Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos Review

A beautiful screenshot of a monochrome landscape.

Release date: September 1993
Platforms: MS-DOS, NEC PC-9801, FM Towns
Genre: Action RPG, Gridder

Not long after finishing work on Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, Westwood Studios was bought out by Virgin Interactive, who was, according to Wikipedia, “home to renowned developers who went on to create successful franchises such as Command & Conquer (another Westwood Studios franchise) and Earthworm Jim (Shiny Entertainment).”

After the Westwood buyout, the higher-ups at the company decided to drop the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons license to focus on a new property, believing that creating a new brand would help to promote the company, and because they wanted to develop their own properties instead of games for other publishers to profit from.

Enter Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, a game that many Eye of the Beholder fans consider to be the true third entry into the trilogy, something that I myself agree with. They knew that creating a new game was going to be difficult. Using the experience they got and the engine they developed while working on Eye of the Beholder I and II, they wanted the game to reach a wide audience, but Brett Sperry was frustrated about creating characters for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, rolling for stats that he knew nothing about, so instead of creating characters, the player selects one main character from four pre-made characters.

The dev team wanted the game to be special, but they knew that Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was also in development at the time and that it would use 3D graphics and Lands of Lore was already too far into development for a change to be made from 2D to 3D, so a blur effect was added when the player's party moves to give off the illusion of 3D instead.

So! With all of that said, does Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos stand up to the test of time?

Scotia has found the Nether Mask...!

The plot of the game starts off simple enough, an evil sorceress named Scotia has discovered something in the Urbish Mines called the Nether Mask, which allows it’s wearer to assume any shape of any power that he or she wishes, and now threatens the Kingdom of Gladstone. King Richard knows truly just how dangerous Scotia and the Nether Mask are, and so he summons four champions of the Kingdom forward. They are as follows:

Ak’shel the Dracoid: The most scary-looking of the group, Ak’shel is the designated Mage of the group, being the most proficient when it comes to magic, and while his defense is nothing to sneeze at, his Might stat leaves quite a bit to be desired.

Michael the Human: One of two Human characters, Michael is the designated Fighter of the group, having the highest Might stat of all the champions. Needless to say, though, that all of that practice that he’s done fighting has left him little time for magical pursuits, and so his Magic stat is the weakest of the lot.

Kieran the Huline: A Huline, a humanoid cat, Kieran is the fastest of the group, but he’s also the weakest of the group, as well. Kieran has the lowest stats of all the characters, only beating out Ak’shel in Might and Michael in Magic. He also cannot wear any footwear in the game. However, Kieran has a special ability that no other character in the game has, and that is a much shorter cooldown timer. Just like in Secret of Mana and Eye of the Beholder I and II, after attacking or casting a spell, you have to wait for a hidden timer to countdown until you can attack or cast a spell, and for Kieran, that cooldown timer is shorter, most likely to make up for his rather lacking stats across the board.

Conrad the Human: Last but not least in Conrad, a Human just like Michael. Conrad is the most well-rounded champion that the player can choose as their preferred champion, the main character of their playthrough. He doesn’t hit as hard with weapons as Michael does, but he hits harder than Ak’shel and Kieran, and while his spells aren’t as potent as Ak’shel’s, he has a higher Magic stat than Michael and Kieran.

Basically, what you can gather from the above character bios is that Kieran is basically Lands of Lore’s Hard Mode. He has low stats, and he can’t wear footwear. Everyone else has high stats and can wear footwear, as if wearing footwear ever made a difference.

Anyway, after choosing one of those four characters as your main character, you then get thrust into the game, starting in Gladstone Keep. A guard welcomes you to the Keep, and tells you that King Richard waits for you in his throne room. Along the way, you can click on numerous things and you get to hear your character say something that relates to whatever it is you clicked on. Remember, though, this is a First-Person Action RPG Gridder, so it has elements of Point-n-Click Adventure games in it, so that was bound to be in the game, right? 

You can click on things to get at least two responses
from your character.

After you’ve finished your business in the Keep, you’re told that, because of the threat from Scotia, Richard has an urgent need for the Ruby of Truth, which is with Roland, who lives in the Southland forest. Geron gives you a writ, and you head down there, only to find that Scotia knew that you would try that, so you have to report back to King Richard, who you find was poisoned by Scotia, who is trying to steal Richard’s ring. You’re told to seek out the Draracle, who will surely know a clue to the cure needed for the poison affecting King Richard. After you meet the Draracle, Gladstone Keep has been torched, Timothy telling you what happened just before he succumbs to his wounds. This leads you to travel over Lake Dread and search for the others to help remove Richard’s casket and find the ingredients to the elixir needed to cure him, while also tracking down the Orcs that stole the Ruby of Truth. Of course, needless to say, that things aren’t always going to go according to plan. These first few moments in the game show you that Lands of Lore isn’t messing around. It’s got a more cheerful attitude than that of the Eye of the Beholder games, but it starts off dark and it will stay that way until near the end of the game. Spoilers, I know, but this is a game that came out back in September of 1993, man, forget spoilers! Game came out over 20 years ago, by now. 

Now that we know what the plot is all about, let’s take a look at the gameplay. It plays very similarily to Eye of the Beholder I and II, in that, like I said earlier, is a First-Person Dungeon Crawler Action RPG, or Gridder, whatever you prefer. Anyway, things proceed in almost the exact same way as they did in Eye of the Beholder. When your characters travel around, you do it in first-person, and you travel all over the place, from Gladstone Keep, to the Gray Eagle Inn, to the Ghorka Swamps, and to many other places. However, the Dark Army stands in your way at every turn to make sure that you don’t succeed at your quest. Yes, while this game is similar to the Eye of the Beholder games that came before it, it’s also a lot harder and a lot more unforgiving that the first one, but not nearly as bad at it as the the second one. There’s no moving pits that you have to worry about, at the very least, something that was unneeded in Eye of the Beholder II. The only moving pits to worry about in Lands of Lore is the ones that require the player to press buttons to move, and usually they’ll never appear beneath your characters’ feet, at least, not too often. One last thing that Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos has over the two Eye of the Beholder games is that it has a built-in automap! Something that Eye of the Beholder I needed, and Eye of the Beholder II definitely needed it!

The stats screen. Here, you can see your characters'
attributes, their equipment, their levels, etc.

Now, when fighting, your characters only have about four stats, similar to the original Dragon Warrior on NES. You have Health, Magic, Attack, and Defense. Yeah, the Magic Stat shown in the beginning just shows you how much MP that character will start with, roughly. You also have three levels instead of just one: those levels are Fighter, Rogue, and Mage. Obviously, to build them up, you need to take actions that pertain to how that character would fight. To increase your Fighter level, you have to fight with Melee weapons. To increase your Rogue level, you must shoot arrows with bows, bolts with crossbows, throw throwing weapons, or simply throw things at opponents. Notice that I didn’t say ‘fight’ with ranged weapons, I said ‘use’them. You can stand in place and fire a bow or crossbow or throwing weapon, and your Rogue level will increase, although not as fast as actually shooting someone with a bow, crossbow, or throwing weapon, but it still increases it. Lastly, to increase your Mage level, you have to cast spells on enemies a lot. Now, I’ve hacked the game so that I would level up to max in the past for all three levels, and apparently, throwing stuff will increase your Rogue level even if you don’t hit anything with the stuff that you throw, and casting spells supposedly increases your Mage level, but neither of those worked for me without editing my save files. Of course, the dev team just couldn’t be bothered to increase your attack and defense stats with level ups, only weapons and armor will do that. Your Health and Magic pools, however, will increase as you level up, depending on which level increased for that character. Fighter gives the most Health at level ups, Rogue gives a moderate amount of Health at level ups, and Mage gives the least amount of Health, but it’s also the only class that will give a character extra Magic whenever you level it up.

There are three levels of difficulty that are available to play on which determines how strong the monsters you face are. On Wimpy, they’re all pushovers, or at least, most of them are. On normal, you get a fair but challenging experience, and on Ferocious the game takes the gloves off and lays into you like crazy. The characters, as I said with Kieran being the hard mode, also determine how easy or difficult a time you’ll have with Lands of Lore. In my opinion, and this is only from what I’ve played of Lands of Lore, and I have beaten it a few times, is that Ak’shel is the easiest to beat the game with, Conrad is fairly easy, Michael is normal, and Kieran is hard, like I said. Speaking of the characters having a difficulty level of their own reminds me of two things: one, the difficulty not only determines how hard monsters hit, but also how many HP they have, and how much experience they give for being hit with attacks. For example, whenever I play Ak’shel on Wimpy difficulty, he only ever seems to reach halfway to level 3 Mage, but on Ferocious I had him reach level 3 Mage by the time he reached the boss in Roland’s Manor. Of course, that’s probably just me, but it wouldn’t be the first time I saw something like that in an RPG.

The music in this game is so good! Composed by Frank Klepacki, the music ranges from the Northland Forest’s curious but somewhat primitive-in-nature sound, and the Southland Forest sounding cheerful, like everything is going to work out in the end. Of course, if you actually read the earlier part of the review that talks about the plot, you’ll know this part of the game won’t end well, but it still sounds cheerful. You have a cavern theme that shows that this is not a fun place to be, but that you’ll need to explore it and brave the darkness to reach your goals, whether it be the tutorial cave, which is called the Thug’s Cave, or the mandatory cave that comes along at the tail-end of the game, the Catwalk Caverns. I would honestly argue that this game is Frank Klepacki’s crowing achievement in video game music, although I’m not sure he would say that.

The graphics are top-notch, too. I don’t know who drew them and, to be honest about it, I really don’t care because I’m not a graphics-whore, but for the most part, for an MS-DOS game, the graphics are amazing. Well, not at modern-day standards, they’re not, but for the time the game was made, they were gorgeous and I still think they hold up well today.

You can expect to see quite a few cutscenes like this
throughout the game.

Of course, I have been praising the game quite a bit, I mean just gushing over it, so of course this raises the question of “what does the game do wrong? What is it that gets under Jestan’s skin?” Well, to me at least, the game feels unfinished. It’s not a bad game, don’t get me wrong, it just feels like it’s missing something, you know? There are areas in almost every map of the game that goes unused, the biggest surprise coming in from Yvel Woods, the later parts of the game throwing traps that are clearly designed to waste your time and pad out the game, making Lands of Lore seem longer than it actually is, and one part of the game, where you’re forced to commit genocide of an entire race of monsters which feels like a gigantic ass-pull (and I’m sorry I swore).

Overall, I think the game holds up well, and if it sounds interesting to you--it is--then you can buy it on gog.com right now, for just $5.99, and it comes with Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny, the sequel to Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos! Two games from the 90s with the price of one on gog.com? What are you waiting for, Christmas!? Go get ‘em! I promise you, you won’t regret it! Well, the first game, you won’t, but I can’t say the same for Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny.

I give this game a 7/10. Give it a whirl!

You can buy the game(s) here.

This review, including all text and screenshots, are © 2019 Jestan Diams. Jestan Diams, Jestan Diams’ Magical Tome of Games, and all original characters mentioned within this review are © and ™ Jestan Diams. Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos belongs to Electronic Arts, unfortunately. All rights reserved.