This game is sort of hidden gem that not many people played or even heard of but apparently almost everyone who did loved or at least liked it very much. It was no different with me who learned about it's existence accidentally in year 2022 and was convinced by exceptionally good opinions and low price to try it out. It's not easy to explain what's so good about it because on paper it certainly doesn't look like anything extraordinary. LH is traditional point and click adventure with absolutely nothing original or groundbreaking. "Indianajonesy" story is entertaining and even has some decent twists. Characters are very stereotypical and not particularly likeable nor interesting. Main protagonist is some silly always cool and ever joking British rascal. He has counterpart in the person of his clever and sensible Asian not-girlfriend which sadly got little screen time. And main antagonist is very cliche Nazi countess. And yet there is some irresistible charm in all this. Scope of the story is pretty big and includes many diverse locations suitable for grand adventure like: Himalayan mountains, African town, Berlin during Olympics, castle on German countryside and jungle. Gameplay mechanics are very traditional and based mostly on inventory puzzles. On rare occasions we have to cooperate between two characters which gets especially interesting in the endgame stage with kind of butterfly effect gimmick. In contrast to plot constantly implying urgency of situation, the game itself is very laid back. It's impossible to die, run out of time or otherwise screw things up here even when it would seem natural, which makes playing LH very relaxing and pleasant experience. Especially combined with not too high difficulty. Not often adventure games give me such frustration-free time. Balance is pretty much perfect here, every once in a while I had to slow down to figure things out but never to the very common in this genre point of frustration or necessity to use walkthrough.
This game has cult status in Poland mostly because it was one of the very few Polish games made in 90's that didn't totally suck and could somewhat compete with western titles in terms of production value. It has some good qualities. Story and writing (at least original, I'm not familiar with translations) are decent with some funny and clever moments, Polish voice acting is very good and professional (unlike say Teenagent) with quite a lot of text lines and cartoonish, hand-drawn graphics are excellent, especially backgrounds. Game is fairly long and rich with locations. Unfortunately not much good can be said about gameplay. Solutions are often nonsensical and what worse there is not enough hinting in what should (or shouldn't) be done which makes this game real brute force fest. And by "not enough hinting" I mean you'll be lucky if there will be any hint at all. Good luck with finding rope (or even guessing that you actually need one), deducing what to do with hobo's shoe, making devil's outfit or getting garlic without desperately trying everything on anything (or looking up solution). There are many more bad design choices. Prerequisite for creating one item requires using the same action twice for no apparent reason. Once after acquiring something I tried to talk about it with certain person, without success - it turned out I had first talk about it with another person (quite random) which didn't tell anything useful anyway and only then it unlocked dialog with the one I tried initially. Brilliant. Annoying timed fast reflex sequences or sporadic pixel hunting are just minor inconveniences compared to all this. Fortunately Adrian Chmielarz left point and click genre in piece after Galador and moved on to other projects with great benefit for himself and gamers.
