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)

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

Fun adventure, the best of the series

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.

DOS · by Thohan (17) · 2003

An excellent Dungeon Master style game, that actually has very few dungeons.

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).

DOS · by Chris Martin (1155) · 2006

[ 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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Identifiers +

  • 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.