Lands of Lore 2

            Reviewed by Alex van Kaam on a P200

I enjoyed Lands of Lore 1, so I was looking forward to Lands of
Lore 2, especially as rumours went around that it would support
3DFX, so together with Starfleet Academy I bought it and took it
home.

Again a game that comes on a lot of CDs, 4 this time.

Let's first start with the game requirements:

DOS:

  - IBM PC or 100% compatible Pentium(TM) 90 or faster
  - DOS 5.0
  - 16mb RAM
  - 4x or Faster CD-ROM drive
  - Sound Blaster(TM) or 100% compatible sound card
  - 30Mb free hard drive space, Recommended 220Mb
  - 100% Microsoft Compatible Mouse

Windows 95

  - IBM PC or 100% compatible Pentium(TM) 90 or faster
  - Windows(R) 95
  - 16mb RAM
  - 4x or Faster CD-ROM drive
  - Sound Blaster(TM) or 100% compatible sound card
  - 105MB Windows 95 free hard drive space, Recommended 220Mb
  - 100% Microsoft Compatible Mouse
  - DirectX(TM) 3.0+
  - Optional: 3DFX card (OpenGL) patch available soon

Well let me start this review with my conclusion........ it's a
big disappointment!!!

Now let me try to explain.......

You start the game as Luther, son of Scotia, the witch you killed
in Lands of Lore 1, Luther is in jail but Luther has a problem,
well two really....or make that three.

His first problem is that he is in jail for no reason, his second
problem is that he changes into a little lizard now and then, and
his third problem is that he changes into a huge monster now and
then.

In the introduction of the game you escape from prison and you end
up in the Draracle's Caves (again a left-over from Lands of Lore
1), you explore the caves until you find the Draracle, he then
sends you to the southern continent in search for a cure to your
curse (changing into Lizard / Monster).

At the moment of writing this I reached the Savage Jungle, CD 3,
and am trying to get into some tombs...........

The main disappointment of the game is that it is not even close
to Lands of Lore 1, you are only 1 player, no party at all, the
RPG part is very thin, okay you have an inventory, but that's
about it, only if you keep your mouse over an object you get a
voice telling you what it is, and for me being non-English it's
bloody hard to understand.

You carry some armour, but you never know the pros and cons of it,
you gain experience as you slay more creatures, but it's all so
unsatisfying.

The biggest annoying part is the fact that you keep changing from
human to lizard or monster, at the beginning of the game you
understand that it's part of the curse and you're looking for a
cure, but reaching CD 3, being in a fight with some zombies and
changing into a lizards that dies in 2 seconds is not funny at
all.

As the game continues your personal quest gets hooked up with
Dawn's (also left over from Lands of Lore 1) quest but you can't
stop feeling that all this game - so far - is, is a personal quest
for Luther.

I truly don't understand why the game took so very long to make,
so far all I have seen could have been done with the Quake or Duke
3D engine, add a movie in here and there and you're finished .....
talking about movies, most of them are really crap, as good as the
movies are in Starfleet academy, as crappy they are here, real
people in a drawn background, looking silly, looking pasted in.

Luther talks in the game, he talks to people, he makes sounds, his
face changes when he gets hit ...... but it's all so silly, as an
example ....... you find a big door with a guard, you kill the
guard, open the door to find a dragon who was held prisoner there
.....  now Luther says: "Say there, you look like you got to get
out of here, any change you could take me to the southern
continent ?"  in a voice as if it was the most normal thing to ask
a dragon who has been locked up for ages .........

Then of course Luther interacts with you too, click on something
and he will say "ooh" or even if you are lucky "aah".

You ,of course, meet talking people in the game, and boy do they
talk, and there is no way you can stop them, you have to listen to
their whole story. If you forget to save, get killed and have to
redo a part then again you have to listen to them, at one point I
just went downstairs to get a drink and by the time I got back the
"interaction" had finished and I could quickly save my game to
avoid hearing it for a 3rd time if I would get killed.

As for the puzzles...... ok take the one in the cemetery, you have
to charge a glass ball at a machine to enter some tombs, the
puzzle is to find the glass ball, the machine, knowing what to do
with the ball and using it to enter the tomb....... okay so
far...... but there are about 8 tombs, and you use 1 ball to enter
the 1st tomb, there you find another ball, that ball has to be
recharged so you can enter the 2nd tomb..... but the bloody
machine to recharge is in the catacombs below the cemetery, so you
end up walking 5 minutes to charge a ball, just to enter a tomb,
get a new ball, charge it, enter a tomb, get a new ball ........
and that another 7 or 8 times ..... to me this has nothing to do
with puzzles, but with lengthening the game.

The sound in the game is very good, voices are okay, just what
they say is crap <g>, graphics are nothing spectacular as for the
size of the game, well it's big because you walk from one side of
say the jungle to the other the whole bloody time just to get
something silly like some bee wax, again it's lengthening an
otherwise small part of the game.

So if you liked Lands of Lore 1 and hope to get more with Lands of
Lore 2, then don't buy it.... I'll probably try to finish it, but
after that I am sure I will never look at it again.

@~A postscript: Alex finished it after just 5 or 6 days; most
@~disappointing after such a long wait for the game to appear.
@~Sue




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