Amiga Longplay [228] Heroes of the Lance

Quite impressive for a game from 1988. Heroes of the Lance is a licensed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons computer game based in the fantasy world of Krynn created in the Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. The consensus is that it runs very slow, and normally it does, on an Amiga 500 anyway. I ran it on a faster model. If you know where to go, and do it in a hurry, the game can be completed in like 10 minutes or less. There's no need to visit all the rooms, collect any of the items (except the Disks of Mishakal, but not even that, it can still be completed, just not the best ending), kill any enemies, play with all the different heroes (just a tanky one + the red-robed dude needed... or just the red-robed dude, but super slow and challenging then). But I do all this just to show as much as possible of the game. Had to play through it twice as the Clerical staff ran out of charges. It has 200 according to the manual, and each spell uses a certain amount of charges. The manual also says the staff will absorb energy if attacked by energy-using monsters. Don't know what that means. It get new charges? How can the staff be attacked? I just stand still and take hits? Then I would need to heal and lose charges again. So, couldn't be bothered to test it properly to see if it DOES get new charges. At least hitting enemies with it (after CCing them so I wouldn't get hit back) doesn't give new charges... I think I did try to hit energy-using monsters with it... oh well. If you play the game and run out of charges, try to find these energy monsters and hit them. I've had enough of the game and can't be bothered to go back and confirm these things :) Running back to the waterfall room will not refill the health again. It's a one-time use only. At the start of the game I show we can't stack spells. At least not the attack spells, as it always comes out as just one - the last one used. Need to exit the menu each time between each spell. You can cast certain spells in one go though, like "Deflect dragon breath", then an attack one, and then maybe detect hidden/invisible, "Find traps", etc, but that's not so useful though. Raistlin (the red-robed dude), he can't run, so he's slow, but he can jump (float) farther. At 15:12 I accidentally went back in, which is why it turned black for a bit. I'm holding up/left to run left, and entering doors is just with 'up', so sometimes doors think I'm holding only up when I run past them. Yeah, you can't use the shields laying around. I picked one up though just to show you could. Before facing the dragon boss, I use the stuff I've collected, like rings, potions, scrolls. They all seem to be pretty useless. I didn't notice stats go up when using a ring and some of the potions. One would think it would increase stats when you get messages like "You feel more confident"... or maybe not... dunno what effect these things have. If I saw increase in something, I would have given them to Goldmoon to buff her up (not that I/she needed it). When the dragon boss in the end is dead, you only have a short amount of time to grab the Disks of Mishakal. Take too long and you still win/complete the game, but get a different message instead: "Khisahth is dead. But you left her treasure the Disks of Mishakal" (yup, written like that - no comma and no period). Goofed around a bit in the end. Everyone else (videos on YouTube of others who've completed the game on different systems) just straight-up kills the dragon immediately. I just wanted to show you have as much time as you want, as long as you re-cast "Deflect dragon breath". I wanted to run farther to the left before killing it, but couldn't go farther as there wouldn't be enough time to make it to the Disks then before being teleported away. Was just one screen more or so before there's a dead end to the left anyway. Moving right, thus too close to the dragon, removes the protection spell and you die. If all heroes die, you still get the same blue end screen, but with this message instead: "You failed in your quest for the disks of Mishakal". I ended the longplay with a clip of what happens when casting Raistlin's "Final strike" spell. The game has no quit/restart option, so guess they added this as a quicker way to kill the party in case one wants to restart. There's saves though, but I didn't show using them. Anyway, the manual says: "Final Strike - destroys staff and causes intense damage when it explodes". Weird the game doesn't capitalize the first letter of each word of the spells, like "Final strike", but the manual does. Which is why I've typed lowercase on the second words of the spells when I've mentioned them in this description.