So now we've looked at Lands of Lore I and II, I suppose all that really needs to be done now is review Lands of Lore III, and then this little series will be at an end, because Lands of Lore III is so poor that it has almost certainly ruined the chances of a Lands of Lore IV ever coming out. And now I've made that sweeping judgement, I suppose I'm going to have to back it up.
Lands of Lore I was excellent, no doubt about it. Lands of Lore II should have been better than the original, but as I think I pointed out in my review, there was something that just didn't feel right. Lands of Lore III is just a bad game and I can point to several things in it that I think contribute to the problem.
First off is the plot. Granted, computer games plots are rarely all that innovative. Lands of Lore I was not particularly inspired: a baddy starts trying to take over the world and you have to stop her. Lands of Lore II was better: you have been cursed and your attempts to cure yourself will result in you defeating a baddy along the way. In Lands of Lore II, moreover, you never knew what would happen next. The story developed well. Lands of Lore III makes no such attempt. The story is, at first glance, mildly interesting: your soul is ripped out by hellhounds and scattered over five dimensions, and you have to recover it. That's where it gets silly. To recover your soul, you must seek out bits of a broken mirror. Okaaaay. And what's worse is that in each one of the dimensions, the broken bit of mirror has been seized by a baddy, and you have to fight it for the honour of regaining the mirror. Now, while this is just about plausible in the case of the dragon (which would like shiny things) in Volcania, quite what the computer core of a nuclear bunker in the Shattered Desert dimension would want with a bit of mirror is beyond me. It gets worse as well. It appears that the game's makers suddenly realised that having the player go through five different zones collecting the mirror - and once they had recovered the mirror, they'd won - would mean it would be impossible for the player to fight a big baddy at the end of the game. So they write a bit of dialogue that establishes Jakel, the servant of the Draracle, as the villain of the piece. Now, that's okay with me, but the fact that they provide no evidence for it, and the player's character (Copper LeGre) just figures it out suddenly, bugs me for some reason. Also, towards the end of the game, bits of other dimensions start to leak into our own, creating very odd environments with fire next to ice and all sorts of stuff like that. It's not very imaginative, that's all.
Another thing that annoys me about this game is the way the world is set out. All the action in our own dimension takes place around Gladstone Keep, Gladstone Forest and the Draracle's Cave, as seen in Lands of Lore I. To get to the other dimensions, you have to go through one of five portals which have opened in Gladstone Forest. The whole portals thing is quite sloppy, as it means that the programmers can present five (or six, counting the original dimension) different environments without having to show how the player approaches such environments. It's always good to see different landscapes like the ice mountains, the volcanic underworld and the radioactive desert (although, frankly, I think the Ruloi Homeworld and the Haunted House that made up the other two dimensions could have done with slightly more thought, especially the latter), but the way these can just be presented as totally different dimensions, instead of aspects of the same world, is just boring. It is just for the sake of a minimal amount of work on the programmers' part (although I suppose they couldn't help it - this game was rushed out in just over a year, because Lands of Lore II did poorly in the shops, Westwood wanted to clear their names by producing something really good. Boy, did they screw up with Lands of Lore III).
One of the most annoying aspects of this game, though, is the programmer's insistence that the player has a 'familiar' - that is, a creature which helps you. The problem is that all four of the available familiars are among the most annoying arrays of pixels that ever sprang from a programmer's deranged mind. The one that especially springs to mind as I make this point is Griselda, a stupid fairy that flies around you shrieking inanities such as "You do find me attractive, don't you? After all, you did pick me, you know" and other such drivel. I believe Griselda is described in the manual as a fairy with "a biting wit" (or something very close to that) but I saw absolutely no evidence of this, merely sarcastic comments in a particularly grating tone. Lig, the iron golem, was better, but only because he just flies around and barely says anything at all.
Another thing I wish to complain about in this game is the movie sequences that the programmers put in. It's always nice to have movie sequences. Some of these sequences were pretty good, actually. The one at the end where all the dimensions start growing grass and get rivers and pretty flowers and lots of things like this, for example, is particularly impressive (never mind that it doesn't make sense plotwise for this to happen). However, the programmers who did the movies were not very good at animating humans. They moved rather jerkily and didn't look remotely realistic. The ones in Lands of Lore II were a great deal better. I could make a sarcastic comment to the effect that the ones in Lands of Lore I were a great deal better, but I won't.
And lastly, before I progress onto the good aspects of the game (of which there are gratifyingly few), I will complain about one of the more serious problems with Lands of Lore III. It is absolutely bug-ridden. I know I can't really talk, given that the last computer game I made was full of bugs as well. I seem to recall editing out about 40 bugs in one afternoon after finishing doing that game. But you expect better in a professionally produced game, really. Lands of Lore III, as mentioned earlier, was rushed out in an attempt to make people realise that Westwood was capable of producing a good game, where Westwood would have been better advised to develop this one to a point where it was actually ready to be sold. Consequently, we get lots of bugs. The most annoying is the one where, when you eject one CD to put another one in (the game has four CDs, and requires you to swap between them just about every time you enter a new area, which in itself is very annoying), the programme stops and brings you back to Windows, where you get an error message that says 'Request to eject drive in operation. Continue?'. Really they could have worked that one out, surely? Plus, of course, once you have been brought back to Windows, the mouse stops working, so you have to get yourself back into the game by using the keyboard. There are countless more bugs in this game, but I'm really not going to waste my time by listing them.
However, Lands of Lore III does manage to get a couple of things right. I believe I was complaining back in my review of Lands of Lore I that all King Richard seems to rule over is a castle and a forest with three thugs in it. Lands of Lore III sets right this impression very well. Gladstone consists of the castle itself (which is duplicated almost exactly as seen in the first game, another good point), a kind of courtyard where the more upper class members of Gladstone society seem to live, and Lower Gladstone, the actual town of Gladstone. This town is full of interesting things to do. There is a pub where you can go and pick a fight (but not buy a drink, it doesn't seem to stretch that far), shops where you can buy and sell almost anything, and also an inn where you can rent a room. This must have sounded a cool idea on paper, but doesn't really work in the game itself. You are supposed to rent a room in this inn, but honestly, what benefit does paying your rent bring you? All you get is a room. You can't sleep there, so all you seem to be able to do without it is leave items that you might want later in it. Unfortunately, you can pretty much leave stuff anywhere you like and be sure of being able to get it back later. It's not like the world is full of people who go round nicking whatever you put down. (In fact, the world seems to be full of beneficient people who go round looking for hollows in trees and putting money, herbs, rocks, bottles of medicine, bags of rotting meat and daggers in them, to judge from the amount of stuff you can get just by wandering around Gladstone Forest and clicking on all the hollows you come across.) So the room idea is interesting but not particularly useful.
One of the things I felt was rather lacking from Lands of Lore II was a kind of thing that told you about things you might encounter eg. monsters. Lands of Lore III amends this. Where Lands of Lore II just had the automap, Lands of Lore III has a full journal which records all the areas you've been in, some of the conversations you've had, the missions you're supposed to be completing, gives you information about any monsters you may encounter and is in general very useful indeed. So there's another good point in favour of this game.
But now I've remembered another bad thing about the game. I touched on it earlier when I mentioned Griselda's "biting wit", but didn't really go into a full discussion. The dialogue in this game is absolutely terrible. The guy who plays Copper isn't much of a voice actor anyway, and his lines are really poor. On encountering the travel agent's shop, which is closed, he states, "Travel agency. Hmm, must be out sampling their own wares." Ha! Ha! Ha! But it gets better. In the thick of battle with something, he is wont to cry out some witticism such as, "Why don't you just go ahead and kill yourself? Because you're not worth my time, and I'm in sort of a hurry right now!" which are guaranteed to have the player rolling in hysterics. These little comments weren't even funny the first time he said them; when he says the latter every time he has a fight, the whole thing begins to wear a little thin. His conversation with Victoria, the new blacksmith, in Gladstone Keep, is one of the most cringe-worthy pieces of work I have ever encountered. The animation is poor, the dialogue is terrible and the acting is worse than these two points put together. I won't humiliate my readers by recounting the dialogue here, but take my word for it. It's awful.
Right. We seem to be at the end of this rather rambling article. I didn't plan it before I started writing, you see, so I don't know exactly what I haven't said that I should have done. Never mind. If I think of something else, I can always come back. But in the meantime, let's give Lands of Lore III a big thumbs-down. The two good points I have mentioned here don't even begin to counteract the multitude of terrible problems with this game.
Read the review of Lands of Lore 1!
Read the review of Lands of Lore II!