The Legacy: Realm of Terror
Description official descriptions
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).
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Credits (DOS version)
31 People (27 developers, 4 thanks) · View all
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Reviews
Critics
Average score: 82% (based on 10 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 23 ratings with 5 reviews)
The Good
This was the second 3-D horror game I played after Alone in the Dark. The main difference here was the RPG elements; you were increasing your character as you explored the house. The 3-D monsters were creepy too. There was a combat engine, so sometimes you had to come back to monsters you could not defeat after you increased your stats.
The Bad
The interface was kinda clunky, and the game balance was a bit off (too easy in some places, too hard in others.)
The Bottom Line
A cool little horror game that hardly anyone played.
DOS · by Tony Van (2797) · 2000
This game had quite a bit of potential
The Good
Fist, you could choose form a number of different people to play as. There was a good mix of male and female characters, starting from college students to more mature individuals. This game was very creepy, too--the music was wonderful in evoking such a feeling, as well as the sound effects. This game was very reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft, although from the documentation I thought they were going for more of a Poe feeling. I don't think it matters, though, because it worked well. The graphics were really nicely done--even though they were hand-drawn I think it's a plus in this circumstance, not a minus. I thought it particularly interesting that at least one variety of monster would not attack you unless you attacked it first--I had never really seen that in a game before this one, and I don't think I have seen it since then. Interaction with NPC's was a nice break from the action parts of the game. I also liked the variety of responses you could give, and the reaction of the NPC's to such responses. Your responses were neither right or wrong, but how you treated other characters was what determined how much information you got from them.
The Bad
There were so many stats for your character, it made my head swim. There were also a great many objects in the game, making it hard to know what to keep and what to ignore. The interface was clumsy, and sometimes could get very frustrating in battle. There were too many little windows for the game--I think the interface could have been better worked out. It took some getting used to, though, but once I did, things went smoother.
The Bottom Line
A game with very good atmosphere and wonderful sound design. I would highly recommend this game to horror story fanatics, despite the flaws in the interface.
DOS · by OceansDaughter (106) · 2002
Boring, super-tough, yet somehow entertaining challenge.
The Good
This is a game of extremes. For example, extremely big, extremely tough, extremely hard puzzles, extreme amounts of written material lying around to read, extreme number of guns (seven, I think including a M16 machine gun) and weapons in general (bottles, kitchen knifes, pokers, baseball bats, swords, even a chainsaw) and an extremely large number of monsters, some easy to beat like zombies and fire spawn most much harder. Extremely large number of spells, like a simple heal spell, to a pick lock spell and shrink enemy spell etc. And a extremely good story. If you like them big and complex you'll love this one, guaranteed !!
The Bad
It is extremely boring unfortunately too. The main problem though is that the game is deliberately too hard. For example there is not enough bullets lying around, you don't have enough Magic Points (making offensive magic a pain in the arse), you don't have enough Health Points (you die really quickly if you try the Rambo "kill everything" approach, die quickly anyway!) and the briefcase is deliberately too small too, there are lots of items to carry around in this one Microprose and a too small suitcase to carry them! Another problem is that there is not enough hints on what you have to do either. Very very very frustrating all around Microprose!
The Bottom Line
You'll either love or hate this one. You either love it for the reasons I stated above or just as equally hate it for the reasons I stated above also it's a pain to get running too, this one wants 610 KB conventional memory and 2 MB expanded memory (use EMM386). Pain in the arse. Loved the music in this one too. Try it if you like big complex RPGs, not recommended if you don't.
DOS · by Simon Kavanagh (5) · 2007
Trivia
Cancelled Amiga version
An Amiga AGA conversion was in development for a while.
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
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Tony Van.
Windows, Linux, Macintosh added by Rik Hideto.
Additional contributors: Trixter, MAT, -Chris, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance, Jo ST.
Game added January 9, 2000. Last modified March 6, 2024.