Legacy, the
The majority of RPG’s is set in ancient or fantasy world so it’s always refreshing to see one that plays out in modern (more or less) times. In the legacy you play as the heir of Winthrop manor and seeing that the person who owned it has passed away you go out to check it out. However things aren’t well in the house because you find clues to demons and other strange events prior to the death of your relative. Now you must finish his work and defeat whatever evil has infested the house before it is too late.
You start the game by choosing the person you are to play. There are lots of different characters to choose from ranging from a military man who is physically very strong to an older woman who can cast spells to aid her. Each one has preset statistics but you can also devide the points among the many talents that you can have. There are three main categories on which you can spend points: strength, dexterity and knowledge. Strength should be fairly obvious, dexteriy if mostly used for long range combat and dodging attacks and knowledge is important for spellcasting and healing. The different stats allow characters to take different approaches to problems as a stong person can try to knock down a door while someone else can pick the lock.
After you select a character you start at inside the house where the front door is now locked and you have to explore the house to get clues and find out find out what has happened. The interface is done with a window system and you can even resize the windows to suit you preferences. Moving around is easily done with either the mouse or the keyboard and your inventory is limited to what you can carry in your hands four small slots. You can find a briefcase later in which you can carry more equipment but unfortunately this also limits you to using one hand for combat and such. The view of the mansion is displayed with a rendered 3D look but there is very little animation apart from the monsters. There is a handy automap that will draw out a map for areas you have already visited. From here on you are on your own and you must fight your way across several levels to stop the demons from investing the house.
The legacy is quite a fun RPG but unfortunately it suffers from several problems. First off the inventory systems is really annoying and the fact that you can carry so little equipment and must carry the bag in which you hold items in your hand also limits you to using one hand in combat. Also the rest sytems is really annoying as you can only rest up in special rooms marked with a protective symbol, this means that you will most likely die unless you know where to find this room. Other than this though the game is still enjoyable and definately worth checking out.
Overal rating: 8/10
This game was released for one systems here are some notes:
| DOS | Released in 1993. Game has been tested but not completed on a DOS PC. This doesn’t work under Windows 2000 or XP (not sure) because it needs an EMS driver, but you can use dosbox as it works ok but a bit slowish. |
| Date added | Sep-09-2005 20:36 |
| Name | Legacy, the |
| Developer | Microprose |
| Publisher | Microprose |
| First released | 1993 |
| Genre | RPG |
