From: mcmath@csb1.nlm.nih.gov (Chuck Treasure Troll McMath)
Subject: Re: HELP req'ed w/ Legend of Valour
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Organization: MSD
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 16:43:15 GMT

In article <C0FsH3.335@pcuf.fi>, fingon@pcuf.fi (Markus Stenberg) wrote:
> 
> In set's, 3rd mission was quite impossible <can't remember just now>.
> In one of arms guilds, 1st <password:blueboar> was that hard that I
> didn't accomplish it.
>  	
      Huh?  I had the game over New Year's Weekend (before returning it on
Tuesday) and that was one of the few quests I completed.  As I recall, all
you had to do was find a helmet in the Armoury and retrieve it.  When you
get there, the helmet is nowhere to be found.  However, if you read the
notices, you'll find that someone took it to somewhere else.  All you do is
go there and the helmet is right on the table!


> And from where one can get weapons / armor / .. after beginning? And
> magic .. ? I simply hate this game, and I'm quite sorry for buying it.
> Speed is abysmal (with 386/40mhz, short distance & little bit smaller
> screen does run somehow, but ... ), and ain't there any kind of speed-
> control? When I run near some wall, it runs really fast & smooth,
> but when some guys appear & I get nearer for example stone circle,
> it drags and drags and ...

	   Hmmm...  I am assuming you're in 'Hustle Mode' which is the way the
Wolf3D works all the time.  Did you remember that if you press the space
bar while in Hustle Mode you move twice as fast?  So I don't think it's a
speed problem.  I have a 386/40 also, and it plays fine on it.

    However, there were enough deficiencies in the game design that I
decided to take it back, to wit:

    - underground mapping is done 'the old way' - every time you go back to
the surface, your map is lost.  When you re-enter the underground, the map
is blank.  This means mapping has to be done on paper.  Unacceptable.

    - the above ground map is a humougous sheet (say, 16" x 24") where the
entire town is shown, but not identified.  You're supposed to go thru and
note which building is which.  It sounded tedious when I looked at the map,
and I was right.  

    - the quests all appear to be (as someone else on the net noted) "go
here, get this, bring it back," though to be fair, once you get above the
intro level they may get more interesting.

    - the interaction with people is plastic.  There appear to be only 5 or
6 graphic depictions of people, and since your 'conversations' all come
from a pretty canned set of selections, there's no feeling of depth there. 
So after a while you tend to see all people as 'things you can attack.'

    - I personally don't think they have solved the 'pixelization' problem
as the ads state.  While things don't get real blocky when you run right
into them, they look a *little* chunky - even when you're far away.  I
believe this one's more a matter of taste.

    - You can't carry that much (at least until you have a bag or two). 
The limit is silly.

    - Character creation is limited, and you can vary your appearance as
long as you want to be a blonde!

    - I really miss being able to look up and down, as you can in UW.  For
some reason, I kept wanting to look up at the tops of the buildings and
down at the ground.  To pick things up, you have to run over them, so they
appear in a special panel on the screen, then click on them to pick them
up.  Silly.

    - The interface seems pretty clunky also.  Note that you can't move the
cursor onto the viewscreen, and I kept wanting to do that (training from
UW, I guess).

    - The magic system is pretty limited, it appears.  There seems to be
only 5 or 6 magical spells, two of which are 'create food' and 'create
water'.

    - Sound support is very very limited.  No music when you start up, no
music while walking around town, just fanfares when you accomplish
something, and the assorted werewolf call at night.  This is unacceptable
in today's day and age.

    - The static graphics (seen in the intro, and assorted times during the
game) are wonderful, and make the dynamic graphics pale in comparison.  It
appears that the beginning was just grafted onto the program, partly
because the graphics there don't seem to relate at all to the program when
you get into it.


    It's not an Underworld killer.  To be fair, I only had it for 3 or 4
days, and played it about 5 hours or so.  I just couldn't stand it, so I
took it back and am scouring for UW2 (hasn't appeared in any of the stores
in Northern Va yet).


chuck


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