[JemyM]

Lands of Lore: Throne of Chaos
I always were a fan of the Eye of the Beholder series. Unfortunately only the first two were ever released on Amiga and I didn't have a PC until much much later. Both Eye of the Beholder III and Lands of Lore (that was going to be EotB3) were released on PC but it took many years until I got to finish EotB3 on my own. And it would take yet many years before I could finish Lands of Lore on my own, so I did tonight.

Story
Scotia, the witch, controls the dark army that threatens the kingdom.
King Richard (voiced by Patrick Stewart) send out the player to find the Ruby of Truth. Right outside King Richard keeps you encounter Scotia herself but she doesn't attack, instead right when you get back into the keep Scotia attacks and poisons King Richard. The rest of the game is spent searching for a way to cure him.

The storytelling is a step above for the time. It plays out partially by comments made by your characters and partially in cutscenes. The events unfold one by one taking new twists and turns just when you thought you done it all.

Graphics & Sound
For it's time, Lands of Lore is a beautiful game. If one appreciate "handpainted" pixeled artwork, this one is really well made. It doesn't have the ugly FMV or 3d Graphics that would be mainstream right after Lands of Lore was released. The sound is well done with some great music (sounds especially good with a good soundfont) and the voice acting is great, including Patrick Stewart.
Unlike Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore uses some pseudo-3d engine that appears 3d when turning around and when you move, but behaves just like a static 2d dungeon crawler. The character portraits are animated and behave according to whatever happens to them (take damage etc).

Engine & Gameplay
The 6-character party of the Eye of the Beholder series is now only 3 and you only have 3 classes to level. Each character can level all three classes by using the primary weapon of choice for the class. A Fighter strikes better and level up by using melee weapons. A Rogue is used for ranged combat and lockpicks and is ofcourse boosted by using ranged weapons or throwing. The mage have several spells in his arsenal but must use offensive spells to gain levels. At the end of the game you most likely have leveled all your characters to at least some levels in each class.

The game is really hardcore. There's one particular item that makes an almost impossible level just hard and for story reasons it seems intuitive to waste it before you even get there. There are monsters that earthquake and make you drop all your weapons on the ground, leaving you to figure out how to beat them without weapons. There are monster that eat your armor from you, monsters that take no damage from anything but a level 4 spark etc. Just figuring out how to beat the monsters is quite nasty. Still, it brings a challenge and variated maps. Each new level means new content, new music, new puzzles, new monsters and new loot. It's really what's fun in a game, I think.

Final Conclusions
This is one of those middle-90'ies gems that still today is worthy of a playthrough. The story is well written and storytelling have taken a great step forward compared to Eye of the Beholder. Gameplay is unfortunately a step down to Eye of the Beholder I think. Only 3 characters and no Dungeons & Dragons mechanics.

I do not plan to play Lands of Lore 2 anytime soon. I have watched bits of a playthrough on youtube and while that is somewhat enjoyable, I prefer partybased RPG's.