by “Are we not all prisoners of our own destiny?”
Whenever asked what my favorite game was, “Lands of Lore II” has been my response ever since I acquired a copy of the game around when I was thirteen years old. To me, the game was a magical world surrounded by interesting characters, dangerous traps and fantastic treasures. As a boy, I spent countless hours running around the scenic locales, discovering more and more secrets while figuring out different ways to tweak the order of events, or even the events themselves, due to the different kinds of reactions characters could have to you depending on your actions. Lands of Lore II truly seems to be the kind of game that no matter how many times I played it, each new playthrough discovered some slightly new way of performing a task or some odd new interaction between Luther and the characters. As a child the adventure seemed endless.
Now that I am quite a bit older though, I sit here and wonder, “Is Lands of Lore II still deserving of being my favorite game?” Even when I was younger, I never tried to argue that it was the world’s best game. It wasn’t–it didn’t have the complexity of Baldur’s Gate, the emotion of Kingdom Hearts, the addictive battle-system of Megaman Battle Networks or the grand plot of Final Fantasy VII. So I thought, “Why was it my favorite, and does it still hold up today?” The truth is, over 15 years of exposure to the title, countless playthroughs and the meticulous repeated pathing of speedruns, the game holds very few secrets from me that I cannot recall within a moment in my head. In fact, were I challenged to do so, I could probably recall from memory a full playthrough of the game without ever having to sit down at a computer screen. At this point, I don’t think it’s even possible for me to provide an objective view of the game anymore.
This is not helped by the fact that as I’ve grown older, I much prefer a game that challenges my technical skill–not my ability to hold prior knowledge gained from hours of previous exposure. After all, Netrunner, Slay the Spire and Dead by Daylight have been my recent favorites, all because they have an intricate set of rules, mechanics and strategy with a high skill ceiling. Lands of Lore II has none of those things. Ins spite of a wide range of spells available in the game for its time, combat success in LoL II generally comes down to equipment stats and sword-swinging. There’s very little skill or technique involved. It is interesting now that I ponder though that the best method of succeeding in combat is exploration of the world itself to find the better gear.
But perhaps that’s actually what makes LoL II so great–that very aspect. Combat never really felt designed to be complex. Success is almost entirely stat/equipment dependent. This means that in order to succeed in the game, you must go explore the world, since there is no money, stores or monster loot drops. You must go out and treasure-hunt. Once acquired, you have to test each item individually (since there is no in-game description of what anything does). You must develop your own creative uses of that treasure and weigh the options of what is valuable and what is not. That, even to this day, is one of the things that makes LoL II one of the most unique games I’ve ever played. You don’t go out adventuring to grind through dungeons to get EXP to gain skills and randomly generated loot. Instead you go out adventuring to see the world–to obtain purposefully placed pieces of magical equipment and artifacts. Even once obtained, their use may not be entirely clear. Do you keep the stalactite throughout the entire game on the off-chance that it’s useful later? (Spoiler, you do.) Is the meager throwing dagger a worthless ranged weapon, or can it be upgraded if you happen to give it to the town magician? (Spoiler, you can.) LoL II always felt like the emphasis of true “success” in the game wasn’t winning combat or finishing a dungeon, but in discovery of a new little piece of something within the world itself; a unique purposefully crafted effect that in some way has its own niche use. That to me, has always been what the game has been about.
With sadness though, I must admit, that purposeful and unique hand-crafted events are finite. In a game like Slay the Spire, the number of unique situations you can find yourself in are so numerous that they might as well be infinite, and accompanying it, the strategy with it. However, StS doesn’t have the luxury of the human touch–the loving hand-placed quality of a unique experience, event or series of circumstances, because the game is modularly generated. In Guardians of Destiny however, there comes to be a certain point where for the most part, you’ve seen it all. You’ve discovered all the speaking stones, you’ve found all the gear and equipment. The obscure relics you thought did nothing have had their uses revealed and all the lizard tunnels fully charted. In a game where the heart of the matter is to explore and discover, how can you do so when there is truly nothing left?
It doesn’t help that when I was a boy, I looked up to the FMV actors within the game. Most of the cast seems to be around the age of 20 to 30 years old, but now that I myself am reaching 30 this year… I no longer feel the same level of hero-worship that I felt all those years ago. Of course I love Luther, Dawn, Kelsrick and the lot. But… they no longer seem like legendary heroes in my eyes. They are simply characters from an adventure I’m very familiar with.
In a large way, this is all made worse by the fact that Westwood, and with it the Lands of Lore series is no longer intact. Lands of Lore III felt like an unfinished mess, and to this day I am not aware of anything that continues the adventure. Humans need to grow–one of my favorite sayings is that if you are not growing, you are dead. It is with great sorrow that I must say, I cannot really grow by continuing to play Lands of Lore II the way I used to. True, there are a few things left to do–an all-fists run, or an actually-recorded speedrun, or an all-magic run would be fun and present a challenge I have not yet accomplished. But in the end, the game itself will still be the same, and with the knowledge I know about the game already. These runs won’t really present that much of a growth opportunity for me. I think Guardians of Destiny at this point may have to be placed regrettably but lovingly in the box of my mind that represents things that were extremely core to who I used to be, but no longer influential to who I am now. To be fair, both Baldur’s Gate and Kingdom Hearts are already in that box, but then again they didn’t hold the accolade of being my literal “favorite game.”
I suppose though, that’s every one of our lives. You yourself reading this must have had to give something up at some point in your life. You had to set something aside in order to move forward–prune the vine to produce something better. Looking back, I don’t want to be that same person that I was all those years ago when I just started playing LoL II. I know so much more now and I can do so much more now. However… none of these things are really fair to be used to judge whether or not Lands of Lore II should still be someone’s favorite game. They have everything to do with my life itself and nothing to do with Luther’s adventures.
So maybe I’ll leave it at that. I could sit here and break down the mechanical aspects of the game and tell you whether it’s good or bad. I could comment on the acting, or the environments or the plot. I could discuss each piece of gear, the joy of discovering their creative uses and how they made the game unique. However, none of that alone is truly why it’s my favorite game. Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny is my favorite game, and will continue to be my favorite game because it was such a core piece of me during a time in my life when I needed it the most. It was an imperfect game that came to me at a perfect time–a time when I needed to escape reality and discover a magical world filled with treasure, characters and adventure. It put me in the company of older real-life people acting out characters that I wanted to look up to as heroes. It provided the freedom of choice to be good, evil, or somewhere in-between in a time where I felt I had so few choices in my own life. Do I want more now as an adult? Sure. Do I know the game like the back of my hand? Yes. In spite of this, who I am now was directly influenced by this journey, and that can be enough for me.
In the end, I may not feel the same spark of joy from LoL II that I once had. It may not hold up by today’s standards. However, as long as I don’t expect it to and recognize what it has meant for me, I can continue to love the game while still moving forward, making it a Tier 1 title to me through and through.
If you’re interested, I recently finished an “Evil Run” below.
