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Playing Legacy of the Ancients (C64)


Cybergoth

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Hi there!

 

Yay, I'm playing another classic RPG!

 

legacyoftheancients.gif

 

What you see above is a picture of the brilliant looking dungeons. I was totally puzzled by these, because they are almost realtime. Well, almost - the game is turn based after all. Still, there's no random encounters a la Bard's Tale, the monsters are roaming the dungeons just like you do. Back in the day this must've been very impressive. (Still, only 5 months later came Dungeon Master on the ST, catapulting the whole genre 5 years into the future ;))

 

What you don't see in the picture is the shocking awfullness that you get on the overworld map, which is looking more like Ultima I. I remember the first time when I tried playing LotA a few years ago, I just quit when seeing that :lol:

 

The gameplay itself has some differences to usual RPG standards. It's simplified to the basics and thus very beginner friendly. There's no party, you're just a single player. There are no experience points for example. After you complete certain story elements, you get just advanced a level, that's it. Fighting is also very simplified, basically you just hit "F" to operate the weapon you've readied, there's no tactic at all.

 

There's a couple of mini-games, like Blackjack or one called Flip-Flop. You can also improve your dexterity stat by playing a medieval variant of Space Zap.

 

Despite the mentioned limitations, the game is still pretty immersing - as you can see I'm typing this the morning after, because I couldn't stop playing last night :lolblue:

 

So on the first day I've just been exploring the overworld, the musem dungeon you start in and a castle I found. I only stopped near the first dungeon, an old Pirate Cave, because I don't have the dungeon maps printed yet. Thank heavens, so I got at least some sleep ;)

 

Greetings,

Manuel

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Tedious. Imagine a 20*20 dungeon, 8 levels deep. After spending the better half of last night to fight my way down there, collecting treasures and having fun, I spent the second half to fight my way up again through the same dungeon. Totally empty then, but having all monsters respawned... :cool:

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Uhh... another first I guess. Or did I already quit playing a game out of sheer boredom in this series before? After spending about an hour raiding a castle, killing ~100 guards in a row, I suddenly started thinking about the meaning of life and then I just couldn't do it anymore. I think the last game I played that so horribly forced me to quit it was the inXile remake of "The Bard's Tale"...

 

The lack of experience points really backfires here. There's no point in doing hack'n'slay at all, if you don't get any reward for it.

 

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see its (hopefully improved!) sequel "Legend of Blacksilver", but first it will continue with a platformer I think.

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Reading this and thinking back on your "Playing" series reminded me of this - I just bought a bunch of run-n-gunners for the Genesis: Midnight Resistance, Mega Turrican, and Target Earth.

 

Mega Turrican is kind of an intriguing game, kind of a Metroid on uppers, and then I saw, in the favorite C64 game thread, that some guy mentioned Turrican I and II as among his favorites. I didn't even realize that the first two were released for the C64. Have you played them? What are they like? Just kinda curious...

 

EDIT: Hmm. Looking at mobygames, I see that Midnight Resistance also saw a C64 release. Ever played that? The Genesis version is very rough, it looks (and is) very much a 1st gen Genny game.

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Reading this and thinking back on your "Playing" series reminded me of this - I just bought a bunch of run-n-gunners for the Genesis: Midnight Resistance, Mega Turrican, and Target Earth.

 

Hm... at first I thought I never heard of Target Earth, but looking it up in mobygames I see that it's "just" the American name for Assault Suits Leynos :D

 

Mega Turrican is kind of an intriguing game, kind of a Metroid on uppers, and then I saw, in the favorite C64 game thread, that some guy mentioned Turrican I and II as among his favorites. I didn't even realize that the first two were released for the C64. Have you played them? What are they like? Just kinda curious...

 

Ah... so you discovered one of Germanys finest! Absolutely brilliant titles. The first two were developed on C64 and Amiga more or less parallel I think, the C64 versions by Manfred Trenz of Katakis fame and the Amiga ones were the first hits from the mighty Factor 5! :lust:

 

Throughout excellent games. The first two were licensed to Accolade/Ballistic for the Genesis versions, which were made by some other team, so they were probably not pushing the Genny to the max, but Mega Turrican was finally done by Factor 5 themselves.

 

I originally wanted to just cover Turrican in the "Rainbow Arts" series, but by now I'm actually planning to dedicate a whole series of articles to it, reviewing a good dozen of versions individually. Right now I want to include these versions:

 

Turrican C64/Miggy/Genesis/PC-Engine

Turrican II C64/Miggy

Turrican II Genesis (aka Universal Soldier, different)

Turrican III Miggy/Genesis

Turrican III C64 (fan game, different)

Super Turrican SNES

Super Turrican NES (different)

Super Turrican II SNES

 

EDIT: Hmm. Looking at mobygames, I see that Midnight Resistance also saw a C64 release. Ever played that? The Genesis version is very rough, it looks (and is) very much a 1st gen Genny game.

 

I'm afraid, no. I played it to death in 2-player mode on the Miggy, but the C64 version was 1-player only, so I was never interested in that one back in the day. I thought that was so totally wrong, like having no 2-player option for Bubble Bobble, Cabal or Silkworm :cool:

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I'm pretty sure the Genesis version is 1-player only also. :cool:

 

I bought them and then played them in this order: Midnight Resistance, Mega Turrican, Target Earth, and then, for sweet relief, Contra on my NES.

 

MR is kinda ok, though very rough. MT looks and sounds nice though, as I mentioned, it is closer to Metroid than Contra. TE straight up sucks. All the reviews at GameFAQs rave about it but, in this case at least, the videogamecritic is right: D-

 

That game is painful. I even went back a few days later and played it again, this time actually beating the first stage, but it still sucked.

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