Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

aka: Lands of Lore: Chaos Na Tronie, Lands of Lore: Kaosu no Gyokuza
Moby ID: 846
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

The Dark Army is on the move again, led by the evil sorceress Scotia. Her goal is obvious: to destroy Gladstone Keep and its ruler King Richard. Scotia herself has recently become more powerful after acquiring "the Mask" from the Urban Mines, gaining the ability to shape-shift. She is virtually unstoppable and able to infiltrate Gladstone Keep, poisoning King Richard. If it were not for the intervention of Sorceress Dawn, the monarch would surely be dead. In order to find a cure for the King's illness, a band of heroes must set out on an adventure, and keep themselves alive from the Dark Army forces.

Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos is a real-time dungeon-crawling role-playing game viewed from a first-person perspective. Players begin by choosing one of the four available protagonists: the Dracoid Ak'shel (high magic power), the Huline Kieran (high speed), and two humans: Michael (high strength) and Conrad (balanced character). Each has his weaknesses and strengths, but all abilities in the game can be eventually upgraded.

Much of the game consists of exploring pseudo-3D maze-like dungeons. Most of them contain secret areas and it is sometimes necessary to solve puzzles to advance. Real-time combat involves clicking on either the attack or magic icon for each character. Depending on their speed attribute they will need a certain amount of cooldown time before the player can activate them again. The point-and-click interface allows interaction with some background objects, sometimes eliciting comments from the protagonist or his companions.

The game does not feature manual character development, introducing instead a semi-automatic form of leveling up, where skills of the hero and the companions are divided into Fighting, Magic and Rogue skills. Each skill level will increase when killing enemies using a particular type of attack: melee weapons increase the Fighting skills, magic increases the Magic skill, and ranged weapons increase the Rogue skills. In the course of the game players will form a party of up to three heroes in the quest for the cure. The player is able to equip these characters with new weapons and armor in a "paper doll" styled interface. The CD version includes full speech.

Spellings

  • ランズオブロア - Japanese spelling
  • 黑暗王座 - Traditional Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

68 People (64 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

Design
Programming
Music
Sound
German Voices
Acting / Voiceovers
Executive Producer
Producer
Production Coordinator
Lead Programming
Lead Artist
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 20 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 106 ratings with 8 reviews)

A wonderful and magically innocent combination of fantasy and fairy-tale

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.

DOS · by worldwideweird (29) · 2007

Finally, on their own grounds

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.

DOS · by MAT (240759) · 2012

I wish my sound would work on my old PC so I could play it again

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

DOS · by Cyric (50) · 2001

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
win 3.x? eXo (346) Feb 13, 2015
MIDI music with Soundblaster effects? fooziex (2906) Dec 6, 2010
Unicorn statue vedder (70685) Dec 1, 2010

Trivia

Versions

Both a floppy disk and a CD-ROM version were released where only the latter features voice-acting. The CD-ROM version also contains "Lore of the Lands" - an extra feature that introduces the player to the legend of Lands of Lore, presented with black and white pictures narrated by King Richard (voice-over by Patrick Stewart).

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • June 1994 (Issue #119) – Best Male Voice-Over Acting (for Patrick Stewart for his role as King Richard)
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #68 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking

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  • MobyGames ID: 846
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Chris Martin.

FM Towns, PC-98 added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: MAT, Jeanne, Игги Друге, jsparky, Paulus18950, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa.

Game added February 10, 2000. Last modified January 29, 2024.