Game 94: Knights of Legend (1989)

      

Knights of Legend

Origin Systems (developer and publisher)

Released 1989 for DOS, Apple II, Commodore 64

Date Started: 24 March 2013

     
Knights of Legend has already delivered a gameplaying experience I haven't felt since I played Wizard's Crown almost three years ago: party-creation angst. Most games have a standard selection of races and classes, similar enough to each other that you don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to fill your six slots. Even though I hadn't played Might & Magic, Ultima III, The Bard's Tale in ages--or Sentinel Worlds and Star Command at all--I was still able to create parties in less than an hour.

Knights of Legend, however, left me practically paralyzed with indecision for most of the day. Unlike most games where classes are available to all or most races and sexes, in this game, race and sex determine the available classes. For your 6 party members, you choose from 12 human male classes, 4 human female classes, 6 elven classes (males and females are the same), 8 dwarven classes (only males available), and 3 Kelden classes (also only males). That's 33 choices. It takes 34 pages of the 157-page manual just to describe them all. And the descriptions aren't just straightforward run-downs of attributes, strengths, and weaknesses ("the barbarian is a strong fighter skilled in heavy armor and two-handed weapons, but not magic"); no, it's all couched in terms of some old codger's recollections in a bar.

The "Dark Guard": one of the more interesting-sounding classes in the game.

There are tables with average statistics, weapon proficiencies, and such later on, but it still took me forever to get through it and put together what seems like a decent party.

Knights of Legend takes place in Ashtalarea, a duchy of the kingdom of Sondar. Ashtalarea is a peninsula, separated from the rest of the kingdom by a mountain range. It is a relatively generic high-fantasy region of men and dwarves and elves fighting orcs and goblins and ogres, with each conforming to the standard Tolkien mold. There is one original race: the Kelders, peaceful winged humanoids who live in the mountains but have recently been moving into the cities of men.

The plot revolves around a sorcerer named Pildar who lives in a "Dark Tower" on an island in a lake. About 60 years prior to the game, he raised an army of orcs, trolls, ogres, and evil men and sent them to pillage and slay the cities and villages of men, elves, and dwarves. Eventually, the duke's forces, led by a legendary knight named Seggallion, were victorious. Pildar retreated to his tower. Years went by. As the game begins, Pildar has become active again. Duke Fuquan has left his seat of Brettle for a dukes' council and has gone missing. Seggallion is nowhere to be found.

The land of Ashtalarea. The game starts in the far center-east.

 

When I read "Seggallion," something clicked, and I searched through my notes of past Ultima games. Sure enough, "Lord Seggallion" was a retired pirate captain who lived on the island of Farthing, south of Jhelom. I got a spyglass from him. That doesn't seem much like this guy, but the Codex of Ultima Wisdom indicates that he shows up again in Ultima VI and is clearly the same character as in Knights of Legend, having accidentally traveled to Britannia via moongate. I almost wish I hadn't read that spoiler.

The manual, I should say, is slightly heartbreaking. It opens with a page titled "The Making of Knights of Legend," which describes how four friends spent six years developing the game and its complex combat system before they were able, through an old buddy who worked at Origin Systems, to attract the attention of Richard Garriott. The combat system is so meticulously planned, the land and its denizens so thoroughly and carefully described in the pages, you can just tell it was a labor of love for the developers. Right on the first page of the manual proper, it glows that "once you've explored Ashtalarea, separate Knights of Legend modules will take you to the nearby lands of Salynn, Barnidor, Tsadith, and Astrikan." Of course, we know now that the game flopped, none of those other modules were ever made, and Ashtalarea was never heard from again.

Creating my first character

Back to the characters. Each class has an "average" score in each of 7 attributes: strength, quickness, size, health, foresight, charisma, and intellect (all on a scale of 0 to 100). These come together in various ways to determine three other statistics: health, balance, endurance, and "body points." It became reasonably clear from reading the materials that I'd want a couple of tanks, a couple of ranged fighters, at least one scout, and at least one mage. I came up with the list below--but I've just gotten started, so I welcome comments. Everyone got a four-letter name because that's as many as you see on the game screen. [Edit: Apparently, the manual is wrong and you can have five letters.]

The designated lead character.

• Coll, a human male "Duke's Highwayman." The class seemed like the standard "knight errant" type, good with heavy armor and weapons.
• Hela, a human female "Ghor Tigress." One of a legendary race of female warriors from a matriarchal society. Struck me as a good balance between strength and speed.
• Aedd, a human male "Dark Guard." The Dark Guards were servants of the evil wizard Sildar before seeing the error of their ways. Now shunned by most of the inhabitants of the land, they work towards redemption. The stats for this class seem average, but I liked the idea of this kind of character.
• Moro, a Kelden male "Far Seeker." A winged race that lives in the mountains, the Kelden have three varieties. The "Cliff Guards" seemed like warriors; the "Rock Rangers" more like scouts; and the one I chose somewhere in between.
• Onia, an elf female of the "Melod" clan. A wild race known for music and dancing. Decent stats put her in the ranged fighter or scout category.
• Yder, an elf male of the "Pyar" clan. A breed of "rogue elves" known for their intermingling with humans. The best intelligence that I could find.

The proud but, for the moment, pantsless party.

If you look at the statistics tables in the book, you might think that my choices above are a bit off, but it didn't take me long to see that the book's assessment of average statistics was way off. The Pyar elf, for instance, is supposed to have an average intelligence of 66, but in my rolls, I never got anything less than an 85, and I got more than 100 twice. Similar, the Duke's Highwayman is supposed to have an average strength of 66, but I never got anything less than a 78 and ended up with an 85. The number "66" shows up so often in the manual, in fact, my hypothesis is that someone stuck it in there as placeholders and forgot to change them to the actual values.

I eschewed dwarves on Petrus's recommendation, the rationale being they cannot ride horses, apparently making wilderness travel a lot more complicated.

The game allows you to painstakingly change your icon.

I should mention that the game comes with a portrait editor, allowing you to customize each character, pixel by pixel. This seemed like a lot of work, but I might play with it later.

This is what we call a "bad sign."

With the characters created, I started to explore the city of Brettle, home of Duke Fuquan, whose butler told me that he's been off to the dukes' council for a while, and he's starting to get worried. There are two weapons shops, a bow shop, an armor shop, two inns, a temple, a stable, a tavern, a training barracks, and a wizard's tower in town, along with several houses.

Wandering the town.

I was pleased to see that the game, like 2400 A.D., adopts the traditional Ultima approach to dialogue, where you type keywords. Sometimes, those keywords will become apparent from the NPC's introductory statements; sometimes, you'll get fed those words by other NPCs. They don't respond to NAME, HEALTH, and JOB, but almost everyone has something to say about "duke," "Seggallion," or "Pildar." As in the Ultima games, four letters (SEGG, PILD) seems like enough to prompt the response. None of The Magic Candle's nonsense where asking about THE LAST UNICORN gives you a different response than LAST UNICORN.

A response to my asking about PILD. "Innocent until proven guilty" is apparently not a key concept here.

The dialogue ties neatly to itself and the lore presented in the manual. For instance, the manual describes how, during the War of Darkness, Seggallion made one blunder when he was convinced to lead his army's strength into a valley, leaving a small, elite unit called the Old Guard to hold Shellar Ridge. Once the enemy saw Seggallion leave, they swarmed the ridge, slew most of the forces, but left the members of the Old Guard alive, chopping off their hands. Exploring the town, I ran into two NPCs who referred to "Seggallion's folly" and also a man named Stephen of Craymore, clearly a member of the Old Guard, who had no hands. He was happy to talk a little about Shellar Ridge.

Asking a knight about a past battle.

 

The interface is a bit annoying, though. With the exception of selecting characters, which can be done with the number keys, everything is done by clicking on icons. What's more, you need two clicks to execute each command: one to select the icon, and the other to actually DO it. There are no keyboard shortcuts the way that Tangled Tales, which used a similar interface, offered. Talking involves clicking twice on the "mouth" icon, typing the keyword, hitting ENTER, reading the text, clicking on the "Continue" icon, and then, if you have more to ask, double-clicking on the mouth again.

In a weapon shop. The icons at the bottom of the screen are, in order: leave the shop, check out my character portrait, listen to what Endle has to say; ask Endle a question, look at the items he has for sale, sell items I already possess, and forge an item with an ingot (which I don't have yet).

In my "The Perfect CRPG: Difficulty" posting, I talked about how there should be some difficulty or cost associated with saving the game. I praised series like Might & Magic, in which you can only save in limited locations and wondered aloud whether there were any games that forced you to pay something--gold or experience--to save the game.

I should be careful what I wish for. Knights of Legend introduces both of these features: you can only save at inns, and each character has to fork over 50 to 100 gold pieces for the privilege. Now this would have been delightfully difficult except Origin had to go and screw it up. The particular character you want to save has to be the one with the gold in his possession, and there's no way to trade gold between characters! Isn't that the most absurd nonsense? I got myself into a situation where one of my characters bought so much armor, he didn't have enough gold to rest and save. Fortunately, new armor sells for its original purchase price, so I got around it by having one character buy some armor, give it to the broke character, and have him sell it. Even with this work-around, saving is expensive enough that I'm definitely not going to be doing it willy-nilly.

All of my characters started with weapons--some of them with both a melee weapon and a bow--but they were all naked, so my first order of business was to purchase some armor. I haven't worked it all out yet, but this isn't a game where you can just purchase the armor with the best protection as soon as you can afford it. It's much more complicated. Every suit of armor has an associated weight, and if the bearer isn't up to carrying that much weight, strength-wise, it quickly exhausts him in combat. For both that reason and for economic ones, I outfitted my fighters in medium-strength "cuirbolli" and my two elves in lightweight leather.

Purchasing armor.

You buy separate items of armor for head, body, legs, hands, and feet, and you have separate equipment slots for a necklace or pendant, ring, belt, and six pockets. Adding yet another factor, for optimum weight distribution, each piece of armor must be "fitted" to the character--a process that costs another 10-20% on top of the purchase price of the item. Lots of logistics in this game.

Reviewing my highwayman's equipment. There aren't many "paper doll" games around just yet; before this one, I can only recall Drakkhen and Galdregon's Domain.

 
Wandering around Brettle and talking with the various NPCs, I soon found myself the recipient of three separate quests:

1. Some bandits have stolen the Guild of Knights' standard and have taken it to their fortress north of the city.

2. Some ghouls stole a magic quill from a witch named Hegissa and fled into the forest to the south.

3. Some "ruffians" broke into the home of Stephanie, stole a gavel, and took it to the woods of Tantowyn. The gavel is an "ancient symbol of the Aldermen's Guild." Everything has a guild around here.

All seem relatively straightforward, and I've decided to tackle the bandits first, since a) from the description, they're relatively close; and b) they're not ghouls.

Pildar seems to get blamed for everything that goes wrong around here.

I don't have enough money left for horses, so we're walking right now.

Soon, my friend.

There's a lot of things I'm still confused about--I'm saving a full reading of the manual for when I'm a little more familiar with the game--but I'm looking forward to checking out the storied combat system, which has prompted various reviewers to different hyperbolic extremes. Of the two reviews on MobyGames, one contains the phrase "best role-playing game I've ever played" and the other is titled "Gaming hell." By next time, I should have a sense of how I feel.