Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance

"Yet another opinion on the game nearly everyone loves to hate!"

Yep, like many people who come to this website frequently, I've read all of the sarcastic praise this game receives on the message board and read all of the reviews, most of which are 1s. Why don't I add a 1 to the pile, you ask? Well, many aspects of this game do indeed suck royally, but I have played worse games.

Story: 5
Well, I haven't read the story that this game is based off of, but the backgrounds of the characters are slightly interesting.

Gameplay: 3
When you enter the maze, there is a huge pit in front of you and two doors on each side of you. You pick a door and start walking and running around, killing various monsters and picking up items.

Now I see why everyone hates those accursed midgets! They ARE a pain in the ass to kill, as are some of the other monsters! Hit detection leaves a lot to be desired in this game. I myself prefer using Flint as my front character, because he seems to have the best accuracy out of everyone else. Not only are some of the monsters a pain in the ass, some are downright weird. For instance, take a look at those those green bipedal lizards that shoot sparklies from their mouths. Just because you get up close to them they stop shooting at you and continue to back away from you until you corner them, in which case you can kick their asses with no trouble at all. After you do kick one of their asses, they will disappear just like all of the other monsters do, but somehow one last sparkly shot is blasted AFTER the lizard's body is gone. o_O

One thing I don't like about this game is that no matter who is in front, other characters will get damaged slightly if you are attacked. This is supposed to add realism to the game, because all of the characters are walking through the maze together, but the characters behind you do not deal extra damage to the enemy the front character is fighting. A very stupid handicap.

The spells in the game are moderately cool, but I hate how I have to access the menu just to cast an attack spell. They should have used a spell system like the one in Zelda II; select a spell to be used on the fly, then cast it by pressing one button.

There are items you can pick up, but some of them have no use at all. I spent quite a while trying to find someone who could use the ''pouch'' to see what's inside, but to no avail.

The maze seems quite big, but because almost everything looks the same it's very easy to get lost. Not everyone draws out maps on a piece of paper.

If you die, the game actually freezes after it displays the points you acquired. For some reason, no matter how many monsters I kill, it says that none of my characters gained experience points. Eh!?

Graphics: 5
Yes, the graphics in this game pale in comparison to a lot of NES games, but I don't think that they are down at the level of Atari 2600 or Apple II graphics like most people think. Putting aside the fact that the full body/mug shots of the characters look good and the picture in the title screen sequence looks good, the actual in game graphics are, but tolerable. I think they should have left out the huge mug shots next to all of the characters' life bars to make room for larger, more detailed backgrounds and sprites. The animation on the characters and monsters is adequate, but since they are so small, you'd think they'd have more room for better animation. The maze is suffering severely from lack of color, which does look crappy, but at least the walls and doors are decently detailed and there are a few things like statues and the like to keep the background from looking 100% bland.

When I found the waterfall, it looked a little messed up. Why they didn't fix the way it looks is beyond me.

Sound/Music: 3
The sound effects seem ok, except for the fact that the digitized clips of monster moans and character moans do get kinda annoying, not to mention the female characters use the same male sounding moan of pain, which is just stupid. Also, when you swing your weapon at the enemy, you hear the swish of your weapon/moan of your monster after you see the weapon connect. Not good. The three songs in the game sound fine, but if you play this game long enough, they can get quite repetitive.

Control: 2
Needing to get a running start to jump I can understand, not being able to duck I cannot. If you can't run up to a green lizard before it decides to unleash it's Sparkly Attack on you, you WILL get hit, plain and simple. One of the obvious bad things about the control that everyone hates is the fact that it can be very hard to hit the enemy. having to press down and the direction you're facing plus the attack button is very cumbersome and I find my character sometimes taking a step forward and getting hit rather than swinging their weapon. If I actually do swing my weapon, I have to hope and pray that I damage the enemy (unless I'm using Flint, who is much more accurate, at least to me...and even he misses sometimes). The menu just plain sucks. Having to go to the menu every time I want to shoot a magic missile? I don't think so. Not only that, but sometimes the missile shoots diagonally upward for no reason at all, missing every single enemy in front of me. WTH!?

Replay Value: 1
If you actually beat this game, give yourself a pat on the back and go buy yourself a huge ice cream sundae; you've certainly earned it. If you actually want to play through it again, go check yourself into an asylum. :P Yes, there are many items that can be and are left undiscovered, but most of them have no use anyway.

Bottom Line?
Well, it certainly was an interesting experience playing this game. Are there any people who would actually enjoy playing it? Not many at all. Unless you enjoy added challenge from extremely crappy controls and don't mind sifting through your items to find ones that actually serve a purpose, there is next to no reason to play this game at all except to see why everyone loathes it, which is why I give it a 2.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/01, Updated 09/24/01