The Legacy: Realm of Terror

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.

The Good
In 1993 "Legacy" arrived at my door and I was highly anticipating it. I had seen the striking box cover before and it was the initial pull for me to purchase the game. In a time when I lived in a remote area and before the internet this was still rare for me. I was not disappointed as it left a lasting impact on me.

"The Legacy: Realm Of Terror" did a very good job of balancing a mix of horror, adventure and action into what I was assuming to be a simple RPG game. While it does have an RPG feel there is a soup of the three aforementioned aspects that makes it much deeper. It was very satisfying to hit an enemy with a weapon, such as a fireplace poker, and see how much damage it did based on the wound. Puzzles abounded and they varied on the level of somewhat easy to downright diabolical. For mood, the horror you felt was a cross between isolation and shock. There was a great mechanic where your character would be frozen with terror depending on how bad an enemy frightened him. Not being able to manipulate your alter-ego at all inspired much dread.

The game looked good and sounded very good. I always felt that there was a bit of whimsy in the overall graphic design. Almost as if it had a comic strip feel for a newspaper delivered from Hell. There was heavy exaggeration at points on the game that would give you a good laugh or made you shiver. The art was done very well and you never had to wonder what you were looking at or needed from your inventory in a pinch. The small auto map on the bottom left corner of the screen was a nice touch. It's most useful aspect was the fact that you could see if there was perhaps a hidden area behind a wall. Very good for giving a hint but not spoiling anything.

The music and sound that was used could hit a wide range of emotion jarring effects. Hearing something groaning from behind a door or down the hall. The shattering of a stained glass window or the roar of an organ were beautiful and startling at the same time. There was a care taken by the developers on how to make the sounds interact with the living environment. They knew when to bombard you while at the same time adding nothing and leaving the silence to torture you.

The Bad
The combat could have been a bit more refined. Equipping weapons and such was simple. They would show up on your character's "paper doll" interface so that was handy. There were "aim" and "hit" buttons to click on during combat. They were supposed to insinuate a strategy when fighting creatures. Sadly though I found it lacking more often than not. A sound idea but the execution was a bit poor.

The Bottom Line
I don't see this game listed on many of the great games categories and that bothers me. I believe "Legacy" had everything you could have asked from it. I remember how much fun it was to play it. To discover new things and want to move forward but also with a charming forbidding that told me to be careful what I wished. It was a wonderful game in just about every aspect and an experience I am glad I did not miss.

The Good
This is one of the few games I've ever played that touched nearly all the things that can make a game fun for me. It was very immersive and had a great story, but it also engaged my intellect. Figuring out what was going on, even with my knowledge of Lovecraftian horror and RPG staples, was a lot of fun. Almost all of the puzzles made sense in the simulated world, instead of being obvious game elements. If you needed to answer a riddle to get somewhere, it was because the stuff within was being guarded from those without the knowlege to use it. If a door was locked, it was because somebody had a reason to lock it. For the limited abilities of the machines it ran on, the graphics and sound were immersive and believable.

The Bad
As some others have said, it was a bit too difficult. Some combats required twitch-gamer reactions more suitable to a later-day FPS title or some of the more recent (and IMHO degenerate) "survival horror" games. The final battle, in particular, was nearly impossible.

The Bottom Line
This game, along with the original Alone in the Dark, is definitive of what a horror game should be like. Heck, just thinking about it makes me want to track down my copy and play it again after all these years.