Game 383: Heroes of the Lance (1988)

Including multiple characters in this dragon battle turns out to be inaccurate.

          

Heroes of the Lance
United Kingdom
U.S. Gold (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)
Released in 1988 for Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and DOS; 1989 for Commodore 64, PC-88, PC-98, and Sharp X1; 1990 for FM Towns; 1991 for MSX, NES, and Sega Master System
Date Started: 26 September 2020
Date Ended: 26 September 2020
Total Hours: 4
Difficulty: Easy (2.5/5)
Final Rating: 23
Ranking at Time of Posting: 155/392 (40%)

         

Since I'm playing the final Dragonlance RPG, I thought I might use the occasion to try again with a pair of SSI-published side-scrolling action titles that were contemporary to the earliest Gold Box games: Heroes of the Lance (1988) and Dragons of Flame (1989). I'd previously had issues emulating them, but that was back when I was Level 1 with emulators, so I figured I'd try again.

    

Heroes takes place during the War of the Lance, a time when the dark queen Takhisis schemed to take over Krynn using armies of evil dragons and draconians. Opposing her are the titular heroes--although the manual makes a point that they're not heroes yet; they'll deserve that title when they've achieved their quest. Said quest is to obtain a set of holy relics called the Disks of Mishakal from the lair of Khisanth, an enormous black dragon. The Disks will somehow restore faith in the other ancient gods and thus weaken Takhisis's hold on the land. I am informed that this plot comes from the first Dragonlance novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight (1984).

   

The game was ported to a lot of systems. I thought I'd throw my Amiga fans a bone by favoring their version of a game for once, but I couldn't get anything but "Guru Meditation" errors when I tried to boot the disk, no matter what configuration I used. I moved on to the Commodore 64 version, but I found the graphics so bad that they bothered me, which is really saying something. Finally, I started up the DOS version to remind myself what had gone wrong previously, and this time I had absolutely no problems with it.

       

The game gives some background on each character as it starts.

        

Heroes lets you play all eight of the heroes in turn, and as the game starts, you get a little character summary of each hero. The manual expands upon these summaries with a list of the characters' attributes and equipment. The characters are:

• Tanis, a male half-elf fighter, carries a long sword and bow. Raised by elves but full of wanderlust, he is the de facto leader of the companions.
• Caramon Majere, a male human fighter. Brother of Raistlin. Carries a long sword and spear.
• Raistlin Majere, a male human mage armed with a Staff of the Magius.
• Sturm Brightblade, a male human knight. Swings a two-handed sword.
• Goldmoon, a female human cleric who has a magical crystal staff. Wife of Riverwind.
  
• Riverwind, a male human ranger with a longsword and bow
• Tasslehoff Burfoot, a male kender thief with a hoopak and sling
• Flint Fireforge, a male dwarf fighter who has both a battle axe and throwing axes

     

The characters' attributes and weapons are completely immutable, which disqualifies Heroes as an RPG by my definitions, as well as the game's: the manual says explicitly that "this isn't an RPG" but that "it is based around the concepts of what is probably the most widely played [RPG]." Even MobyGames no longer lists it as such. But it still appears on enough RPG lists that I would have eventually had to do a BRIEF, and that frankly takes as long as playing the entire game. 

          

Character selection from the C64 version.

       

After a copy protection exercise, gameplay starts at the entrance to the lair of Khisanth. Goldmoon is the default character, but the SPACE key brings up a menu, and among the options are switching to another hero. Outside of the menu, you move with the joystick or the keypad. Holding down the joystick button (or ENTER) changes the keypad into a battle menu, with commands for attacking high, medium, or low depending on the direction you're facing.

        

A junction. As I move side to side, I'm moving south to north, but here I can transition to a west-east corridor.

       

Navigation can be a pain since everything is side-scrolling. You have to watch the compass carefully and note the direction you're traveling. When one of the top or bottom compass directions change to blue, the up and down keys let you move into those corridors, switching the side-scrolling direction 90 degrees. For instance, going right (north) in a south-north hallway might lead you to an "up" (west) exit, thus moving you to a west-east hallway. It gets more confusing on a couple of levels that have razor walls, so that moving south from an east-west corridor mysteriously puts you in another east-west corridor without an intervening north-south corridor. That probably doesn't make any sense, but it really won't until you play it.

     

The game can't really decide whether the heroes are individuals or a collective. Although you only control and see one at a time, all of them are assumed to be in the area, and one will fluidly step in if another is killed or (in some cases) even injured too badly. Anyone in the first four slots can take damage in combat, even though three of them technically aren't on the screen, and Raistlin and Goldmoon have to be in the top row for any of the characters to cast mage or cleric spells, respectively. Casting spells is explicitly done with Raistlin and Goldmoon's respective staves, both of which have limited power, rather than through the usual memorization process.

         

The game's selection of magic user spells.

         

Monsters include humans, Baaz and Bozak draconians, giant spiders, trolls, small black dragons, evil dwarves, and wraiths. Some of them are at fixed positions, but some randomly generate, particularly when you transition between corridors or reload a saved game. A lot of the game's fun, and also its frustration, is figuring out what characters and what attacks work best against which enemies. The human and half-elf fighters work best against human enemies. The two characters with bows work well against dragon hatchlings, which continually back off out of melee range. Flint is best against other dwarves, which tend to barrel in too close for humans and their swords. Anyone with missile weapons is ideal against Bozak draconians, which explode (and also try to back away from melee combat). I couldn't find any use for Tasslehoff Burfoot at all, but experienced players probably know secrets that I don't.

        

Dwarf vs. dwarf in a hall of statues.

         

I never quite became an expert on the spells; I didn't even notice "Raise Dead" until I'd already won the game toting two dead characters. I preferred to save the cleric spells for "Cure Light Wounds" and the mage spells for "Web," which reliably paralyzes enemies for a few rounds and is a must for trolls and Bozaks.

         

Approaching a troll caught in a "Web."

          

The game has a bit of a rough start. Until you master the controls and figure out issues such as the optimal distance from an enemy in combat, it's easy to burn through a lot of characters very fast. My first couple of attempts, I lost all of them on the first couple of levels, sometimes several of them in a row in the same combat. There's a lot of luck associated with combat, too. Face off against an enemy one time, and you might lose two characters. Reload and re-engage him, and one character might kill him without losing a hit point. Small variances in distance makes the difference between a character who can't even hit an enemy (even though it looks like he should be able to) and one who kills the enemy in one blow. However, the ability to save and reload wherever you like (except the dragon's lair) makes it fundamentally easy even if the individual battles are hard.

           

I hit the draconian with a "Web," then turn to deal with the fighter.

          

As you explore, you find some items, but only some are useful. Most, including additional weapons and shields, just count towards your endgame points. There are a variety of healing, strength, and heroism potions (color-coded) and some scrolls that only Raistlin can use and seem to cast "Magic Missile." It's possible there are other items. I'm sure I didn't find every corner of the game.

           

After I deal with these guys, I'll have a couple of potions and a couple gems to pick up.

          

There are a few navigation puzzles, including traps that fall from the ceiling, jets of fire that spout from the floor, and pits that you have to jump. Each character has a different jump radius. Raistlin has a kind of "magic jump," and there's one pit that I'm convinced only he can clear. 

           

Clearing a pit on Level 2. It's unclear how all the characters are presumed to have jumped over when they all have different jump lengths.

       

Part of the fun of the game is that although it's not very big--only five levels--there are multiple paths to the final level. A player who adopts a "rightmost path" approach at the beginning faces a very different game than one who adopts a "leftmost path." Entire levels might be skipped depending on what corridor you take. The game is meant to be replayable, and I suppose the highest score would involve finding every treasure and killing dozens of monsters, but every monster you engage depletes resources that you might need for the endgame.

            

Transitioning between levels is not subtle.

         

Ultimately, you find yourself in the lair of the dragon Khisanth. It took me a long time to figure out how to kill him. I suspect it's possible with regular characters and regular weapons, but the only way I could figure out how to do it is to activate Goldmoon, cast "Deflect Dragon Breath" (which takes a lot of magic power), and have her throw her blue crystal staff at the dragon. The manual doesn't give you this clue, but it goes on at length about the staff in several places, so you get the idea that there must be something special about it. I also figured Goldmoon must be the default character for some reason.

       

Defeating the dragon.

           

Beyond the dragon are the Disks of Mishakal in a stack. Once you pick them up, the endgame screen appears with your score, and if you achieved a high score, you can enter it on the leaderboard. It only took me about 4 hours to learn and win the game, and my winning game from beginning to end was a bit less than an hour. Heroes is meant to be replayed and mastered rather than "won." I thought it was a reasonably fun diversion even if I don't understand why the developers couldn't let the characters gain levels--even one or two--from all the monsters.

               

The winning screen.

         

Heroes isn't an RPG, but I'll apply the GIMLET anyway:

      

• 3 points for the game world. It doesn't mean much to someone who isn't a fan of the series, but the manual goes into a lot of detail anyway.

• 0 points for character creation and development. You don't create them, and there is no development.

• 0 points for no NPC interaction.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. There aren't many, but they represent a good cross-section of what the Dragonlance universe has to offer, each with clear strengths and vulnerabilities. The jumping puzzles might be worth half a point.

• 4 points for magic and combat. It's action-oriented, but it does draw from each character's underlying attributes, there are tactics associated with each foe, and magic adds some strategy to the game without overwhelming it.

             

Reacting quickly to a dragon hatchling.

           

• 2 points for equipment. Most of it is fixed, but there are scrolls, potions, rings, and wands to use and treasures to find.

• 0 points for no economy. Finding treasures doesn't really count.

• 3 points for a main quest with an ancillary quest of trying to improve your score.

         

Party statistics late in the game.

        

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and input. There was no system on which I didn't find the graphics to be at least a bit grainy and ugly, but I admit the Atari ST and Amiga versions look nicer than DOS, and I'd bump it a point for those platforms. Sound effects are rare but fine. The controls are a little clumsy and didn't always work the way they were supposed to. I would have preferred separate keys for movement and combat instead of holding down a key to switch between them. Switching between melee and missile weapons doesn't always work consistently. 

• 5 points for gameplay. It has some nice nonlinearity within its limited geography; it's designed to be replayable; and it poses the right kind of challenge for the right amount of time.

      

That gives us a final score of 23, low for an RPG, not bad for an action game rated on an RPG scale. I liked it more than some RPGs from the same year. In general, though, I don't think action games age as well as RPGs, and I think it would be hard to enjoy this today against lots of other titles that offer similar experiences with better graphics and sound and more complex controls.

             

         

It was popular in its era, however, breaking sales records at SSI. In the same issue (December 1988) that Computer Gaming World offered warring perspectives on Pool of Radiance, it had nothing but positive things to say about Heroes. The platform made a huge difference, however. Ratings were low for Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC editions and for both console ports. The Atari ST version (which was the one that CGW played) got consistently high reviews. Amiga and DOS were in the middle.

   

What surprises me most about this game is that SSI gave it over to U.S. Gold, Ltd., a British company known chiefly for distributing U.S. games in Europe. SSI didn't have a strong history with action games, so I can understand why they subcontracted it, just not why they went across the sea to a company that had only ever published titles from other developers. Neither product manager Jerry Howells nor design coordinator Laurence H. Miller have any previous credits that I can find. Whatever the reason, U.S. Gold delivered well enough that they got the contracts for two sequels: Dragons of Flame (1989) and Shadow Sorcerer (1990), both of which I have rejected as RPGs despite MobyGames continuing to insist otherwise. I may try one or both at some point, particularly if Dark Queen drags on, but please remember that making an exception for one game does not obligate me to do the same for others.

       

I'd always been curious about this one, my previous attempts to play having been thwarted, so I'm glad I could finally give it a shot. Let's see what else awaits us in the world of Krynn.