Adventure Gamers - Forums

I only have one playthrough to go by, but in my playthrough I didn’t keep the same companion throughout the game.

That’s kind of a minor spoiler, TBH.

Antrax - 17 October 2015 12:13 AM

That’s kind of a minor spoiler, TBH.

Since you think so, I’ll put the spoiler tags on it.
I’m not sure it applies to all playthroughs though.

I don’t think you really have choice. At least, in all my playthroughs, everything happened the same way.

wilco - 16 October 2015 11:14 AM

That was disappointing, seems I was just lucky and just picked the right companion from the start. Tried going back and none of the others lets you leave the first room.

I thought that was disappointing too. I wonder if it was always intended that way, or if they had more ambitious plans for the games originally.

There is a similar scene in Infocom’s Stationfall, where you are given the choice between three robot companions. But in that game there is never any doubt that only one of them is the correct choice, so I didn’t mind that at all.

I thought Companions of Xanth was pretty weak for a Legend game, but that may be because I know nothing about the source material. (Though that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying some of their other games.) It would be interesting to hear the opinion from someone who’ve read and enjoyed the books.

I haven’t read the books, and I can accept the game has some issues (like a maze), but for some reason I absolutely love the game. In part it’s the way the game fucks with your head early on with the whole game-within-a-game thing, and in part it’s because the pun-based puzzles are sometimes very clever.

Antrax - 21 October 2015 11:30 PM

I haven’t read the books, and I can accept the game has some issues (like a maze), but for some reason I absolutely love the game. In part it’s the way the game fucks with your head early on with the whole game-within-a-game thing, and in part it’s because the pun-based puzzles are sometimes very clever.

It’s probably just not my kind of humour, and I tend to prefer adventure games where the story feels a bit more serious. My favorite Legend games (of the ones I’ve played) are Death Gate and the two Gateway games, but it’s still interesting to hear what others think of the other games.

I’m with you on Death Gate, again because of puzzle design. I also really like Superhero League of Hoboken, but will readily admit it’s not really a good game. Just a hilarious original one.

I finished Companions of Xanth.
I think it was very enjoyable, have no idea what the source material is like but liked the fantasy world even if it was mostly standard fantasy stuff.
That concept of game within the game is pretty unique (you even start the game as a desktop screen until you “start to believe”), the whole gods bet, little man at the start and companions was different.
Lots and lots puns, with some puzzle “monkey wrench” puns (that were of course the harder for me). But the puzzle difficulty is still on the easy side with the companion giving lots of hints, sometimes almost insulting the player . I mostly liked the comedy tone and fun dialogues.
Game is very linear with no dead ends, I wish areas were bigger for exploration. The maze in the middle of the game, I ended up drawing it since the in game map is very poor, that made it much more easy to solve. Also has a somewhat tedious puzzle that drags for too much that only involves checking references in an in-game encyclopedia. Rest of it was mostly more about inventory puzzles. In the end, not a very ambitious game, but still a mostly fun experience

Now on to Death Gate, seems like it’s one of the more popular ones

Did you have a graphical glitch when climbing aboard the Censor Ship? IIRC my copy had it and I always wondered if all copies do.

I don’t think so, everything seemed ok, what was the glitch?

wilco - 22 October 2015 02:07 PM

Now on to Death Gate, seems like it’s one of the more popular ones

One thing I thought was interesting about it from a purely technical point of view was that the CD includes both a hi-res and a low-res version. I don’t know how common that was back in the day, but the only other game where I’ve personally seen that was Prisoner of Ice.

I don’t remember much of the puzzles in Death Gate (I need to play it again some day), but I do remember enjoying the story. The graphics looked nice, and I really liked some of the music.

wilco - 23 October 2015 03:42 AM

I don’t think so, everything seemed ok, what was the glitch?

One of the screens was completely garbled, instead of graphics it just had those weird colored boxes. Probably a minor error in the data files that screwed the decompression up or something.

There’s really no point in comparing the game to a seven-book series. The game cuts a lot of the epicness and character development that you just can’t fit in a game with a limited amount of videos and text. It ticks all the right boxes but the journey is amazingly hurried - you can’t compare a six-screen world to an entire book, content-wise.