Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance

"As 2001, a tragic year, comes to a close, it is only fitting that this, my 200th review, be for a game as bad as Heroes of the Lance"

OPENING STATEMENT
Heroes of the Lance goes hand in hand with being a landmark review of mine, because it has probably had more influence on my time here at GameFAQs than any other game. Yes, you guessed it, it is time for a story. In the Summer of 2000, Steve McFadden (Psycho Penguin) rounded me and a few other reviewers up to take the message board scene by storm. We took the Heroes of the Lance board, and became the HotL Crew, and made that board our clubhouse. We posted topics without any meaning, we had a great deal of fun, and we were moderated daily for off-topic posting. SCCAN85, Terra Branford, DY$E (DTurner), and many other reviewers were present, and we were soon the most visited game message board in all of GameFAQs. Since then, most of the original members of the HotL Crew have moved on, but a new crew led by Ed the Moogle and Sturms Mustache have taken over. And more of the original crew, including myself, are popping in every now and then as well, so it’s becoming a powerhouse once more. So, anyway, if you want to experience one of the more fun aspects of the GameFAQs faction territory, go to the Heroes of the Lance Board and check out the HotL Crew, where the Heroes of the Lance discussion lasts all day and all night.

GAMEPLAY--1
The gameplay in Heroes of the Lance is strangely difficult to describe. Take your generic action game formula, and add eight different characters, all that immediately pop into the game when another one dies. Also, add a pseudo-three-dimensional aspect that involves pressing down to go through doors above and below you at the same time! And of course, you cannot forget that your characters have weapons, which only work about thirty percent of the time, adding to the excitement. You never know when the sword may actually strike that midget!

Of course, you cannot forget the mazes winding through a castle. Yes, the gameplay actually requires you to navigate a castle filled with more traps than a match of Thirteen Dead End Drive. But do not worry about the traps; They do not fall from the ceiling until you have already passed the hazardous area. They are intended to do much more psychological damage than physical damage. As if playing this game does not do enough emotional damage on its own.

GRAPHICS--1
This is officially the ugliest game ever released on the Nintendo Entertainment System. These graphics would not even be in the upper echelon of graphics on the Atari 2600. Pac-Man is far more beautiful. Heroes of the Lance gives you the pleasure of viewing scantily clad midgets in brightly colored, abstract clothing, attacking colored blobs supposedly looking like fierce enemies. These characters are sadly the best looking things in Heroes of the Lance.

Well, in all actuality, Heroes of the Lance is so simplistic that the only other thing in the game besides the characters are the backgrounds. And the backgrounds do look far worse. They consist almost entirely of the colors black and gray, adding to an already gloomy picture that the inherent lack of quality presents. You will occasionally recognize some squares masquerading as bricks throughout the backgrounds, but only if you squint really hard. That is correct, the developers could not even make straight lines look good in Heroes of the Lance.

MUSIC--1
SOUND--2
This music cannot be from an NES game, certainly not one released as late in the system’s life as Heroes of the Lance. I am really not sure if Atari 2600 games have music or not (I’ll play the system soon enough.), but if they do, their music is better than the music in any 2600 game, even the horrendous E.T., both in quality of the composition and in general sound quality. The same thirty second songs plays throughout the entire game. It is essentially a war-themed song, attempting to sound like it originated in medieval Europe. The only thing that actually sounds like it is from the medieval Europe is the sound quality. If there was a gaming system back then, the sound quality in Heroes of the Lance would be comparable to that.

You have no idea how bad the sound effects are in Heroes of the Lance until you play this atrocity. There are about five sounds in the entire game. Four of them are so bad I fail to even acknowledge them as existing. The remaining sound effect is actually well done, but strangely familiar. In other words, they obviously lifted it out of another game. As for the rest of the sound effects, what can you say. The two sound effects for when characters come into contact with weaponry sound like a dying cow’s last moo. Hey, at least there are two styles of moos, one for when your character gets hit, and one for when a foe gets hit. The other effects are for menus and picking up items, an action that occasionally happens even though I have no clue how or why it does. These are also poorly done, but are indescribable besides that they are beeps with the sound quality of a child’s toy from the 1960s, that has been used continuously for the past forty years. And the batteries are almost dead.

CONTROL--1
I have already told you that Heroes of the Lance presents the worst graphics ever achieved on the original Nintendo. Well, never fear! This game also presents the worst control ever featured on any console game, arcade game, or computer game ever released. This is even worse than some unreleased game that some guy made out of text on his computer. I was unaware that games could be this unresponsive and still be called a video game.

I am unsure why this controller configuration was selected. The ‘A’ button, the primary button, occasionally allows you to jump, but quite rarely. However, the ‘B’ button allows you to swing your sword aimlessly whenever you please. Also interesting is the fact that you press down to go through a door above you on the screen. Of course, the collision detection is so awful that your foes will only register your strike against them about a third of the time. Do not worry! This just makes the game two-thirds more challenging and worthwhile. And the selective jumping times that new difficulty by ten fold! So nice these developers are!

FUN--1
If anyone has fun playing Heroes of the Lance I advise them to seek psychiatric assistance immediately. The asylum is more than the theme for Twisted Metal: Black, you know. Perhaps you should pay it a visit. (BrakZero, this means you.) There is nothing enjoyable about Heroes of the Lance. Not even the most diehard fan of the Dragonlance books, or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever other licenses this game has could enjoy it. The horrible collision detection is far to frustrating for this game to be fun even if if looked and sounded as good as a GameCube game on the NES. The fun in a game is truly the sum it’s parts, and in Heroes of the Lance the parts are too useless to amount to much of anything.

CHALLENGE--MEDIUM
The challenge in Heroes of the Lance is not because the game is especially difficult, or the artificial intelligence well planned-out. No, Heroes of the Lance is difficult because only the bravest and most diehard gamers of all can tolerate the game enough to finish it. If you can tolerate the game long enough to play it for half an hour, you have completed an amazing accomplishment. The general awfulness of it, coupled with the horrible control, utter lack of collision detection, and the difficulty in telling what is an enemy and what is a pillar, is what causes Heroes of the Lance to be difficult.

REPLAY VALUE--NONE TO LOW
If anyone wants to play Heroes of the Lance again after playing it once, whatever the length of time was the first time, the asylum should once again be their final destination. There is really no reason to ever play Heroes of the Lance at all, let alone more than once. (Unless, of course, you would like something to talk about to the HotL Crew. Your time would be better spent listening to In-a-Gadda-da-Vida eight or nine straight times. At 17:04 a time, nine times through Iron Butterfly’s magnum opus will take you two hours, thirty-three minutes, and thirty-six seconds. That should cover any urges to ever play Heroes of the Lance again.

PROS
*It spawned the HotL Crew!
*It has not one, but TWO licenses!
*Anyone can join the HotL Crew!

CONS
*The collision detection is worse than that in a Ford Pinto. (Boom!)
*You will wish you are blind and deaf and paralyzed from the neck down so you cannot touch the controller ever again.
*IT SUCKS! LET’S JUST AVOID BEING SPECIFIC!

CLOSING STATEMENT
Since this is not only my two hundredth review, it is also the end of the year, I went all out on the other reviewer references. So, here are some memorable quotes made by other reviewers concerning Heroes of the Lance.

*Jerec : “It makes mediocre games seem much better.”
*DY$E (DTurner): “Don’t waste 200th on this.”
*RuninRuder (Dark Fact): “A waste of a 200th review.”
*Shinnokxz (GameFAQs oldest member!): “I agree with Runin.”
*Sashashan: “An exercise in frustration and futility that is excellently suited to make you turn off the NES and get back to work.”
*NickEviL: “Fad.”
*Pat Uhler: “An overblown fad that went on too long.”
*Bobo the Clown: “I second Mr. Uhler’s motion . . .”
*Doodleheimer: “Think of it as virtual castration.”
*Cheezmonky X: “I just noticed that the game sucked really bad!”
*BrakZero: “I still think it’s fun to play.”

And there you have it. Heroes of the Lance has entered the reviewing community and stayed there like no other. Skee-Ball is the only one that even comes close, but you do not see us populating the Skee-Ball message board, do you? Now go visit the Heroes of the Lance board, and join the HotL Crew!

OVERALL--1

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 12/31/01, Updated 12/31/01