Posted on: February 20, 2020

Jezebel1988

Games: 248 Reviews: 100

Simplistic but fun

LANDS OF LORE was Westwood's unofficial EYE OF THE BEHOLDER III when they split with SSI after EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II. Graphics style an menus will look familiar to anyone who played EOB I or II. LANDS OF LORE: THE THRONE OF CHAOS is the first in a trilogy - the first sequel GUARDIANS OF DESTINY comes with the first here on GOG, the second sequel (simply called LANDS OF LORE III) has to be bought separately for whatever reason. I suggest ignoring the terrible sequels. LANDS OF LORE 1 starts you out picking one of 4 pre-made player characters. With 3 different attributes: offense, defense and magic. There are no stats. There is no character creation. Each character has 3 classes - fighter, rogue and mage - and levels them up by actions (throwing for rogue, casting spells for mage) much like DUNGEON MASTER. This might be a little too simplistic for real cRPG fans. There are two more slots for NPCs who come and go during the adventure, uping the party to a maximum of 3. This actually works better than the 4 character party - there is no front and back row. Graphics are nice to look at and the GOG version is the fully voiced version with Patrick Steward as King Richard. Laso the character portraits are animated. It has a few nice enhancements to the genre at the time and it is a nice game, just not very challenging. It's a 3 out of 5 for me. LANDS OF LORE II: GUARDIANS OF DESTINY however is another story. Here you play as the son of the original game's villain, there is no choosing a player character this time and no NPCs. Your character is a shapechanger, who shapeshifts RANDOMLY which proves to be a major pain in the butt. Graphically Westwood ditched the 90 degree step by step movement for "softscrolling" 360 degree movement at the price of being very pixelated up close. For me this is a rockbottom 1 out of 5. Don't bother installing it.

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Posted on: May 23, 2019

LATESTACORONATA

Verified owner

Games: 741 Reviews: 230

Lands of lore saga is astonishing!

A must buy in every game library, lands of lore 1+2 are magnificent games that truly show quality and substance I've rarely seen. Speaking about the single episodes themselves, I must admit that while the first one is truly a timeless masterpiece with its dungeon-crawling gameplay at its finest, spectacular graphics ( truly it surprises me while I was seeing its wonderful cinematics), simple yet engaging with a clear goal, well design maps, fun puzzles, and a full party to play with, the second one tries to expand on that ideas but removes the party in order to promote a single hero for its story, with multiple ending and way larger maps. But I must admit, it does that with mixed results, and I personally found it confusing both in its design and gameplay, and overall, to be less fun compared to the first entry of the saga. However, like the first one, lands of lore 2 must, at least, be trying out just for experience what game has to offer, just for the experience in which the second episode is all about to exploration, with absolutely no hand holding or any form of help, even discovering how an item works is fascinating. My whole experience with this saga was about to discover how the game works, running around its enormous maps and trying out spells and items. Overall, A must buy for every player that loves old school RPGs and dungeon crawlers at their finest, and a true masterpiece that, in its prime, was simply on top of almost all its competitors, and still you can play it today and, truly, be still amazed.

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Posted on: October 29, 2023

Andvari_Nidavellir

Verified owner

Games: 217 Reviews: 6

Pixel Art Glory

The game probably has the highest quality presentation of any grid-crawling blobber CRPG, and represents the absolute epitome of gaming art prior to the 3d era. The simple but effective story is presented through action, beautifully animated cinematics and dialogue (fully voiced, courtesy of the advent of CD-ROM). The game mechanics are mostly hidden, leaving you both free to enjoy the adventure rather than be bothered with cumbersome rules. On the other hand, it makes some things hard to judge. For example, one of the playable characters has notably lower stats than the rest, but claims he's very fast. Is this just flavor text or is he harder to hit? Does he attack faster? Hard to say. You find an axe with poor offensive stats but a special name. Does it do anything special? Nobody knows. Some of the puzzles can be rather obscure and frustrating if you're not accustomed to old-school dungeon crawlers, especially in the Urbish Mines. A walkthrough will be your friend for those bits that aged a little less gracefully.

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Posted on: August 2, 2024

Pulsed101

Verified owner

Games: 252 Reviews: 21

The old Red Alert "coming soon" demo

Purchased these recently after rediscovering that old demo advert on C&C Red Alert. I didn't finish LoL1. It is definitely a well made game, I just found the level design frustrating (spinning tiles, respawning enemies and fake walls). I might go back to it someday. I've never played anything like LoL2. The cheesy fmv character interactions set in a rich dark fantasy setting is refreshing. Low resolution but the textures are really nice and the digital soundtrack is top tier. Midi soundtrack sounds great too. The controls take a bit to feel out but once the keybindings are set and learned they feel good. The devs created something very special with this old unique game.

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Posted on: March 30, 2022

lemonfed

Verified owner

Games: 393 Reviews: 2

fun games that din't age that well.

I've played both of them for a few days and gone past more then half of each games so I've seen where they strenght and weakness lies. Lands Of lore 1 is a solid Dungeon Crawler game that start with a simple but engaging story , some very fun dungeons are first but later on start throwing you rather frustrating level design , hidden switch , obscure riddle and puzzles , invisble walls and fake holes ... expect to have to look for a guide if you want to finish the game without spending weeks and months of going around because you've missed a little detail. The overall game is fun but could have been much better if the map where better designed. The fighting system while having nothing special is solid , Responsive and doing it's job and is what kept me playing the game for days and still willing to try to see the end of it. Land Of Lore 2 Guardians of destiny just aged badly , the presentation is fine , the story is also very good but the game itself will require you to sit down and rebind almost every single keys. it doesn't help the game has an extremely low field of view , it's claustrophobic and make the navigation around the map much harder then it's should. The game map design also doesn't care about your limited field of view and have holes and trap placed where you can't see them , I've died a lot's of time because I could not tell how far my character was from falling off a platform.

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