Erebus
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2008
- Messages
- 4,773
I'd heard of the series, but had never played it before. Recently, I decided to give "Hand of Fate" a try and really enjoyed it. I'll probably give "Malcolm's Revenge" a try in the future. LoK 1 doesn't appeal to me so much, possibly because the main character doesn't look very interesting.
I briefly read about the story of LoK 1 before starting to play its sequel and it was more than enough : the plots have almost nothing in common. In Lok 2, the land of Kyrandia is disappearing bit by bit and the kingdom's mystics can't figure out why. Then a giant sentient hand (seriously) tells them that what they need to stop the destruction is a magical anchor found at the center of the Earth. A young alchemist named Zanthia is chosen for the mission (apparently, she was a minor character in LoK 1). Zanthia plans to create a teleportation potion to get to the center of the Earth quickly, but as she comes back to her swamp house, she has an unpleasant surprise : somebody has just destroyed most of her equipment and stolen the rest. Getting to her destination is going to be harder than she expected.
"Hand of Fate" isn't as horribly difficult as many adventure games of the 90s. Most of the puzzles rely on using the right items (or making the right potions), but they're not especially convoluted. You don't have to search forever to find an item that should be fairly common and a few puzzles have more than one solution. All in all, the game is fairly merciful : Zanthia will often give clues regarding the way to solve an obstacle. She can die, but that usually requires a gross error of judgement. And you can't get stuck because you missed a necessary item and can no longer go back to obtain it (an unsatisfying way of failing also known as the SIERRA!RAGE!). In fact, Zanthia loses almost all of her equipment at the beginning of each new part of the game (there are about half a dozen of them, some longer than others).
The adventure is quite entertaining and Zanthia's a nice heroine. There are a lot of imaginative or amusing encounters and the places we get to visit are pretty diverse. The humor, while not as good as what's found in a Monkey Island game, is nevertheless fairly amusing. The plot isn't the main focus of the game, but it's fairly decent and has a few fun twists.
All in all, a good way of spending a few hours. I played the floppy version, but had a look at the CD version on Youtube ; Zanthia's voice actress isn't bad, but I don't think the voices add much to the game.
I briefly read about the story of LoK 1 before starting to play its sequel and it was more than enough : the plots have almost nothing in common. In Lok 2, the land of Kyrandia is disappearing bit by bit and the kingdom's mystics can't figure out why. Then a giant sentient hand (seriously) tells them that what they need to stop the destruction is a magical anchor found at the center of the Earth. A young alchemist named Zanthia is chosen for the mission (apparently, she was a minor character in LoK 1). Zanthia plans to create a teleportation potion to get to the center of the Earth quickly, but as she comes back to her swamp house, she has an unpleasant surprise : somebody has just destroyed most of her equipment and stolen the rest. Getting to her destination is going to be harder than she expected.
"Hand of Fate" isn't as horribly difficult as many adventure games of the 90s. Most of the puzzles rely on using the right items (or making the right potions), but they're not especially convoluted. You don't have to search forever to find an item that should be fairly common and a few puzzles have more than one solution. All in all, the game is fairly merciful : Zanthia will often give clues regarding the way to solve an obstacle. She can die, but that usually requires a gross error of judgement. And you can't get stuck because you missed a necessary item and can no longer go back to obtain it (an unsatisfying way of failing also known as the SIERRA!RAGE!). In fact, Zanthia loses almost all of her equipment at the beginning of each new part of the game (there are about half a dozen of them, some longer than others).
The adventure is quite entertaining and Zanthia's a nice heroine. There are a lot of imaginative or amusing encounters and the places we get to visit are pretty diverse. The humor, while not as good as what's found in a Monkey Island game, is nevertheless fairly amusing. The plot isn't the main focus of the game, but it's fairly decent and has a few fun twists.
All in all, a good way of spending a few hours. I played the floppy version, but had a look at the CD version on Youtube ; Zanthia's voice actress isn't bad, but I don't think the voices add much to the game.