Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

What I will say further you will hear from me very often when it comes to old games made by Westwood. Before the company began to rivet various clones, it made very good games. And mostly quests and RPG of the highest quality. Westwood created the Eye of the Beholder trilogy, a first-person RPG based on the AD & D system, in which a team of four heroes had to rescue the city of Waterdeep from an invasion of dark forces, the source of which was deep under the city.

After completing the trilogy, which enjoyed well-deserved success, the Westwood team embarked on a new project, Lands of Lore. This game is based on the improved Eye of the Beholder engine. This simple sentence says a lot. And quite good for those times graphic performance, and walking "through the cells", and graphics from the first person, and many more things, including the fact that the game action takes place in real time.

The game has an intuitive interface and a role-playing system that allows even a person who plays a role-playing game from the first person for the first time to get used to it very quickly.

The plot of the plot is initially quite simple. Evil sorceress Scotia got some artifact Nether Mask, allowing it to turn into any creature. King Richard is clearly not happy about the fact that various evil spirits simply rush through cities and villages, pulling closer and closer to the capital, and he sends you on a mission to save the kingdom, destroy the crazy witch and take away the artifact from her, in any order of these actions.

The plot changes constantly, each time confronting the heroes (one main character and two NPCs), some local tasks. The player almost always knows what to do and why. There are several ways to solve one problem. For example, it is possible to agree with the marsh inhabitants by completing the task of their leader, or you can cut them all.

Locations imagine a certain maze in which there are various puzzles, objects and monsters. The good news is that these labyrinths do not have a standard structure or size, but at the same time, the logic of construction is preserved, that is, in the three-story White Tower, all three levels have the same size and shape. Even more simplifies the orientation of a great map, which brought any little things, whether it's traps, chests or levers.

The "walls" of the labyrinth are drawn in sufficient detail, as in other matters and everything else in this game. Monsters of the same type are slightly different in coloring, which adds a bit more vitality to the overall picture. Unfortunately, the name of the monster can only be guessed from the dialogues of the characters and nothing else, but to find out what is most effective against it, you can only in battle.

Another worth noting is the excellent quality of the commercials. Who saw clips Eye of the Beholder 2-3, he will understand. Large, traced to the smallest faces of the characters, great animation of movements, and stunning for those times special effects.

To simplify the gameplay, developers abandoned character creation and simply provided four characters to choose from. If you simplify it, this is a Mage, Warrior, Thief, and a certain character who knows a little of everything, which is called Ranger or Paladin.

The hero is universal. He can freely improve in classes Fighter, Rogue and Mage. These abilities grow as they are used, when the red stripe reaches the right border, the hero raises his level in this class with all the ensuing consequences. There are also parameters Protection and Might, which are responsible, as is clear, for the degree of protection and the amount of damage inflicted by the character. There are no physical characteristics or any skills, everything is as simple as possible. Parameters vary from the initial choice of the character, and what he is wearing.

There are only six spells in the game, and any character can use them, only manna would be. Spells can indicate power, like the games in the Wizardry series. Moreover, there are only four attacking spells, so it is rather difficult to get lost in them.

The game does not provide for the death of the character. When his life reaches zero, he simply loses consciousness. Only if all the characters lose consciousness will you have to load the saved game.

The inventory is quite interesting. Instead of distributing things among the team members' backpacks, a bar of general inventory is provided at the bottom of the screen. Again, this is intended so that the player does not suffer by shaking up the contents of each character’s backpack, and has direct access to the entire inventory at once.