AD&D: Heroes of the Lance (NES) Playthrough
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- Опубликовано: 26 апр 2024
- A playthrough of FCI's 1991 action-adventure game for the NES, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance.
Heroes of the Lance for the NES is a port of U.S. Gold's 1988 PC action game based on "Dragons of Autumn Twilight," the first novel in the D&D Dragonlance series.
Hoping to restore balance and peace to the land of Krynn, a party of eight adventurers known as The Champions of the Lance have entered the destroyed city of Xak Tsaroth. The city is a crumbling maze teeming with traps and monsters, and it's your job to help them retrieve The Disks of Mishakal, a sacred relic, and to slay its guardian, the black dragon Khisanth.
Given that it's the first NES game to carry the AD&D license, you might expect Heroes of the Lance to be an RPG. It makes a few attempts to pass itself off as such - there are plenty of menus, stats, and magic spells to fiddle with - but at its core, it's a combat-heavy platformer.
The party is represented in-game by whomever is in the lead position, and fights play out in real-time. You can use magic and items at any time from the menu, and combat mode kicks in whenever an enemy draws near. In these moments, you attack by holding down B and pushing the d-pad in the direction you wish to attack.
Whenever you're not grunting and flailing at the bad guys, you'll be busy collecting items as you chart your course through the labyrinths that make up the three main areas of the city. Some items can improve your performance in combat, but the majority do nothing but increase your score ("experience") when it's tallied at the end of the game.
Though it's a reasonably accurate adaptation of a well-received computer game, Heroes of the Lance is often cited as one of the worst games on the NES. I don't think that it's a great fit for the platform, but I also don't think that it's as bad as it's made out to be.
The key to harvesting any enjoyment from Heroes of the Lance is to not approach it like an NES game, and that's a big ask given that it is indeed an NES game. It inherits the PC version's awkward controls, RNG-based battle system, and the constant need to juggle menu screens, and though these design choices fly in the face of the console gaming crowd's expectations, everything works as intended. The soundtrack is pretty good, too.
Overall, Heroes of the Lance is a decent port of a decent game, but it holds too close to its PC roots to feel at home on the NES. Natsume was responsible for a good many NES classics, but this was one time they fell short of the mark.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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I can see why people hate this. Seven menu inputs just to recollect and reequip the spear after you throw it.
Heroes of the Lance is a decent port of a popular PC game, and that's its biggest fault. It doesn't feel like an NES game. Still, it can be fun once you manage to wrap your head around the way it works.
Definitely a clunky game imho.
I read and re-read the books so many times the front cover came off and there was Chex Mix smears from my fingers on nearly every page
You've forgot to mention that hitboxes are *really* off in this game. That why I'd rather recommend the Master System version over this one. (Plus, it looks waaaay better!)
I tried playing this game way back when. Didn't know what to do, where to go. Got stuck jumping a large gap and called it a day. ✌️
I remember renting this back in the day. Of course, when you rent, there are no instructions. Had no idea what the hell I was doing. Glad to see I didn't miss mich all these years later. 😂
On the flip side of that coin, my local rental store DID include the manuals (one of them even photo-copied them), the size of which made these kinds of games even more intimidating.
I just remember Spoony being driven insane by this game
“Uhh is this Ember’s room?”
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Legend of Spearchucker
0:51 I'll just call you David.
Very good, Nes's best channel, I follow all his videos, the people from the United States do too.
thanks
Thank you! 😊
WOW this is a blast from the past. This game was fuggin impossible as a kid but I was such a D&D nerd I had to keep trying.
What a coincidence. Im reading those books now
Highly reccomended
I read those back in the early 90s....10/10 highly recommend
Would it be shameful to admit that my first exposure to Dragonlance, and D&D in general, was the animated movie?
I never watched it myself out of fear of contradicting the cannon in my head from the books. I did listen to the audio books though. Guess it depends on your first exposure what the true cannon is
13:18 Waterfall
I've played this game enough that I was able to complete it in about 10 minutes...
I read the books on a lark a few years back. They’re actually really good. But you have no context for any of these people, including the supreme badass made of glass that is Raistlin Majere.
Dude puked up blood every time he cast a spell haha. Gets stronger in the 2nd trilogy though. No spoilers!
I rented this once, back in the day, and hated it.
It was still the 80's; they were still figuring out video games back then.
The animations and music are great from my point of view. 🐐👍
The music for the NES port was done by former Konami sound designer Iku Mizutani.
@@danalong1237 Thanks for confirming it, I hadn't thought about that.
Main problem of games of those years was poor interface planning. Player had to perform too many unnecessary menus and actions in them. Why couldn’t fiddling with objects be made simpler by selecting the selection of objects for a key combination and item would be picked up by hero who is selected? Weapon equipment is same. Why is it necessary to equip a discarded spear every time? I'm sure it could be done so that such weapons are automatically equipped when picked up. As a result, approximately 50% of gameplay is switching between boring options. I immediately remembered game Pool of Radiance where there were same problems. For example, it’s a mystery to me why developers didn’t think of making it so that spell used in battle, is remembered by hero by default, until you switch and choose another one. This would greatly improve game. As a result, after each battle, you have to set up camp and manually select same spells used to memorize, again and again. It's very tiring.
Yeah, that was my main issue with it, too. They didn't make any real attempt to rework things for a gamepad and everything involves way too much meaningless button mashing through menus.
You spend more time in the menu than the actual game.
Good thing they picked that super intense red for the menu color to keep it easy on the eyes.
I'm going to open a SNES gameplay channel, and if it goes well, I'll quit my CLT job and turn me in a looking for another job that pays better. Apparently it's working very well.
How many of the NES games have you played now?
I'm not sure of the number off the top of my head, but for official US games, I think it's somewhere around 600 atm.
@@NintendoComplete how many official US games were there?
@@finnhaverkamp 718 I think.
@@finnhaverkampThere were 693 North American games (carts), 2 Championship games, and 19 European games totaling 714. After that it gets muddled if you count the Famicom games as some have the same title but radically different, then there are the odd 10 copies of Ma Jong in Hong Kong that are licensed, PAL, but never released in Europe or Australia.
OVER 600 NES GAMES? I didn't see 600 NES carts at my local Toys R Us as a kid! 😳
I was a big fan of the books so I rented it based on that. Sround that same time I learned the game was a low quality port from computers. I didn't like that my heros from the books could be killed permanenrly in the game. Didn't fit the books camnon
As a kid, I was quickly conditioned to see these Dungeons and Dragons and Might and Magic games as something I'd understand when I was older. I was ignorant to their status as ports of PC games, which I didn't really have any awareness of, and yet I still somehow knew these were "computer games". Boring even for kids like me who preferred his RPGs slow and dull.
This game is tedious. It's not a game. I never got around to "playing" it correctly.
💀
this and wizzard and warriors are the only good nintendo games