Klepacki's best works). Sounds are great, from the awful hissing of that snake on White Tower, level 3 to the hilarious "bo-bock" of them flying chickens. Graphics are extremely well drawn and can often enough be dark and gloomy, but are largely just gleaming with an almost uncanny warmth and soul, resonant in bright, full colours. I guess this really is hard to come by nowadays with all that rendered, high-res 3D. In fact, I cherish the low resolution of "Lands of Lore": It somehow adds a "sepia touch" to the game, making it even more lovable just because because it's recognizably old.

Since this review is getting longer by the minute, a brief note on actual gameplay. Staying in line with its overall light-hearted approach to fantasy, controls are as easy as possible, in fact, I think "Lands of Lore" to be an ideal role-playing game for beginners (I was one at the time, too, after all), movement is fluent and easy to manage, combat is real-time but far from being too "hectic" and the auto-map was and is one of the best around. In line with this easy accessibility are the game's limited amounts of existing items, spells, and character stats: "Lands of Lore" doesn't offer the player a lot of stuff, but what it offers is executed perfectly.

The Bad
For me, there are only two points to mention here. First, this is not a revolutionary game. In fact, in may be the very opposite of a revolutionary game: it mimics its fantasy and fairy-tale role-models so well and weaves them together so closely that little to none space remains for some kind of "true" innovation. I mean, the auto-map feature was fantastic at the time, so was the fluent movement and the voice acting, but hands down: neither gameplay nor content-wise does "Lands of Lore" surf a high tide of boundary-pushing.

Second, this game is so streamlined and overall "well temperated" that some players might object to it. "Lands of Lore" is far from being a "gritty" game, it employs lots of dark and spooky dungeons without ever really becoming harsh or "edgy". If one wants to learn more about how cruel a world we're living in and what kind of monsters human beings can be, this game doesn't serve the purpose at all. This is almost like a Christmas game: while it contains darkness, it contains it to entertain the player, not to put the fear of God into him.

The Bottom Line
Objectively, this game is a beautifully executed, classical fairy-tale combined with quite some more serious and darker fantasy elements. It's easily accessible, features streamlined controls and gameplay, graphics and music which yell out the obvious talents of their creators and excellent voice acting. "Lands of Lore" is a pinnacle when it comes to pure, optimistic entertainment - though it may not be a high point of overcoming old gaming traditions and replacing them with something revolutionary different.

Personally, this is sort of my teddy-bear of gaming. If all else fails, this remains what it always was: pure and innocent fun.

The Good
When I first tried out it, I almost "fell in love" with it. Beautiful, hand-drawn characters, colorful items, nice backgrounds. FMVs (actually, not full-motion) are great, just like in any other Westwood title. In-game spell effects are spectacular. The enemies vary, there are usually more types of them on one level.

The music is dashing, full of life; I can enjoy it in itself. Voice acting is pretty good! They're professionals. (At least Patrick Stewart)

The scenes are different enough: mines, forests, a city, dungeons.

Interface can't be simpler: one-click fighting, two-click casting, and cursor keys for movement. Found items can effortlessly be put in the invertory; while sorting items or equipping PCs the game pauses. World-objects in the view-port can easily be operated. Practically everything is logical. Auto-mapping makes the life easier, especially in the large levels.

Clever puzzles; you'll need to observe everything carefully, or else your progress will be harder. E.g. there is a hint in the King's library that ghosts cannot stand emerald. (So, ghosts on the top of the White Tower or the Castle can be defeated quickly using emerald blades)

The Bad
Nothing important. There are only some minor bugs in the CD version.

On the castle levels are a number of items i couldn't use for anything and a number of doors I couldn't open. It's not bad, but exasperating.

At the completion, the game generates a LANDS.SAV file, just like at the end of EOB2 (FINALE.SAV). I'm sure it was meant to be imported in the next game. It's a shame it eventually didn't make it to LOL2.

The Bottom Line
Consider it a technologically improved EOB or Dungeon Master; outdoor levels, better graphics, animation, music, storyline. Wonderful.

The Good
Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos is a very fine tuned game. Cutscenes are done in animation with fairly decent voice-over work, and some incredible effects within the game itself.

The Graphics are truly remarkable. The game is similar to Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, but the similarities end there. Instead of a Jolting step pattern (those playing the aforemention games know what I'm talking about), its a fairly fluid movement, and turning is fluid as well. Spell affects are very cool. Instead of happening on the window where the action is, the spell effects affect the entire screen. For instance, when a heal spell is cast, a glowing ball forms in the viewscreen, then travels to your character picture at the bottom of the screen. Instead of Dungeons, you explore swamps (with gas seepages... watch out with the fireballs), castles, towns, forests, mines, and other locales. Each location is unique, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, tar pits in the swamps can be frozen and then crossed before they thaw. Neat trick, eh?

Sound and Voice-Acting are par for the course considering the time of release. The clincher though is that Patrick Stewart provides the voice of King Richard, and that alone is worth grabbing the CD-ROM.

Gameplay is again par for the course. Inventory is handled very differently than most 3D Dungeon Crawls. Instead of each person having a separate inventory, there is one inventory for all characters that you come across. Makes handling inventory much easier, although not very realistic.

Magic spells are handled differently as well. Instead of picking and choosing your spells (a la D&D), you have spells available to you and the only thing that limits your capabiltiy of spellcasting is your level and your mana energy. Kinda tacky, but it works well within this game.

The Bad
There are a few things that peeve me about this game. One one thing that stands out is a pit that CAN'T BE CROSSED! Talk about aggravating! I have tried every trick I know to cross it with the aid of a trainer, and I still haven't figured out how.

The Bottom Line
If you like Dungeon Crawls, this one is a visual beauty. A great game (despite it's minor flaws).

The Good
I love this game. I've had it for the past 10 years and I never get sick of playing it. I put it away for a few years and then come back to it. Time seems to fly by because there is always something to figure out. I like the mazes and the puzzles that are in the came. Fantastic.

The Bad
The only thing I don't like about the game is getting stuck. It can be hard figuring out what I've done wrong to find a path for a key or object. It could also be a bit brighter in the caves and caverns even when using the lantern. Just not bright enough to see down the path very far.

The Bottom Line
I would describe this game as exciting. Like I stated before in what I liked about the game. Trying to figure out the paths and where the keys and objects are to get to the next level keep the game interesting and unique. There's adventure in every land. The game keeps you on the edge of your seat and I quite enjoy that. Bravo Westwood Studio's and Virgin Games.

The Good
Simple interface. This game got the interface right. Casting magic and attacking with two weapons are both easy. Ranged weapons are also do-able.

Graphics are superb, and when you move from one square to the next, it's really smooth - no jumping, no skipping. Graphical effects to magic were fantastic. No wimpy "lightning bolt", no, when you cast this puppy, anything within several hundred yards probably heard it!

Background music and sound effects are also really good. Bonus with Patrick Stewart as the King (although you only get to hear him at the beginning and end of the game).

Good story line and lots of different locations. There was also some creative use of foreshadowing, but it wasn't so obvious.

The game was very well balanced. Just when you thought you had a huge advantage with a more powerful weapon, armor, or spell, you were shown wrong. It might be an advantage, but it wasn't a show-stopper.

The Bad
I don't think there was anything glaringly annoying about the game, but some of the puzzles were a little much.

The game itself was actually kind of long, and not too easy to finish, but I made it through without cheating or getting a walkthrough.

If you want to get really picky, you could say that there weren't many weapon, armor, or spell choices.

The Bottom Line
A really good game. Mind if I play a little? :P