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[oracrest]

Available on gog.com for $5.99



WHAT IS IT?

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos is the first installment of the Lands of Lore series. It was developed by Westwood Studios and distributed by Virgin Games, Inc. The game presents a real-time, three dimensional view from the character's perspective that is similar to the interface used on the Dungeon Master game and the Eye of the Beholder series.

SCREENSHOTS

A LITTLE BACKSTORY...

Back in 1993, this game blew me away. I must have played it through 4 times when I got it. I still find it impressive to this day how beautiful the art remains. Back in the early 90's, Westwood Studios pixel artists were really breaking a lot of ground with their work. Rich colors, gorgeous landscapes, and solid animation. Sadly, they were doing this at a time when 3D was starting to become a standard, and this style was lost in favor if fugly polygons.

This first title in the Lands of Lore series, as well as the early Kyrandia games still feel like pillars of 2D game artistry. While making this thread, I stumbled across one artist that worked on all the great 2D Westwood Studios games, Louise Sandoval. Check out her career.... She worked as an animator for He-Man, She-Ra, Blackstarr, Ghostbusters, and many more, worked on Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, and stretching way back, was a storyboard artist for the original Star Trek series. Pretty cool!



MORE WESTWOOD STUDIOS ART

The Legend of Kyrandia series

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II

You can't beat the price....

 

[Svartnatt]

Ah the memories of this game! Loved it back in the day, may grab this again for the nostalgia...

 

[ghibli99]

MAN, they kicked ass. The music in Kyrandia was fantastic, too.

 

[BluWacky]

I have a slightly embarrassing confession about this game...

I only ever completed it as Ak'shel, because I'd played the demo and that gave you overpowered items or abilities or something along those lines - so I copied over the saved game from the demo and then went on to finish the game.

I feel like such a fraud

Never got into the sequels, they were too FMV-esque for my liking.

 

[Minsc]

I always enjoy returning to this game, it's a lot of fun. Juggling items can be a bit annoying sometimes, but there's not too many other flaws other than it can get a bit repetitious and maybe stays a little too simplistic. Catchy music, detailed animations (lots of nice little touches like when you first get a lantern or spell), auto-mapping, and a fairly challenging difficulty curve (

Spoiler

though getting to the end without having kept the proper weapon types is a nightmare

). It has some randomness to it with enough secret passageways and objects to click, that I usually end up finding something new every time I play it. Definitely one of my favorite dungeon crawler games, nice to see all the familiar screens in the OP.

 

[Callibretto]

wow, it has such a nice art, never play games like these, may have to give it a try sometime.

 

[oracrest]

I always enjoy returning to this game, it's a lot of fun. Juggling items can be a bit annoying sometimes, but there's not too many other flaws other than it can get a bit repetitious and maybe stays a little too simplistic. Catchy music, detailed animations (lots of nice little touches like when you first get a lantern or spell), auto-mapping, and a fairly challenging difficulty curve (

Spoiler

though getting to the end without having kept the proper weapon types is a nightmare

). It has some randomness to it with enough secret passageways and objects to click, that I usually end up finding something new every time I play it. Definitely one of my favorite dungeon crawler games, nice to see all the familiar screens in the OP.

Yeah, it's one of those games that still feels fun to play. I also love how you can click on almost anything in game and get a description by the character.

 

[Peggies]

This is where the Dungeon Master clone genre reached its peak. Very polished, fun and beautiful to look at.

Never finished it, but now that it's on GOG and has ScummVM support, I will definitely give it one more try someday.

 

[Alexios]

Kind of wish I could buy it separately, not digging the sequel's use of CG/photos stuff.

 

[mclem]

Kind of wish I could buy it separately, not digging the sequel's use of CG/photos stuff.

GoG has just two price points; it's worth the entirety of the lower pricepoint, really.

Just forget the second game exists!

 

[Hellcrow]

Me and my friend played this game a long time ago. We didn't find out how to attack with weapons, so we just threw swords at enemies. Atleast what I remember.

 

[mclem]

Me and my friend played this game a long time ago. We didn't find out how to attack with weapons, so we just threw swords at enemies. Atleast what I remember.

I now have a mental image of Baccata staring at a sword and yelling "HOW DO I WORK THIS CONFOUNDED DEVICE?!?!"

 

[Grimmy]

I never cared much for either Lands of Lore or the Kyrandia series. To me Westwood's crowning achievement was EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II, as well as DUNE II, DRAGONSTRIKE, BLADE RUNNER and CIRCUIT'S EDGE.

 

[TheOddOne]

I got a copy of this somewhere, need to find it. Thanks OP for reminding me

 

[ROBOKITTYZILLA]

Oh man, Kyrandia. I had totally forgotten about those games.

 

[pancakesandsex]

I did not know this was on GOG. I loved this game. It was part of my formative gaming years.

 

[blu]

Ah, the memories.. Seeing that title screen brings back rushing memories of the palette animation they used to do the B&W->color transition. That was considered a cool effect back then : )

 

[Sinatar]

I never cared much for either Lands of Lore or the Kyrandia series. To me Westwood's crowning achievement was EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II, as well as DUNE II, DRAGONSTRIKE, BLADE RUNNER and CIRCUIT'S EDGE.

Lands of Lore 1 is the real Eye of the Beholder 3. How can you like EoB 2 and not like LoL1? Madness.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Ooooh, such a nice game. It was polished like no other. I remember being amazed how there was an animated transition between steps, instead of just instantly popping into a new square. The voices were also awesome.

No idea where my copy is though.

 

[Rolf NB]

Ah, the sweet times of youth. I loved Lands Of Lore. Out of all the contenders (Eye Of The Beholder trilogy, Anvil Of Dawn etc) it seemed the most polished and impressive. In retrospect, probably a bit dumbed down. But lots of fun. Second only to Dungeon Master, but I'm hella biased for that one.

Too bad the sequel kind of sucked. It was one of those early, early 3D games where people hadn't figured out yet how to do 3D games properly.