Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos
I played this lot over the last couple of days, and got through the White Tower, Yvel City, Catwalk Caves, and "Dungeon." That leaves me at Scotia's castle, so I guess I'm nearing the end of the game.
The White Tower was very easy with Vaelan's cube, but is probably close to impossible without it. What a mess this area is. The game provides no hint whatsover to use the cube in the White Tower (in fact, a clue early on in the game leads you astray, indicating that the cube is used to drain energy from LIVING foes). Even worse, what player would hang on to the weak emerald blades, just in case? I think most players, playing blind, threw the otherwise useless emerald blades away to clear up inventory space, used the cube the instant they found the gate, and were therefore forced to drop the game with no way to clear the White Tower.
Yvel City had a cool event where you have to single-handedly hold off an invasion; but even this is a mess. It goes on forever and you have no indication that you are actually making progress, so after killing my 50th orc or whatever, I was wondering if I was supposed to go find a specific enemy on the map or something. Luckily, shortly after that, whatever triggers the end of the invasion triggered, and it was over (still plenty of enemies roaming around of course...)
Catwalk Caves was fine, though quite annoying to navigate due to all the one-way secret doors, requiring you to constantly circle the entire (large) map just to get anywhere.
"Dungeon" is clearly filler, and came completely out of nowhere. Two alien races warring in the basement of a castle, and you have to kill one or the other to proceed. Huh? Why? This was really dull, as you just explore a really dull dungeon and wipe out every single enemy. I went with the Xeobs, and found the Knowles to be extremely annoying to fight; they have this earthquake attack that knocks everyone's health down to 50% and also forces everyone to drop their weapons. This is just dumb. You obviously can't defeat these monsters with your bare hands, so the only choice is to tediously pick your weapons up one by one and equip them again. It's just there to waste your time.
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Anyway, I hope to finish this by the end of the week. I'm hoping Scotia's castle will be more interesting; it would be a shame if the game ended on a string of bad dungeons.