The Legacy: Realm of Terror Reviews

It is like Call of Cthulhu Eye of the Beholder. It is good.

let the DOS wash over you. for real though hard game but really fun to unravel the story and gameplay. There is no difficulty setting which is huge plus balancing seems to be really well done with any class being a solid choice.

I first played this game back in '93 when it came out. My entire family (save for mom) got into it, and it took forever to finally figure out how to beat it -- like at least a decade! Definitely gives you a creepy sense of isolation playing this, and even with dated graphics, the monsters give you the heebie-jeebies something fierce. Perfect old-school horror game, 10/10 recommended!

Played this back in '93; glad it's on Steam. This is quite a difficult game, but there are multiple ways to navigate the story. It's frustrating at times, and you can 'ruin' your adventure/character with point allocations that ultimately only work for ONE thing in the story and never really needed again. Points are limited, items are limited. There's no respec for your character, and some of the objects for puzzles are easy to overlook. There's 'combat', but it's not really an action game. All that being said though, this is still my favorite horror game (maybe a tie with original Alone in the Dark). If you love horror, haunted houses, cosmic-horror/Lovecraftian monsters - check this one out.

this game is one of my ultimate favorites. Many hours spent learning all the tricks and solving the puzzles.

A fun little game, can be tricky in some parts but you can't help but go back for more. If you don't mind the old school interface and presentation then it's worth giving The Legacy a try. For my First Impressions of The Legacy: Realm of Terror, check out my video here: https://youtu.be/WXqEZUOmVuE

It goes without saying that, where games that have a particular horror setting involving the more cult-like behaviours that often give way to excellent storytelling in said scary genre of movies and books, I have an unusual fondness when it comes to such titles as what can be seen here with The Legacy: Realm of Terror, least not of all because of it primarily being what many would consider to be an 'ancient' game of sorts from the MS-DOS days as it were! Seeing how this is also an old-fashioned RPG of sorts, bearing a vague resemblance to the classic Dungeons & Dragons games with it's labyrinth structure and facing wandering monsters that can either be fought or evaded in whatever manner you deem fit for the specific encounter, noting that this game features early 3D graphics when exploring the map unlike D&D's 2D labyrinths, no doubt approaching this from the perspective of somebody who has easy access to a vast array of modern games at their disposal is already going to make this a hard sell for most here in 2024. But yes, what exactly is this old DOS game all about anyhow? Seeing as games like these were made during what I would call more 'experimental' times back when the average game developer didn't really have a solid grasp on what made a game truly appealing to not just hardcore nerds of the time but to a much wider casual audience, the 'golden ticket' to a big hit for said company as it were, hence various games from the late 80's up to around the late 2000's being a huge promoter of various creative games where one didn't know what kind of fun and wacky experience they'd get during these more brave times and all! So, not delaying any further on delivering what many are keen to hear, The Legacy: Realm of Terror centres around a solo character who has been given a large manor as per right of inheritance, although this very much becomes evidently a 'trap' of sorts as you find the massive estate to not just be haunted but downright dangerous as each of the floors of this mansion are roaming with various enemies, each having their own manners of attacks to harm you as well as defences/weaknesses to work out when doing combat with them although, as noted before, combat is often a matter of whether you have the resources to safely fight them whether by means of ammo or enough health/healing items to get by with close-range combat. To touch upon what makes this an RPG though, starting off is a fun little character selection screen whereby you can choose one of eight characters who will represent you in-game via traditional RPG manner, by which I mean it shows each of the character's five stats to highlight their strengths and weaknesses. Going into this further, Stamina is the most simple with increasing how much HP your character has. Next is Willpower that determines how much 'magic' you can use before requiring replenishing via magic crystals spread throughout the mansion as well as how easily 'scared' your avatar is of new foes and needing more time to get accustomed to them. Strength is attributed to the 'melee' builds that focus on pummeling enemies with the use of fists and blunt weapons alongside being able to force most doors open through sheer strength, followed by Dexterity that focuses on more agile skills such as the usage of sharp blades and ranged firearms as well as dodging more efficiently. Finally there is Knowledge which emphasizes the usage of spells and amount of magic power/health restored from magic crystals/first aid kits alongside repairing of electronics and mechanical items. Since the latter-three all each have four sub-skills of their own, most of these have their uses when it comes to the general gameplay throughout your time spent inside of the mansion, although I could not figure out for the life of me for what purpose 'Lift' has in this game, also similarly useless is the 'Throw' skill that does indeed allow you to throw items further away but, outside of a couple of specific cases where throwing a specific type of item at an enemy will instantly kill them, I couldn't find much of any reason to invest my hard-earned experience into those two sub-skills. On that note, how does gaining experience work in a RPG with a horror setting anyhow? Since practically almost all RPGs encourage the player to engage in combat, either to become tougher with increased levels and more gold for the purchasing of more powerful gear to take on bosses that then allow access to even more dangerous areas, so on and so forth? Well in an interesting twist to the genre, you do not gain ANY experience at all by fighting enemies of all sorts in the entirety of the game as, instead, you must read all manners of letters, documents and even maps spread throughout this game's 11 floors in order to gain sufficient experience to improve either one of twelve sub-skills or one of the five core stats (Strength/Dexterity/Knowledge help to raise all sub-skills slightly alongside it's main stat whilst for Stamina/Willpower it is exclusively the main stat) to further improve your character's chances of survival, something that is quite unusual when game progression via 'levelling up' is tied directly to the exploration of a large environment and reading important notes about the overall plot and lore of the game gives you said needed experience to face off against more dangerous threats the further you stray away from the 1st floor of the mansion. No doubt this makes replaying The Legacy: Realm of Terror quite the fun experience as far as experimentation goes, although it does go without saying that I do have some issues with this game, one of them quite serious that can essentially make all progress pointless. To start on the more nitpicky side of things though, the graphics do look interesting enough for a DOS title of it's time but, as is to be expected for a game that originally released over 30 years ago, one could hardly call this genuinely terrifying as graphics have advanced to a point where, for some, the graphics don't gel so well with more modernized gamers that fancy realistic portrayals of various monsters, something I can't fault MicroProse for back when they were developing this horror RPG on quite limited technology at the time. Also The Legacy: Realm of Terror is guilty of having to not just backtrack a lot to get items of various random purposes for puzzles, but the actual puzzles themselves are, more often than not, quite obscure and most will likely need a guide at some point to get them truly started in this old DOS game! Though my harshest criticism comes from the game design itself in relation to progressing the story, seeing as the game's stats presents it's gameplay in such a manner that various different classes are completely valid ways of playing the game that offer not just differing challenges of combat but also unique solutions to puzzles that require the use of certain sub-skills to progress more efficiently. The keyword there being 'more efficiently' as most puzzles do allow you to use items to get where you need to go and the few instances where you have to use a sub-skill often means wasting time or resources to give it more attempts, however one crucial puzzle at the 4th floor requires the use of a particular spell to cast on three potent items to make more progress, something my melee/ranged character had no access to due to low Knowledge/Willpower. It's a shame at that, since I had picked up multiple spells but could not even attempt to cast them, resulting in something of a 'softlock' scenario for me, which is somewhat disheartening after putting a good solid few hours into my 3rd character that I finetuned the skills I wanted, however if you have at least some background knowledge to explore this game properly, then I can say that it is at least a decent retro look into older horror RPGs that, with some patience, can be it's own rewarding experience and offer decent gameplay for a DOS title of it's era!