Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Heroes of the Lance (USA) ROM

Heroes of the Lance is a side-scrolling fantasy action-adventure game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe and appears to incorporate hidden roll mechanics. It plays in a very different way to most fantasy titles as it strays from traditional RPG elements and instead uses an almost brawler-style setting including a 'roster' of 8 pre-made characters on your team.

Controls were atrocious, feeling totally unresponsive at times and queued at others. You may hold left for a moment and after you release, your character is still running like they're on ice...right off a cliff. This is one title you absolutely need the manual (or a control guide online) to play successfully.

Sound was surprisingly good, providing new depth to bleeps and bloops.

Graphics were pretty bad. An attempt was made to be detailed and have depth, but instead it looks horribly aged, grainy, and odd.

Gameplay consisted of moving through levels, avoiding obstacles, solving 'puzzles', and defeating enemies while utilizing 8 different characters.

Unfortunately, the title programmed combat horribly and I probably restarted 15 times going through every character on the first enemy I faced. You could sit through 20+ swings and never make contact with the enemy.

Overall, this was a terrible game and I wouldn't suggest it to anyone.

I have read dozens of novels in the Dragonlance franchise and I have used the setting in tabletop campaigns. It's a wonderful setting with very original rules for clerics and magic-users. Sadly this game is one of the worst ports of AD&D ever made. The gameplay, meant to be action-oriented, is clunky and obscure. The main reason to play this is to see the lovely 8-bit digitizations of Larry Elmore's classic art. If you want a quality Dragonlance game check out the gold box trilogy for PC.

I don't really like the Advance Dungeons & Dragon series, except for Dragon Strike. They use other character as lives. But the enemies take so many hits to kill that when you finally kill something, your health is 1-3 hits left to death. The map is just a big maze with no map. And I personally think the game is kinda boring.