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

 

That's a heck of a promise.

      

Warriors of Legend

United States

Synergistic Software (developer); Virgin Games (publisher)

Released 1993 for DOS

Date Started: 27 March 2025 

Date Ended: 17 April 2025

Total Hours: 17

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

     

Summary:

 

The last RPG using Synergistic's "World Builder" engine, Warriors of Legend takes place in a world clearly inspired by the stories of Conan (the subject of the previous World Builder game). A party of four heroes must slay the members of the Black Circle and stop an invasion of the land of Lemuria. The "studio" view cities and dungeons are fun to explore, but just about everything about the game's mechanics are a janky mess with minimal RPG elements. It's too bad, as there are some good ideas here, like full-sentence dialogue, a reagent-based magic system, and lots of equipment slots. 

     

****

    

No one seemed to be terribly interested in Warriors of Legend, so I pushed on to the end. The ultimate goal of the game, not terribly well-related during gameplay itself, was to find and slay the members of the Black Circle, collect their pieces of the Chaos Key, and use it to stop the god Set from entering the world.

        

I had killed the first two members of the Black Circle—Moc Madure and Gamorrah—during the first three entries. Each member of the Black Circle, save one, can only be killed with spells. I'm not sure if there's only one spell that kills each one or whether there are a couple of possibilities. The spell system is so unreliable, with spells sometimes not casting when you click and sometimes not doing anything when they cast, that my victories may have been just luck with a particular spell rather than the inevitable need for that spell.

     

An NPC gives us information about the next location.

      

As you kill each member and obtain each key, dialogue back in Illandria changes to reflect your victory and to give you hints for the next mission. I'm going to be charitable and assume that there are sufficient hints in all of this dialogue to get the player through the levels and to suggest what spells are necessary to kill the bosses. The problem is that there are an awful lot of people in Illandria, including many who are easy to miss, and I had no interest in doing a complete circuit of the city between every mission. Thus, the hints that I received were mostly incidental as I visited shops.

    

I stumble upon an NPC who tells me a lot about the fifth boss, Bandor.

        

A Dead Man's Key looted from Gamorrah let us into the ancient palace. The palace was a large maze of hallways with frequent invisible pits. Falling down a pit meant fighting a battle and then climbing up back to the beginning. Fortunately, the potions of "True Seeing" that we had found in Gamorrah's lair let us see the pits and avoid them. Even then, the screen is small enough that we sometimes stumbled into them accidentally, especially when coming from the north.

      

Somehow, I didn't get a screenshot of a single pit, but here's the palace in general.

      

A few new enemies made an appearance here: beholder-looking things, large lions, and fat, toothy worms. They all died from a couple of bonks with our Thor's Hammers.

      

Worms and beholders in one screen shot!

    

At the end of the dungeon, we found the third Black Circle member, Khalimad. We had two dialogue options with him: "Prepare to die, Evil One!" and "Can I use the bathroom?" Since I had to replay the encounter several times, I tried both. The second option got him to laugh and give us a hint: "On the off chance you should defeat me, you'll be wanting an empty flask."

   

It took about half a dozen tries to defeat him. Someone in town had told me that he could be defeated with the "Gripper" spell, which is nice except there's no such spell, at least not that I was able to find. "Paralysis" eventually did the trick, which I suppose is enough of a synonym for "Gripper" that either I was supposed to figure it out or they changed it in production and forgot to change the dialogue.

         

Why do these guys all have the same face?

      

His treasure chamber had the third piece of the Chaos Key and a Mummy Key. A nearby room with a waterfall explained what he meant about an "empty flask." Clicking on it with the flask got us a potion of Holy Water, supposedly one of the ways to defeat the skeletons in the next dungeon. I couldn't get it to work. The game doesn't let you throw it at enemies, just consume it yourself. How does that help?

     

The next dungeon was the final choice on the outdoor map: the pyramid. We went through a few screens of Canyons of the Ancients before finding a sarcophagus propped up against the canyon wall. A skeleton came out of it and, like last time, killed all of us in about 15 seconds. After several reloads, I learned that the "Armageddon" spell was a sure way to kill these skeletons, freeing me from having to figure out how the Holy Water worked.

    

I wasted some time trying to defeat this skeleton the traditional way.

     

The Mummy Key let us into the pyramid through the empty coffin. I guess we somehow started at the top, as we had to make our way through multiple tiers to the bottom. This part of the game was both annoying and clever, which would be a good tagline for Synergistic's entire catalogue. The game became a kind of platformer in which we had to find our way from the top to a particular door near the bottom by going across platforms and up and down ladders. The key to this exploration was the "Plank" spell, which lasted about 30 seconds each time I cast it. While it's active, a plank automatically appears to connect to the nearest platform if you walk to the edge of the current one. You can also click to generate them. 

    

Making our way across magically-generated planks.

         

There were a number of doors, most leading to minor treasures and battles. Annoying, entering a door caused all the planks we had generated on the outside to disappear. We had to find the particular door that led us to the final battle with a lich named Bohan Atep. There were a bunch of skeleton minions leading to his chamber, and he had a couple when we found him. There were no dialogue options; he just attacked. Fortunately, "Armageddon" wiped everyone out.

     

Moments later, my "feeble spells" kill him.

       

The fourth piece of the Chaos Key lay beyond, as did a White Key.

     

At this point, I had a problem: there were no more places to visit on the map. I wandered around the city for a while, selling my loot and buying Armor Amulets for all the characters. With the mithril armor I'd already purchased, my characters hardly ever got damaged in combat. The Armor Amulets changed "hardly ever" to "never." The only thing I had to worry about were spells from boss enemies and the occasional spider capable of poison.

    

From NPC dialogue, I knew that the next member of the Black Circle was named Bandor, but I had no idea where to find him. I waded through about three dozen more barbarian jokes (My favorite: "Do barbarians prefer cats or dogs?" Answer: "Depends on the sauce") before I gave up and consulted a walkthrough.

    

A: "A new home."

      

It turns out there are large parts of the city that are completely inaccessible from the ground. You have to climb a ladder to the inner walls and use the "Plank" spell to cross rooftops. The ladder was always there—I verified it by starting a new game—but I hadn't registered it as a ladder. 

     

I remember I had the same problem when I played Captive. I want my ladders to have two side rails, dammit.

      

The ladders and upper walls led to a couple of new locations, including the Thieves' Guild Vault, but I was there prematurely.

      

Crossing rooftops with "Plank."

        

The other new location was the inner part of the city containing King Osric's Palace. It had five exterior doors and multiple interior doors, and the shtick was that I had to open them in the correct order with the correct keys. There must have been about 20 doors and as many keys. I assumed they were one-use items and dropped them after using them; If I hadn't, I wouldn't have had room in my inventory for anything else.

      

Q: What does a barbarian do when he encounters a wooden door that requires a particular key?

        

As we explored, we got attacked by random guards—gnats at this point—and occasionally by the next boss, Bandor the Butcher. He claimed to have usurped the throne from King Osric years ago, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would he have put out a call for heroes? 

   

Anyway, he claimed that: "Your strength is no match for my shape-shifting power. I can transform myself into any shape, any form, from the smallest mouse to the greatest dragon." Sure enough, every time he attacked, he took on the form of a different monster from the game, including beholders, lions, red dragons, and giant spiders. The problem for him is that none of those monsters had been a real threat for hours now. Every time he attacked, we just bonked him a few times and he disappeared. For the last half dozen times he appeared, he said, "Prepare for our final battle!," but it was never the final battle.

   

Except, I guess, this time. You can see the obelisk in the room behind him.

     

It took me a couple of hours to open all the doors necessary to enter his inner chamber. I don't remember what his final form was, but it was something pathetic. After we'd crushed him with our Thor's Hammers, we found his obelisk and got the fifth piece of the Chaos Key and the Bronze Key.

      

Bandor attacks us as a lion.

      

The final area was accessed via the Thieves' Guild Vault, through a door, and down some stairs: The Temple of Set. It was another large, annoying maze full of monsters, including some new ones: giant orcs and flying gargoyles. It was impossible to map normally because directions were inconsistent. I had to use a node map. 

 

Some new foes, no harder than the old ones.

         

It took a while, but I eventually found an obelisk with the sixth Chaos Key piece. Beyond it was a room with a swirling red gate. A voice said: "Oh, more tourists, I see. Having fun? Busted up any of our quiet local taverns yet? That's what you do isn't it? Go away." It seemed like a weird statement from the God of Chaos, and I suspect that the game accidentally pulled dialogue from an NPC somewhere in town.

     

At least it wasn't a barbarian joke.

         

A demonic face then peeked through the gate. I wasted a lot of time trying to attack it and cast spells on it. Nothing seemed to work, but to his credit, Set was patient. He didn't fight back or anything. He just looked at us while we pummeled him. It was sad, really.

   

Eventually, I thought to try to use the pieces of the Chaos Key directly on the gate. I chose one and clicked. "As Set devours your soul," it said, "you realize you threw the keys in the wrong order." The game immediately ended. Order? Studying the graphics, I realized that the keys all have a little letter on them. Five of them spell out CHAOS and the last one has a little key symbol. 

       

What kind of "Chaos Key" is this if I have to throw its pieces in order?

         

Tossing them in that order worked. After each one bonked Set in the head (which was slightly hilarious), they came together to seal the gate. After that, a couple of screens of endgame text began: "With the Chaos Key restored, the portal into Chaos has been sealed. Set can no longer meddle in the affairs of Lemuria. King Osric, in his gratitude, has declared the heroes Champions of Lemuria. They shall never want for wealth, power, and honors. And, of course, they will be expected to deal with any other minor threats to the kingdom that may come up in the future . . ."

       

          

And that's the end, though I like the idea that I could fire it up and get a few new barbarian jokes whenever I want.

     

Warriors of Legend is incomplete and unbalanced in ways that go beyond a simple lack of playtesting. There are flaws in its very concept. It is another sign of the somewhat baffling ignorance with which Synergistic treated the rest of the CRPG world. From Dungeon Campaign (1978) all the way through the World Builder games, Robert Clardy seemed so interested in doing his own thing that he never looked at what anyone else was doing, and because of that, I don't think he ever really understood how the core mechanics of role-playing games are supposed to work. So we end up with a game in which you can get the best equipment in the first hour; in which the player has full-sentence dialogue options that are mostly meaningless; in which there are four characters but only one can act at a time; in which a visually interesting city is populated with dumb, generic encounters; in which a complex spell system is used six times (what is the point, even, of the mana bars?); in which you have multiple options for healing, none of which are necessary because you can just wait a minute; in which you find multiple interesting-looking inventory items with no clear purpose; and in which you have inventory slots that are never used.

     

Conan was clearly the better game. It had crisper, larger graphics and its RPG mechanics, though underdeveloped, at least made it clear that it was more of an adventure game. I don't know what they thought they were doing here.

   

Let's try a GIMLET:

    

• 5 points for the game world. This is probably the best category. I like the visual and linguistic themes of the Hyborian Age setting (I'm 100% sure that this was originally going to be a Conan game), and I like how the NPC dialogue reflects the changes the party is making in the world. I wish it had come with a map and the streets had been a bit easier to navigate.

      

Scenes like this make me want to like the game a lot more.

      

• 2 points for character creation and development. You need warriors and one guy to cast spells. Archers and agility are useless; thieves and stealth are useless. "Character development" consists of some of your attributes increasing a little bit during the game as you hit things.

• 5 points for NPC interaction. You do learn about the game world from NPCs, and their dialogue—when it's not barbarian jokes—makes up a lot of what's interesting about the setting. I give some credit for the mechanics of full-sentence dialogue options even if they hardly ever matter. 

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The monsters in the game are visually interesting but don't offer much in the way of challenge or tactics, except the bosses, who annoyingly cannot be killed except by certain spells. There are no non-combat encounters except for the navigation puzzles.

• 2 points for magic and combat. Combat involves nothing more than selecting characters and pointing them at enemies, and we've talked about how the interface makes this annoying. The variety of spells is mostly wasted, plus subjected to an interface in which you can only mix one spell at a time. 

      

Bashing a giant spider.

       

• 3 points for equipment. There are several types of weapons and armor, but most of the system is wasted by allowing the player to find the best stuff from random battles early in the game. It's unclear what some of the most expensive items (Demon Amulets, Undead Amulets, ankhs, spellbooks) even do. 

• 4 points for the economy. It's not bad. Between spells and the more expensive equipment, you generally have reasons to sell loot and burglarize houses for at least the first half of the game.

• 2 points for a main quest with multiple stages but no options or side-quests.

 

Ataris's inventory at the game's end. I hung onto that Dragon Sword for the entire game, just in case.

       

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are generally nice. Sometimes, they strive for too much detail, but in general, they contribute to the evocative nature of the setting. Sound is minimal, on the other hand, and I thought the interface was a nightmare. It required far too much mousework, often clicking on moving targets. Getting into the spell menu during combat requires far too many clicks. And the perspective is a real problem in a game so dense with buildings and items. In the city streets, it's often not clear where you can and cannot walk.

• 3 points for gameplay. Linear, not replayable, too easy, but at least not terribly long.

     

That gives us a final score of 32, below my "recommended" threshold, which is accurate. I don't recommend it. Looking at my entry for Conan, which I gave 42, I said: "Synergistic doesn't do things quite the same way as any other RPG developer. This has produced both bad and good results, and Conan fortunately balanced on the "good" side." Warriors of Legend is balanced on the "bad" side.

    

I think "historical" might be stretching it.

        

Warriors made so little splash that the only magazine I can find to review it was the January 1994 PC Joker (German), which called it a "diamond in the rough" and gave it 69%.  

     

I have no idea what was going on at Synergistic in the early 1990s. The company isn't nearly as well documented as, say, Origin or SSI. Somehow, they had lost the Conan license but managed to get licenses to make, in the same year as Warriors of Legend, games based on The Beverly Hillbillies and Homey D. Clown. It would be hard to imagine characters less in need of video games. Accordingly, both games have shown up on lists of worst games of all time. Who at Synergistic thought that these were viable properties? 

      

Homey don't play that game. Neither did anyone else.

         

It doesn't surprise me that the company at this point took a turn towards action and sports titles. Their sole RPG for the rest of the company's life is Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance (1997), which I understand is perhaps more of a strategy game than an RPG. I really hoped that Synergistic, which started off so strong with the Campaign series, would really "make it" with one of these later RPGs. Alas.