Lands of Lore
Westwood 1993Genre: RPG
Themes: Sword & Sorcery
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC
Review by Wandrell (published November 24th, 2008, last updated November 23rd, 2008):
You are sent to get a magical stone, but then problems happen as usual. And you end with no kingdom backing you, and no good guy’s army, just the mean people’s one. What does it means? Oh, you know it well: you have just become the last hope for getting rid of the evil witch and her magical ring.Forget the plot, nothing new, move along. Let’s look at what you really have in front of you: a dungeon romp. You travel through mansions, swamps, mines, towns and whatever is in you way, but they really are a lot of dungeons.
And if you expect they won’t be plain corridors twisting around as if the master architect was on psychedelics, great, because they aren’t plain corridors. They just have really weird and overly complex designs. But at least it is along the two things I like on dungeon games: a variety of places and open space zones.
That way you feel you are exploring around, instead of feeling trapped along a lot of bad guys who got lost while waiting for you to hack them in half. You even have a nice automap, and each region you go to is divided in a bunch of zones through which you can move the way you wish, visiting shops, talking to people and finding objects in a freely way.
These objects you got from the ground are not just a sword, a helmet, another sword and a few fancy killing tools, I must note. Ok, they are a bunch of fancy killing tools mostly, except for the healing herbs or the keys (and the much more useful lockpicks). Because I must say all those oil flasks are there on the snapshots just for taking space, that lantern thing is just a little gimmick. You are supposed to be worried of having no oil for the lantern? That is plainly bothersome, and no light just means a bit of darkness.
I’ll go back to the problems later. I was going to say all these shiny things you find around are little more than wands with different icons. But using a crystal skull to cast a deadly spell, or a jewelled goblet for healing is much more fun than waving a piece of wood and *poof*, something happens.
As usual, not all is perfect. Dungeons get longer the more you advance. Too long I must say, for the engine is just like in Eye of the Beholder and, well, there is just so much fun a dungeon can give before you notice you got trapped inside a never-ending blocky corridor.
And also, like most dungeon cleaning games, it gets repetitive, as the characters and game barely change from beginning to end. Yes, there are some levels to raise (as the RPG watermark seems to demand), but they won’t help you much.
And the biggest thing, after all this, I feel like I said nothing. You know why? Because this game adds nothing to the genre, but they knew it and just made a fun one.
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