The Legacy: Realm of Terror (DOS)

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Description

The year is 1993. The protagonist's ancestors, the Winthrops, have obviously dealt with black magic and perhaps even pacts with the demons. Now their mansion is invaded by horrifying creatures, and it is up to the brave hero(ine) to venture inside, solve the mystery, and above all - survive.

The Legacy: Realm of Terror is a role-playing game with adventure elements. The player navigates the protagonist through the 3D locations of the mansion from first-person perspective. The environment must be explored, and items procured in order to solve puzzles and advance in the game.

Beside these adventure game features, the game plays like a RPG, with character customization, equipment, and combat. The player can select one of the eight pre-made characters (four male, four female) to control in the game. Characters' attributes and skills are divided into three categories, which correspond to pure physical traits, supportive techniques (such as healing), and dexterity in usage of firearms and smaller melee weapons.

The player relies on magic spells in combat; those can be acquired and upgraded from spell pages found in the game world. There are offensive, supportive, and restorative spells in the game. Resting, consuming food, and even meditating affects the player character's condition as well.

Combat takes place in the same environment as exploration, utilizing a real-time system, which requires the player to quickly select commands ("Aim" and "Hit" for weapon attacks, and the corresponding spell icons for magic).

Screenshots

Promo Images

There are no promo images for this game

Alternate Titles

• "The Legacy" -- European title
• "Haunted House" -- Working title

Part of the Following Groups

• Gameplay feature: Auto-mapping
• Gameplay feature: Chainsaws
• Theme: Haunted house

User Reviews

A terrific horror game that did just about everything right.	Rob Von Strahd (7)
Probably the best "survival horror" game ever made - years before the genre was named	weregamer (157)
This game had quite a bit of potential	OceansDaughter (106)	unrated
Boring, super-tough, yet somehow entertaining challenge.	Simon Kavanagh (6)
Lot of fun	Tony Van (2665)

Critic Reviews

Techtite	2000		100
Top Secret	May, 1994	95 out of 100	95
PC Joker	Dec, 1992	86 out of 100	86
ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)	Dec, 1992	10 out of 12	83
All Game Guide	1998		80
Power Play	Dec, 1992	77 out of 100	77
Play Time	Apr, 1993	75 out of 100	75
PC Player (Germany)	Apr, 1993	70 out of 100	70
PC Games (Germany)	May, 1993	70 out of 100	70

Forums

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Trivia

Cancelled Amiga version

An Amiga AGA conversion was in development for a while.

Collector's Edition

RadioShack released a Collector's Edition of this game in a black box with only The Legacy: Realm of Terror in red font on the box. Inside, the manual and disks were covered in fake spider webs. There was also a small white plastic disk that activated when the box was opened which would “moan” and make other scary sounds.

Inspiration

The storyline of The Legacy (and particularly the grim Victorian house where the game takes place) was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's tales.

Savegame

Upon successful completion, The Legacy created a small binary file WINNER.INF and informed the player that the file should be kept. The contents of the file seem to indicate that it was intended for use in a planned sequel, to import the victorious player's character - unfortunately, no sequel was ever made.

Videos

The opening, title, and ending cinematic sequences were stored in a common animation format and were not hidden, encrypted, or otherwise obscured. This made viewing them very easy.

Information also contributed by Jaromir Krol, Martin Smith and saladpuncher

Related Web Sites

• IGCD Internet Game Cars Database (Game page on IGCD, a database that tries to archive vehicles found in video games.)
• The Magnetic Scrolls Memorial (Fan-page with lot's of information, collectors information, documents & help.)