E141: Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

Westwood Studios wasn’t always known for the command and conquer series. While 1992’s Dune 2 laid the foundation for the RTS genre as a whole, they were more famous for their dungeon crawling RPGS, usually associated with Dungeons and Dragons. So when they decided to develop a new IP with Lands of Lore, they were coming to it as grizzled veterans, and they had no intention of messing around.

It was released to near universal acclaim. Critics praised near everything about it - graphics, combat, puzzles, even the UI. It was considered to be less cruel than other dungeon crawlers, less punishing and with greater clarity when it came to puzzles and enemies.

But this was 1993. The genre that Lands of Lore belongs to is very nearly dead, with only the indie scene keeping it alive by the skin of its teeth. As the genre developed, slow and methodical dungeon crawling was trumped by real time demon slaying, something that even the sequels to the game were not immune to. The friction of delving into a dungeon where death lay at every turn, and confusion reigned is something that we see very rarely today.

Is this with good reason? Have we moved on from what Lands of Lore has to offer? Or is it still worth playing all these years later?

On this episode, we discuss:

UI.
Lands of Lore has a very unique UI, with heavy use of screen space dedicated to inventory and spells and only a relatively small window showing you the real time action of what your party is doing. Does this offer excellent functionality, or is it just a bunch of wasted space for no good reason?

Combat.
Combat is turned based, but movement is real time. Attacking and spellcasting are tied to cooldowns, but using items is not. Enemies chase you in pods when aggroed, but you are free to rest and heal to full at any point. Do the contradictions in the combat systems of Lands of Lore exist for a reason, or does it just become a complete mess?

Level Design.
Lands of Lore’s dungeons are elaborate mazes, filled to the brim with traps, treasure and buttons. Progressing through them is difficult, it's easy to get lost or stuck, and much of the environments look the same. Is this part of the fundamental experience of playing a dungeon crawler, and part of the fun, or is it simply an exercise in frustration?

We answer these questions and many more on the 141st episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Lands of Lore OST - Frank Klepacki

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Is Lands of Lore a good entry point into the blobber genre? What were your experiences playing this one on release? If we were to play another one, which one should we tackle next?

Come let us know what you think or recommend us a new game on our community discord server!

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