Saturday, February 20, 2016

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993): Initial Impressions

I've heard a lot—good and bad—about this series, and although the first game gets rave reviews for its detailed graphics and streamlined dungeon exploration, I've read troubling things about its simplicity and interface.  I've therefore been somewhat hesitant to hunt the game down, even though GOG offers the first two games in a bundle for a very good price.  It's been on my wishlist there for at least a year.

Well, I had some other purchases to make on GOG and decided to throw this in the cart, and now I can say a little something about it.

The first thing I do with a GOG game is take the data and drop it into my dedicated DOS folder.  I run D-Fend Reloaded for all my DOS games, since I like being able to easily tweak the settings depending on whether I am playing on my CRT (320x200 no scaling) or LCD (scaled up to native res).  Once I got it all set up, I relaxed with a beer and got ready to explore some dungeons.


Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos  is a real-time first-person RPG in which you control a small party of adventurers as you explore dungeons and wilderness areas.  Although combat is real-time, it basically works on a turn-based system a character must wait a certain amount of time in between each action (although you access your inventory, etc. in real time).

First impression: this is one beautiful game.  The intro is all hand drawn and animated in an era where you would expect some CG that has aged poorly.  The artists at Westwood were truly masters of low res pixel art.  Look at the painstakingly rendered light and shade.  The way faces—not just mouths and eyes—are animated when characters speak.  This continues with the game proper with even UI elements receiving more detail than characters in most games: the compass needle springs into place as you move instead of just snapping into place, and more.

The games start with you selecting one of several characters—basically from a fighter, thief, wizard, or jack-of-all-trades character.  I went with the balanced guy, thinking this would let me enjoy all the stuff in the game to some degree.

Second impression: the soundtrack is pretty awful.  Granted, I don't have access to my Roland SC-55 as I've moved into the living room due to the cold, but I do have BASSMIDI along with a Sound Canvas soundfont loaded... and while I know the soundfont is no substitute, I also know from experience that it is close enough to judge.  Compare this with Anvil of Dawn's atmospheric and—yes, catchy—soundtrack, and Land of Lore's anemic jazzy, EZ listening noise comes off as almost unlistenable.  Coming from the Legend of Kyrandia people, this is simply unforgivable.


After some brief exploration of the starting castle (including a weapon/armor shop you can't afford anything from—big negative in my opinion) you have no choice but to leave and explore the surrounding woods.  Despite the best effort of the music, the woods are quite atmospheric, and I really like the smooth scrolling effect as you walk around.  You soon realize though that the area is very small and linear, and although there are several squares that bring up unique graphics, you have really only one way to go.  Combat at this point is just pressing your attack button, waiting until it becomes active again, then pressing it again.  It seems that you can move around to avoid enemy attacks.


You pick up your first companion shortly into the game, and while I was hoping this would make the battles a little more tactical, it just gives you one more attack button to press and one more health bar to worry about.  At this point I realized how inconvenience the inventory bar is.  You can see it at the bottom of the screenshot above.  You place all items in a seemingly never ending strip of boxes at the bottom of the screen, and unless you tediously manage this thing by hand, you will be madly scrolling item by item as you frantically search for the antidote when someone has been poisoned in battle.  It eclipses even Fallout in terms of the unwieldiness of its interface.


An hour in and you pick switch out your companion for another guy, and find this lady.  At this point, juggling three attack buttons and health bars is more annoying than thrilling, and I started wondering if this game all flash and no substance.  The graphics continue to impress, but the puzzles—if you can even call them puzzles—are of the "press the switch next to the door" variety.

At this early point in the game you have what amounts to a wizard and a thief in your party, but the crazy thing is that I have not found a single use for a thief (you can't sneak, and all locks are opened by switches and keys), and the wizard is able to launch a single "high power" spell (that cannot even kill a single enemy) before his magic points are completely used up.  Most battles are me launching that single spell, then cycling through each character's attack button.  Probably should have gone with the fighter for my main character.  I'd also like to mention how frustrating it is that I seem to miss 75% of the time, but enemies hit nearly every time and also can poison you (which seems to last until you die).

So after a couple hours I feel a bit conflicted over this one.  It is easily one of the best looking dungeon crawlers ever, but there is very little underneath the beautiful graphics.  Having said that, I am still interested in seeing what comes next.

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