Lands of Lore - The Throne of Chaos

"Lands of Lore - The Throne of Chaos" is a first-person dungeon-crawler style RPG created by Westwood and Virgin, and released first released in 1993 for MS-DOS. The game works pretty well in DOSBox. Although ScummVM is supposed to support the game, I recommend against using ScummVM for this game.

In-game intro

Let's just kick off with the good stuff. The screenshot above was taken of the in-game introduction animation, which was downright stunning for its time. It was very rare to see such detailed animation back in the 1990s. This made the game very inviting. On top of that for the CD-ROM version of the game, they hired Patrick Steward (famous for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star-Trek The Next Generation, and Xavier in X-Men) to voice King Richard (left on the screenshot), to make the game extra appealing. The CD-ROM version also contains the history of the world in which the story takes place narrated by thesame guy.

Normally I get very skeptic when I see such beautiful animations voiced by actors that "matter". Normally this promises a very very crappy game hidden behind good graphics and famous actors. Well, it's a rare case when I'm glad something does NOT live up to expectations like that, as Lands Of Lore does also excel on the points that matter most. Let's take a quick look shall we?

The Four Heroes

What may be a bit of a down-side in this game is the fact you cannot "create" a character like you can in Eye of the Beholder. This was done due to the limited resources they had at the time and still wanting to make more interaction with the character himself and his surroundings possible. It was an obvious choice, not all dungeon-crawler fans may be happy with, but give the game a chance. The characters are well-balanced and it's certainly working out in this game.

The four characters are:

• Ak'Shel is a Dracoid and is the most powerful choice when you wish to focus on magic. Very likely you will only be able to use the game's strongest magic if you pick him as your hero.

• Michael is physically the strongest pick. He can hit very hard.

• Kieran is the fastest. He can act twice as fast as all the others and appears to be the best pick when you want to use shooting weapons. Unfortunately, the shooting weapons part is a bit "under-worked-out", as you cannot compare shooting weapons as well as melee weapons. Yes even this game has its weak points.

• Conrad is the most balanced character. Stronger in magic than Kieran and Michael, but not as strong as Ak'Shel. Stronger in normal attacks than Ak'shel and Kieran but not as strong as Michael, and so on.

Ak'shel, Michael and Kieran all focus on one of the three points the game is specifically worked out for and Conrad covers them all in a certain sense, but not as good as the others. It does provide some choices.

You choice does NOT affect the story line in any way. It only matters in combat. Although each hero has his own voice actor (CD-ROM version only), his own animated picture and all other characters you meet in the game will always call him by name.

The Game

The Game starts at Gladstone Keep. The home of King Richard of the Kingdom of Gladstone. Your first task is to see the king, and after that the game will explain what to do next. The game is pretty straight-forward in it's missions, which is only a big plus as this helps you to move along quite easily. The game can still be challenging though.

A quick look onto the screen shows that it's all pretty well organized and set up as is to be expected of an RPG Dungeon Crawler written in this era. You can click on the arrows to move around, alternatively the cursor keys can also be used for that. Unfortunately the "WASD" key combination is not supported, but that is due to the fact that WASD was not used at all in ANY game released in this time or earlier.

The "ZZZ" icon is to make your character rest. That means recovering HP and MP (hit points and magic points respectively). Be warned that resting takes time, and monsters in the field will keep moving around while you rest, meaning you can be attacked during your rest (causing the party to wake up, but be damaged nevertheless). If you click this icon while everybody is at full HP and MP, they will smile at you, which is pretty funny.

The "41" on the screenshot above is your money. The currency in Lands of Lore is "silver crowns".
And below we can see the inventory, which is, like in any dungeon crawler limited. However as party members come and go, your inventory is shared among your entire party.

The "diskette" icon (left-bottom, in case you've never seen one) leads to the game options like saving and the game config. You can also set the strength of the monsters. Like "Whimpy" if you want easier monsters or "Ferocious" when you seek a real challenge.

Attacking will cause a cooldown on your character, well nothing new on this department.
Due to this, you can get the hang of Lands of Lore quite easily, so you only have a short learning curve.

Quite unique to the series might be the magic system. All characters can do magic, however one is better than the other. You acquire spells by obtaining scrolls. So far nothing new. All characters can use the same spells, so you don't have to worry about to whom to give a spell. This makes things easier to organize. When you click the yellow icon next the the party member's portrait you'll see a small menu with "I", "II", "III" and "IV". Those show the four grades each spell can have. The higher the grade, the more MP the spell costs to perform, but the more powerful it will be. You should use this wisely. It makes no sense to use grade IV when grade II is enough to kill a monster. The choice of spell is of course also very important as some monsters are not sensitive to a certain kind of spell and over sensitive to another. The spell animations are superb for the time the game was written in.

The game does provide a challenge in beating the enemies. The interface is easy to use, and the level design is also well-worked out. Due to the automap feature, you will not easily get lost, so no wasting time on finding out where to go, and all important places are marked. You can also use the automap for places were you are not at the the time or to which you cannot even get to anymore. Lands of Lore features one of the best automap features ever.

Story-line

The story-line of the game is not very special. Gladstone is the greatest kingdom among the lands and its greatest enemy is the Dark Army, led by an evil woman named Scotia. Scotia found a magic ring called "The Nether Mask". This ring allows its bearer to transforms in any shape he or she desires. She becomes very dangerous, and during the game she poisons King Richard and tries to take over the realm. You are summoned to cure the king, stop Scotia and bring peace back to the realm of Gladstone.

Not a very original story-line, but it fits the game well, and due to the lore of the lands being well worked out and well-developed characters, the game does take you into its story line well. Since the gameplay does not suffer under all the graphics workouts (which is a very great problem nowadays, even back then) the story-line provides just the extra motivation despite it not being very special on its own.

Conclusion

Lands of Lore is one of those rare titles that covers it all. Great audio and visuals (for its time), a story-line that is not much but still well-written to get you into the story quite well, an easy to use interface and a challenging gameplay. It's considered one of the best RPG games of its time for MS-DOS. It can even compare with some games written today.
It's not that unlogical the game got two sequels due to the success the game had at its time. Unfortunately, both sequels never lived up to the expectations the first game gave you. ;(

Obtaining the game now

I got my copy on CD-ROM back in the time it was for sale.
Today it can be found on GOG.com click here for that. (thanks to Jani for pointing that out).