Lands of Lore - the Throne of Chaos

[Arbiter]

2) What are your thoughts on smol Dawn?

She has changed a lot between LoL 1 and 2:

 

[oasis789]

I bet you loved Luther in LoL2 though.

Truth be told I've not ever played it. I have it on GOG and on my LaunchBox as options to download, but I can't stand to see that guys face on the cover (assuming this is Luther?) amidst all the gorgeous cover art of my other games so I never install it. I'm not opposed to trying it if it has some merit because Westwood produced some of my favorite games, but from what little I know it doesn't seem much like the first game?

Lands 2 was in the early 3d era which didn't age well, whereas Lands 1 is still a timeless classic.

 

[unseeingeye]

I was mostly kidding, because Luther is the only character to play as and his face is just as plain as Conrad's, but to be frank, his voice and attitude grew on me.

LoL2 features 360° movement and verticality so it's definitely much different than the original, but I enjoyed it a lot back in the day. The exploration's pretty entertaining and there's a lot of secrets to discover.

The concept is that you play as Scotia's son and due to a botched Nether Mask transfer, you are cursed to transform into different forms, namely a giant beast or a small and quick lizard. All of the forms have different abilities in gameplay and while t the start they happen randomly, in time you learn to control them.

Being Scotia's son, you are torn between good and evil and it's really fun to be bad. You even get to fight and kill some important characters from the first game if you choose the dark path.

I suppose I ought to give it a chance then. I always assumed the second and third games were more like FMV style adventure games and so never had much interest in actually playing them, but if there is still some semblance to the original than I could definitely be interested to try it. Older adventure games I very much enjoy when I'm in the mood, like the Scumm games and the many similar style games, but even back in the 90s I found the FMV games to be terribly unappealing and always preferred game cutscenes or action sequences that are presented in an animated form. I so very much wish that there were more games made like Lands of Lore, it is such a shame that just as the pixel art designs were reaching their peak nearly the entire industry shifted to either FMV or 3D graphics and we didn't see these kinds of games pursued anymore. Even today where there has been something of a return to Dungeon Master style games, the majority that I've seen use 3d graphics and to me the realistic presentation just does not fit the blobber perspective, so I've not been able to enjoy most of them. I thought the upcoming game Island of the Caliph looks absolutely gorgeous but I think you only have a single character in that game.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

I just saw on GOG there's a Lands of Lore 3. I never even played 2, and wanted to do that. But do you know anything about 3? It's 100% under my radar.

I didn't care much for it. There's goofy immersion-breaking stuff, like crossing into the C&C universe and exploring a Nod base, fighting robots etc.

Is it an easter egg or a mandatory part of the game?

Mandatory, around 15% of the game.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

GOG's release has been giving me issues on my Linux system, fails to detect game files in GAME.DAT, but I managed to find a solution. I created a directory for the game then mounted GAME.DAT into it. After that I copied all of the game files to a different directory for future usage.
mkdir /media/LOL mount LandsOfLoreInstallDirectory/GAME.DAT /media/LOL -o loop
I imagine this might work for other archive/image formats which do not easily open up through archiving programs.

 

[Tweed]

I just saw on GOG there's a Lands of Lore 3. I never even played 2, and wanted to do that. But do you know anything about 3? It's 100% under my radar.

I didn't care much for it. There's goofy immersion-breaking stuff, like crossing into the C&C universe and exploring a Nod base, fighting robots etc.

Is it an easter egg or a mandatory part of the game?

Mandatory, around 15% of the game.

It's the final dungeon.

 

[Grauken]

Fighting robots in late-stage areas is a staple of lots of classic RPGs like Might & Magic (various) and Wizardry 7

 

[Ryzer]

A bit late to the party, but I'm unable to simply take items on the floor, because the game takes priority on movement keys over action keys which is entirely retarded since now I'm unable to pick up coal in the Urbish mines because they are on the top-down of the screen. I wonder how the masterminds behind this game didn't think of this????
Sincerely thinking to drop it since the gameplay is just extremely simplified to spam the same button over and over again ad nauseam thanks to the spawn rate.
Also it's misleading, this game is not an RPG but more a point&click.

 

[Maxie]

hi does anyone have the keyboard layout for lol1 id like to map them to controller

 

[newtmonkey]

After several attempts over the years, I was finally able to complete this tonight. It feels good to get this one done with.

I must say that it looks and sounds absolutely amazing, with some of the best VGA graphics out there, and a great soundtrack that sounds wonderful on a Roland Sound Canvas. Even the interface is beautiful; they even went so far as to animate the on-screen compass as you move around, rather than just having the needle snap immediately to whatever direction you're facing. It's just a joy to look at.

The game starts out with some very simple and tiny dungeons, but slowly ramps up in complexity, reaching its peak around the halfway point at the Urbish Mines, which is a fine multi-level dungeon with some great nonlinear exploration and multiple puzzles to solve. Definitely the high point of the game imo.

Unfortunately, the game is just too easy and simple, and all the pretty graphics and great tunes in the world cannot make up for it. After the mines, dungeon puzzles are never more complicated than putting something on a pressure plate or hitting a button to open a locked door nearby. Combat is mostly boring, but becomes very tedious later on; in an attempt to add "difficulty" the last few dungeons are full of annoying enemies that permanently destroy armor, or use an earthquake attack that makes you drop your weapons. They aren't hard, but they sure do waste your time.

Luckily, the game ends of somewhat of a high note, as the final dungeon is quite decent. Even the ending was a lot of fun.

 

[Tweed]

Did you play on ferocious? The game congratulates you if you do.

 

[newtmonkey]

Tweed
No, I just played on whatever the default is.

 

[Eirinjas]

I just completed Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos. The game was really good up until the Catwalk caverns and then it became a chore. The world also felt suddenly less realized than it had up until this point. You finally get to a town and think the game is going to open up and become more interesting, instead it nosedives into one long dungeon slog to the end. The Xeobs vs Knowles was a narrative non-sequitur that felt hammered in and completely out of place. The developers should have concentrated on the core narrative, because many things in the end felt slap-dashed together. I mostly enjoyed it, but the shit towards the end was aggravating. The armor-eating acid attacks and relentlessly spawning mobs were overkill. The game certainly looks great, a quality production, but some mechanics are overly simplified. I suppose I'd rate it a 7/10.

 

[Tweed]

Have to agree, Catwalks is dull and then the Xeobs Knowles thing is completely left field. Acid attacks mean you reload the game since armor is irreplaceable. I think Castle Cimmeria itself is a great final dungeon though, well designed and appropriately tricky, also has a mandatory spin maze near the end like all good blobbers should. All in all I still think it's a great game and one of the best ways to get into the genre if you're completely new.

Sequel is a different breed, closer to Ultima Underworld. A load of fun, with two branching paths. Only real problem is getting Glide set up properly and the fact that even with 3d acceleration the game is ugly as hell.

 

[Eirinjas]

Have to agree, Catwalks is dull and then the Xeobs Knowles thing is completely left field. Acid attacks mean you reload the game since armor is irreplaceable. I think Castle Cimmeria itself is a great final dungeon though, well designed and appropriately tricky, also has a mandatory spin maze near the end like all good blobbers should. All in all I still think it's a great game and one of the best ways to get into the genre if you're completely new.

Sequel is a different breed, closer to Ultima Underworld. A load of fun, with two branching paths. Only real problem is getting Glide set up properly and the fact that even with 3d acceleration the game is ugly as hell.

Cimmeria castle is a good dungeon. I like how that one big room takes your atlas and breaks your compass leaving you to navigate an area full of spinners and pits without those frames of reference. The Death Disks and Manthas in the castle are pissers though. The former spits acid, and the latter hits hard and can stun-lock, and they both multiply like rabbits. I found when taking off the armor to fight Death Disks that ALL of my characters suddenly had excellent to-hit ratios, but you can't fight the Manthas without armor because they hit too hard. So, armor incurs a to-hit penalty - not mentioned in manual, of course.

 

[Ryzer]

I would have liked it better if it was a full point and click adventure game instead of a half-cooked blobber game where the gameplay consists about clicking 2 buttons(one to attack and the other to cast a spell).
Also I have no idea why they added hidden paths if the map shows them to the player, it's stupid.

 

[Sceptic]

I just completed Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos. The game was really good up until the Catwalk caverns and then it became a chore. The world also felt suddenly less realized than it had up until this point. You finally get to a town and think the game is going to open up and become more interesting, instead it nosedives into one long dungeon slog to the end. The Xeobs vs Knowles was a narrative non-sequitur that felt hammered in and completely out of place. The developers should have concentrated on the core narrative, because many things in the end felt slap-dashed together. I mostly enjoyed it, but the shit towards the end was aggravating. The armor-eating acid attacks and relentlessly spawning mobs were overkill. The game certainly looks great, a quality production, but some mechanics are overly simplified. I suppose I'd rate it a 7/10.

I was always under the impression that the game was rushed. The initial release had quite a few bugs, some pretty nasty (it's possible to complete the Draracle Caves with the girl still in your party, which means the game will crash when Paulson tries to join and you can never complete the Urbish Mines), some super helpful (the famous Vaelen's Cube duplication; I swear everyone thought it was feature), but the moment I realized this was on reaching the Xeob/Knowles stuff. It's obvious filler, has nothing to do with Scotia or anything else in the game, and that's around the time when you start running into doors that cannot be opened, switches that do nothing, and other obvious signs that parts of the level were unfinished. And then there's the whole business with the 4th pyramid; gathering them all is a major plot point and each one is a long and involved quest... and then one of them is just there, for no reason other than you need it and Westwood didn't know how to do this quickly and elegantly so they didn't even bother. I think the game was just too long in development, and they spent too much time and money on the special effects (the spell graphics were something else at the time). I still like the game despite this.