Worlds of Legend: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

     

Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire

AKA: Son of the Empire: Legend Worlds I - This Time Its War!

United Kingdom

Mindscape (developer and publisher)

Released 1993 for Amiga and DOS

Date Started: 19 November 2023

Date Ended: 31 January 2024

Total Hours: 35

Difficulty: Hard (4/5)

Final Rating: 36

Ranking at time of posting: 382/508 (75%)

          

Summary:

 

A sequel to Legend (1992) using the same interface, Empire has the strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor except that it's a lot shorter--which is a strength. The victorious Legend party is summoned to the home of the Assassin party member, the Empire of the Moon, where the emperor--the character's father--has just been assassinated. This plunges the nation into factional strife, and the party is told by the Assassin's aunt that to reunite the land, they must find the four pieces of the Eternal Amulet and summon the Eternal Champion.

   

Gameplay takes place in a series of dungeons in which characters explore from an oblique angle, find treasures, and fight monsters. Combat is absurdly chaotic, with the party and dozens of monsters engaging in a melee that only the most astute player could possibly even follow, let alone manage. The game is bolstered by a justly famous spell system in which players can make up their own spells by stringing together different runes; I found these useful before and after combat but rarely during combat. Character development and role-playing are both relatively limited. It's a game with interesting ideas that needed a few interface improvements to be truly "good."

    

*****

    

Well, I finally won an Anthony Taglione game, but holy hell was it hard. I didn't see Legend to the end, but I can't imagine that it was harder than this.

   

When I last blogged, I'd found three pieces of the four-piece amulet, and I was heading into Guidato for the fourth. Guidato was the usual two levels with the usual locked doors and keys of various materials. The dungeon was perhaps a little more open than the others, but otherwise not worth recounting in detail. There were a couple of rooms with exits separated by a river, requiring me to enter from multiple angles, but otherwise nothing new except that I think Guidato might have had the only no-spawning-enemies-guaranteed rest room. 

    

I can't quite remember what this puzzle was about. I solved it, though.

     

I think the enemies were easier in Guidato in comparison to previous dungeons, although occasionally one of them would cast a single massively powerful spell that plowed through my hit points and killed one or more characters. I didn't take any notes on the puzzles here, meaning they were easy enough for me to figure out.

     

The final shard.

      

A sign towards the end noted that: "The Eternal Champion has visited our world before, but never for very long." In the room where I found the amulet shard, another sign said: "Bring them all and make them one. Invoke the gods so HE may come."

   

I took the fourth shard back to Sushiana. She somehow fused the pieces and gave the completed amulet to me. "Pray that the Book has told true," she said. "Here, I give you the Eternal Amulet whose power may be used in An Odd Shrine."

       

I guess that's not just a descriptor but its actual name.

      

I stopped by the Mad Monks for leveling--paying instead of fighting--before going on to the Odd Shrine and using the Eternal Amulet to "Call forth the Eternal Champion." Alas, Sushiana's book had tricked us. A demonic visage appeared and gloated:

      

At last! I am free of these ancient bonds. For centuries, I have planned the means of my release at the hands of a human. I thank you, mortal fools! You have now granted access to your realm. With my Drune Lords I shall lay waste to your world.

          

Brandon Sanderson used this same twist.

      

With that, a new banner emerged from the central shrine and started circling around the lands, conquering everything.

 

The demon's name, according to the top of the dialogue screen, is "Tetrahagael." According to my notes, you fight this demon towards the end of Legend. He's a boss in the dungeon Fagranc. You kill him to get his key. This doesn't quite square with the idea that he's been trapped in the Odd Shrine for "centuries." "Drune Lords" is apparently an homage to the comic story Sláine, a Conan-like hero featured in the British comics magazine 2000 AD. While I was scanning information about the characters in Sláine to see if I could find any other influences, I happened to notice that one of the characters is named "Megrim," which might have served as the inspiration for that name in a bunch of Motelsoft games.

     

Back in Imperia, Sushiana didn't even apologize:

      

Oh dear, what a disaster. To slay the demon isn't possible without the Eternal Blade. There is only one chance .  .  . You must fight the foul army and kill one of the Drune Lords. Only a Drune Ring can gain you entry to the Shrine and the Blade.

        

Now the difficulty began. First, I wasn't entirely clear from Sushiana's description, although in hindsight it should have been, that killing the Drune Lords meant attacking Tetrahagael's army. Second, once I realized that, I had trouble identifying his specific army. I didn't really note what his banner looked like when it appeared, and I'm not sure I realized there was only one of them. Third, while it's not hard to get into a banner fight while you're trying to cross the map, it's hard to get into a specific banner fight, as neither you nor the other banners travel in a straight line. The result was that I fought a lot of banner fights, blowing through my reagents, before I hit the particular one I needed.

       

The party and the evil army nearly connect at the bottom of the map.

      

I had to reload a few times during this process because Tetrahagael kept conquering all the cities before I could get to him. This brings up a message that says that he eventually conquered "all known civilisation."

    

They wrote more text for this than the "winning" message.

    

I eventually reloaded from before I freed the demon so I could engage him immediately when he left the Odd Shrine. This worked. But then it turned out that finding and engaging Tetrahagael's army was a snap compared to actually fighting it. What you have to do, it turns out, is fight long enough to kill a Drune Lord, then loot the ground for its Drune Ring, then escape from battle because Tetrahagael himself is impossible to kill (or even damage) through normal means. 

    

The Runemaster stands alone, futilely trying to kill Tetrahagael. I just realized now, looking at this screenshot, that the Drune Ring is literally at her feet.

    

None of the enemies in this game is labeled, so I have no idea which of the demon's many allies are Drune Lords. Beyond that, I didn't notice that one of the packets that some enemy dropped to the ground was a ring--the little dropped bits are too small. Most important, it wasn't clear to me that the solution involved abandoning the battle and escaping. I kept trying to fight it until the end. I didn't realize that the demonic enemy that couldn't be hit was Tetrahagael himself; I thought it was the Drune Lord I was supposed to kill.

   

I tried for ages to beat the army using my usual strategy, which was to let the first three characters die, concentrate entirely on the Runemaster, letting her "Damage," "Disrupt," and "Thrall" the foes around her, cast "Multi-Healing" when she got low, and plan to "Vivify" her companions at the end. The problem is that there was no end. I saw that the demonic figure was taking no damage, but I figured if I could just clear everyone else out, I could take time, experiment with spells, and figure it out. His allies never stopped coming, though. After a battle that lasted more than 30 minutes and left every square on the screen strewn with loot (including, somewhere, the Drune Ring), I ran out of both spells and reagents and died.

     

Tetrahagael does a little butchering of Macbeth.

       

I tried again a couple of times, then started work on a "Summary and Rating" entry in which I swear I felt fire shooting from my mouth. A couple of paragraphs, I thought about the battle again and realized that the unkillable foe must be Tetrahagael and the Drune Lords must be the other dudes in the army.

    

I thus engaged yet another time. I wasted some time trying to figure out what monsters must be Drune Lords before I realized it didn't matter; I just needed to kill a bunch of enemies and start looting the battlefield. To help, I periodically walked off-screen, which re-sets the monsters. Finally, I noticed something that looked like a ring and grabbed it.

    

Tetrahagael had some smack talk as we took off:

     

That sounds like a pretty miserable place to live, even for you.

      

We took the ring back to the Odd Shrine and entered, finding a one-level dungeon. As we entered, an odd sign said: "Although you know that you've never been here before, the decorations in the Odd Shrine seem disturbingly familiar." That must be a reference to Legend, but I don't know what, exactly. 

       

Another message was very pro-demon.

    

Enemies in the dungeon included more four-legged foes, including some things that looked like small dragons and others that looked like centaurs. Still, most of the battles weren't too bad. The funny thing about this game is that fixed battles in key rooms are usually pretty easy, with just a few foes. Then you leave the room, enter a random corridor that you've already cleared, and encounter a massive random fight in which the enemies never seem to stop spawning. All your characters die; you reload; and the battle isn't even there the next time.

    

Enemies come prancing towards the party.

      

A couple of puzzle rooms gave me trouble. I had to look up a hint for one, and I really didn't like the solution. The room had four areas, each accessible from a different door on the perimeter, each with a single "Damage" rune on the floor. A lever on a pillar caused bolts to fire across those runes. To actually hit the runes, someone needed to be standing on them. Four runes, four characters. But there was no way to put one character on each rune since there's no way to "Teleport" across water. (It actually works across two of the platforms in the south for some reason, but let's not complicate things.) I tried for a while to get monsters on the runes, but that didn't work, as monsters didn't stay in place on the runes unless there were other monsters next to them, at which point those other monsters intercepted the bolts before they could reach the runes.

       

The Runemaster resurrects her allies, one by one.

     

An online guide had the counterintuitive solution: you have to kill three of your own characters (or let them die), drop their bones on the runes, bring the fourth character (the Runemaster) to the area with the lever, cast "Target-Vivify" on each of the stacks of bones to revive them, then pull the lever. The bolts fired, struck the targets, and somehow changed one of the water squares to a tile, allowing access to the key in the center of the chamber. I wasn't too happy with that solution.

   

I unfortunately also needed a hint for the final dungeon room, where I had to open a sequence of four doors by casting various iterations of "Missile-Damage" or "Forward-Damage" on a "Damage" rune. I figured out that casting "Damage" once opened the first door, twice the second door, and so forth. The problem is that when the first door or third doors open, they close all the others, so there's no way to structure a sequence that keeps them all open. By nudging the characters forward when the doors are open, you can get three of them to the other side, but you need to get all four of them there: three to stand on teleport destination runes, and the fourth to stand on the teleport pad (which won't work if the destinations are blocked) and open the chest.    

    

My three companions are through; now how does the Runemaster get through?

      

Here's the solution I got from a walkthrough: "Stand the Runemaster [two squares away from the "Damage" rune], then cast TELEPORT on him. Now get him to cast MISSILE SURROUND DAMAGE DAMAGE DAMAGE CONTINUOUS DAMAGE DAMAGE DAMAGE DAMAGE at the floor tile before the rune. The instant you cast the spell, teleport the Runemaster to the position between Door 2 and 3 before the first two doors close. Door 3 will open. A moment later and Door 4 will then open."

     

Well, I don't feel dumb for not figuring it out for myself. Even knowing the solution, I don't understand what it does or how it works. I can't believe anyone ever figured that out.

    

My Assassin's final statistics, with the Eternal Blade equipped.

    

The chest contains the Eternal Blade, which can only be used by an Assassin. (That makes sense, as it's his game.) By this time, I also had what I think are the best weapons usable by each of the other classes: a "Slugger" for the Berserker (despite the name, it's an axe); a Vorpal Blade for the Troubadour; and an Arcane Sword for the Runemaster.

     

Sick of combat, the party flees the dungeon.

    

With the Eternal Sword in my possession, it was time to engage Tetrahagael again. (I leveled up, donated at temples for luck, and refreshed my reagents first.) The battle was rendered more difficult because I needed to keep my Assassin alive; I couldn't just rely on the Runemaster and her healing. Yes, she can heal the Assassin, but in the chaos of battle, targeting a specific ally is nearly impossible. I probably should have invested in more usable items.

        

i got this message a lot this session.

     

Making this final battle particularly tricky is that Tetrahagael teleports all over the place, frequently and randomly. I couldn't keep the Assassin anywhere near him. (Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that you can't save the game on the encounter screen before the battle, so when you lose, you have to go through the annoying process of intercepting the evil army again.) Finally, I realized that I needed some item that would allow the Assassin to do his own teleporting without the Runemaster's help. I had such items earlier in the game but used them up.

   

I hit a few cities until I found one selling Cloud Helms, bought a bunch, then realized the Assassin can't equip those. I tried again and found one selling Cloud Rings. These worked. I bought six of them, just in case.

      

It turns out I only needed one.

       

Winning still took me about six more tries. I simply couldn't keep the Assassin next to the demon. He kept teleporting away, and when I tried to follow, he'd be surrounded by other enemies or allies. When I finally killed him, it was so sudden I didn't even notice. I was in the middle of clicking things and I blew past the final messages, suddenly finding myself at the DOS prompt.

   

Screaming, I reloaded, went through a couple more iterations of the final battle, and finally got the closing messages, which were hardly worth the effort. (They weren't in Legend, either, I recall.) Tetrahagael has a final speech:

      

I dub this a "Trandle Oratory."

     

And then the game had a few sentences (at the top of this entry) describing how "the men of the Empire were again united beneath the flag of Imperia." The game never really explained why they became disunited in the first place nor why my defeat of the demon caused them to reunite. I mean, before I accidentally released the demon, Sushiana told us that only the Eternal Champion could unite the land. What changed? Probably Sushiana was just wrong about everything.

   

Let's move on to a GIMLET. It will be interesting to see how the total compares with Legend's, which I won't look at until I finish. If the GIMLET has any consistency, we should see a similar final rating, but I would think Empire would get a boost in the final category for being shorter, but maybe 1 point less in combat for lacking the strategy component.

    

• 4 points for the game world. It's got a backstory and some lore and a quest that's personal to one of the characters, but I can't give it much more than that. The various factions aren't given any of their own lore (or even a reason for fighting), and the story is often inconsistent.

• 3 points for character creation and development. You're forced to play a particular roster of characters. They do have clear strengths and weaknesses in both combat and puzzle solving, but when they get stronger, it feels like equipment has a lot more to do with it than the leveling up process. There are no choices to make when leveling.

• 1 point for NPC interaction. I feel like I'm being generous with that. There aren't "NPCs" in the game so much as "encounters."

• 3 points for encounters and foes. It gets almost nothing for the foes, who aren't even named. At no point in the game did I get a strong sense of which ones even could cast spells. Every combat was a surprise there. Most of the credit here goes to the innovative puzzles. I had to look at hints for some of them, but that might be my own deficiency. The rest were relatively satisfying.

     

A typical puzzle room. How do we get to the other doors?

     

• 4 points for magic and combat. The spell system gets most of the credit here. Combat is otherwise a chaotic mess. With very little helpful feedback. As we've discussed in previous entries, a few basic changes could have made it so much better.

      

Not an atypical combat screen.

       

• 6 points for equipment. This is one of the strongest categories. Because I've found different items in different places after reloading, it's clear that the distribution of equipment is at least somewhat randomized, which I like. With four characters and slots for weapons, armor, helms, rings, amulets, and boots, it feels like someone always gets an upgrade. There's also a huge variety of usable equipment, which provide many of the combat tactics.

• 6 points for the economy, another strong category. With the need to pay for reagents, training, temples, and equipment, only at the very end of the game does it seem like there's more than enough gold.

      

I never really did understand the game's use of "luck."

     

• 3 points for quests. A game always gets 2 for having a main quest and the rest is mostly devoted to side quests. Here, there aren't really any side quests, but I guess the Mad Monk dungeon is optional and would have led to some other weapons if I'd explored it more.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. One point is for the automap. The rest is for the graphics, which are serviceable in places, but in general, I thought the artists over-reached, often trying to depict things that couldn't be depicted at this resolution. I give no points for the rest of the interface, which relies too much on the mouse, nor the sound, which is very sparse and cannot be turned off independently from the relentless and repetitive music.

• 3 points for gameplay. The length was good with this one--much better than Legend--and it gets at least one point for offering a decent challenge in most places, though often going too far. But it's also excessively linear, and it offers in my opinion no replayability.

            

Needing to find a series of keys to open doors got rather old.

      

That gives us a final score of 36, which puts it in the "recommended but not truly good" category. Now consulting my Legend entry, I see that I gave it 37. I was definitely right about "gameplay" (I gave the original a 1 there), but I apparently felt better about the graphics, sound, and interface. I somehow found that it had "redundant mouse and keyboard options"--what was I thinking there? All you can really do with the keyboard is select party members unless you memorize how the rest of the function keys map to the commands. No two of the commands begin with the same letter; why not just have the character hit "P" instead of F5 for "Push"?

   

Economy, equipment, and NPCs were scored the same, and with the same comments. As I suspected, I rated "magic and combat" one point higher. I mysteriously gave 1 more point to "encounters and foes" and 1 more to "character development"; perhaps the latter was more palpable as we moved from Levels 1 to 7 than it was from 7 to 12. In general, I'm pleased with the consistency given the intervening time period (almost 6 years).

      

Despite the subtitle, this is clearly not the Assassin.

     

Although Empire had a U.S. release, it doesn't seem to be covered well in U.S. magazines. MobyGames's review roundup of European magazines shows a wide range of ratings, from 37% in the German PC Player to 90% in the British CU Amiga. The median is in the low 70s. The common theme among the reviews is that the original wasn't bad, but the sequel doesn't attempt to improve anything from the original. Reviews also complained about lack of quality sound. (I was gratified to see the line in the German Play Time review that said, "The constantly recurring music in the background is a bit annoying.") Many of them also shared my complaints about the combat while still praising the magic system. 

    

As usual, a British magazine makes me want to stuff a scone down someone's throat. The reviewer in question is Ben Styles, writing for Amiga Computing in July 1993: "It's about time software houses stopped doing Dungeon Master clones. Worlds of Legend might have the odd feature which sets it apart but it is still a Dungeon Master clone." Other than the fact that it has four characters and puzzles, I don't see how anyone can look at this game and think it has anything to do with Dungeon Master.

      

I found an unpublished article on the entire Taglione series written by Richard Hewison for Retro Gamer, which went out of business before the article came out. Hewison's interviews with Taglione and Peter Owen-James reveal that the idea for the original game came out of a Dungeon Quest board game session. Son of the Empire was originally going to be an expansion to the original game, but it got big enough to justify an independent release. At some point, the developers had a plan to create three more sequels, each focusing on a different character in the party. The next Worlds of Legend game would have been Runemaster's Revenge, which got as far as a 256-color demo before Mindscape lost interest.

       

Anthony Taglione in an undated photo.

      

The pair next developed Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993) for Psygnosis before returning a final time to the RPG world with Hexx: Heresy of the Wizard (1994). As commenters have pointed out, this game is essentially a remake of Bloodwych (1989). Both Taglione and James have credits on games into the 2010s, but no RPGs after Hexx.

    

When I have some more time during the summer break, I may give Bloodwych another shot. I don't think I had a great reason for abandoning that one except that it was too long. I may see if I can get Irene to play with me. She owes me one, as she's been making me play The Lies of P (2023) with her despite my dislike for the entire Souls-like subgenre.