Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

List Price: $9.99 Discount Price: $9.92

Features:

• Incredible story taking place on a historical divergent Earth during what should be the renaissance after a mystical cataclysm has occurred.
• SPECIAL rules system (from Fallout 1 & 2) adapted to a real-time fantasy setting - including 30 skills, 40 perks, and 15 traits.
• Classless system allows the user to customize their character however they want as they advance to as high as 60th level.
• Eight major areas of the world contain over 80 levels that range from pure story and dialogue areas to pure combat challenges.
• Fast paced combat in a rich and detailed world where dialogue interaction and story play equally large roles.

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

May be the best RPGs I've ever played... [Posted on 2006-07-01]
Think this might be the best RPG I've ever played... Even over Baldur's Gate, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Diablo... Mechanics are good, nice mix of action and role-play, story is REALLY good, challenging, sometimes very challenging, interesting yet easy to follow, side-quests aren't annoying, lots of chioces but not too many, role-playing elements like character generation, skills, level-up choices, and the magic-to-muscle balance all offer good variety and complexity, without being overly-complicated... Very fun and compelling game.

An overlooked gem [Posted on 2006-09-01]
This game was a swan song of Black Isle Studio, the creator of such grand adventuring prospects such as Fallout, Fallout 2, and Icewind Dale. To best describe it, Lionheart takes the best parts of the Fallout series (the SPECIAL and level perks system) and combines it with the real time combat theme of Diablo.

The background for the game is as follows: The game begins with the story that in 1189, the Pope ordered a Third Crusade to take Jerusalem from the infidels. In 1191, King Richard the Lionheart captured the city of Acre and demanded tribute from Saladin, leader of the Muslims. When Saladin failed to produce the tribute in 1192, King Richard was advised to bring together several holy artifacts to bless his army and to curse his enemies. While Saladin tried to negotiate the tribute, King Richard put to death several thousand Muslims in a show of force. That bloody act, combined with the presence of the reality weakening artifacts, caused a calamity known as The Disjunction.

The Disjunction caused a rift in reality, allowing demons, monsters, and other hellish beasts to appear in the human world. Joining forces, Saladin and King Richard were able to drive off Richard's advisor, who turned out to be a powerful demon in disguise, and ended the ritual before its completion. However, the damage was done. Magic was released into the world, mythic beasts now roamed the lands, and humanity as a whole was ill equipped to deal with them.

Fast forward several centuries to 1588, the current time of the game. You play the Scion of Lionheart, one of the bastard descendants of the rather prolific King Richard. In your bloodline resides a spirit of considerable power (you can choose whether it is angelic, demonic, or bestial), which was once merged with King Richard. The spirit has now awoken within you and allows you to utilize magic, a rare talent that is now being cracked down upon by the Inquisition, who ironically also use magic.

You start as a slave who narrowly avoids being killed by assassins. After you free yourself, you meet with Leonardo Da Vinci, who tells you that in order to find out who is trying to kill you, it would be best if you joined a faction and find out who is behind the assassination attempt. It is at the foot of Nuevo Barcelona that you start your quest...

Character Creation: Fairly straightforward. Anyone who is remotely familiar with the Fallout series will see the exact duplication of the skill setup, the perks system, and the SPECIAL system (Strength Perception Endurance Charisma Intelligence Agility Luck). You can choose four racial types: Pureblood (human), Demokin (human who has a demonic spirit taint in their bloodline), Sylvant (human who has an elemental spirit taint in their bloodline), or Feralkin (human who has a bestial spirit taint their bloodline). From deciding which race you choose allows you certain abilities and disadvantages (since this is the 'fantasy history' of the year 1588, racism is alive and well, along with persecution for being anything other than 'human').

The skills system is arranged so you can devote to three Tag skills that will increase faster than the other ones. Using the Tag skills allows you to customize your character to your play tastes. Like sneaking about and popping locked chests with ease? Tag your thieving skill set. Want to be a splatterpunk? Tag your HTH skills. Want to talk your way out of everything? That's right, Tag your diplomacy skills. I thoroughly enjoyed creating the character, although I was disappointed by the few customization choices of the avatar (Head changes or color of your clothes).

Game mechanics/graphics/music: Obviously, the game is completely mouse driven with a set of hot keys for various actions and placeholders for using spells and commonly used items (i.e. healing and mana potions). The resolution of the game is stuck in 800x600 frame, which cuts down on some visibility. However, you can choose to turn off the feature that allows the screen to center on the character and can scroll about the screen that way. Combat and magic is just like Diablo, with creatures rushing to engage your character. Left clicking once on an opponent will start your character to attack with his equipped weapon until it is defeated. Right clicking will cause the character to cast his readied spell. As in Fallout, you can choose to hit a certain area on your opponent in the hopes of causing a critical hit. Unlike Fallout, you may also vary the speed of your attacks in order to increase the frequency at the expense of accuracy.

My quibbles in this section are minimal. To me, there wasn't a diverse enough group of enemies. The programmers seemed to think that, "Hey, we need another type of monster! Why don't we Super Size a regular sized monster?" was a good idea. They also thought that just changing the color of the monster would expand the foe base. It just seemed lazy to me. The music is very good but, just like the foe base, is limited. Also, the music skips a lot. Even after the patch was used, the music still skipped and restarted.

Like Icewind Dale, you can play the game online, but I have yet to do so. I would be interested in trying it out, however.

Game background and plot: The plot, as mentioned above, is nothing new. You're cast into the unenviable position of a)trying to find out why someone wants to kill you and b) ultimately stop them from initiating a Second Disjunction. To that end, the first half of the game is spent in wandering around Nuevo Barcelona and the surrounding countryside, gaining experience, and getting new equipment. The game is non-linear in the beginning, but eventually becomes as straight as a ruler in the second half. This jarring change left the impression that the creators just wanted to rush the player on to the Final Battle, but not before running the player through several gauntlets of enemies. My other complaint is that, just like in original Fallout, the companions you have the odd chance to pick up are useless for the most part. In a turn based combat system, they might last longer. But, in real time combat, they burn up like snowballs in Hell without their hats. To add insult to injury, they never gain levels like you do, nor are they particularly intelligent when it comes to engaging enemies. They just run pell-mell at the nearest baddie and nearly every time they get their heads handed back to them on silver platters.

On the other hand, playing in the alternate universe of 1588 was rather fun. Besides Leonardo Da Vinci, you also meet the likes of Galileo, Hernan Cortez, William Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Miguel De Cervantes (who, like Don Quixote, is slightly off base). I also found it to be interest piquing game for European history at that time. Until I played the game, I never knew of the religious movement of the Cathars. So, I read up on it. Wow, who would have thought that a game might cause interest in the history that it's using as a backdrop?

Final standings:
Character Creation: A-
Game mechanics/Graphics/Music: A
Game Background and Plot: B-
Overall: B+

GOOD RPG [Posted on 2006-12-23]
Reading some of the other reviews here I was feeling I had made a mistake in buying this game. Truth is I got quite involved in it from beginning to end.

As some other reviewers have noted, about halfway through the game narrows down to a single purely hack-n-slash non-stop all-out war but a few things keep the game interesting: The character will keep leveling up, so directing his skill points and perks provides variety to the otherwise repetitive and seemingly endless confrontations. Almost every locale has its own types of foes and tactics that work on one type of foe may not work on another. Inventory can be very important in this game, particularly enchanted armor and weapons, and partly because there is no prohibition against changing armor and weapons during a battle. At times inventory management is the name of the game.

I purchased a French edition to get practice in French but wound up playing the English version because the French edition still had English voiceovers anyway. The French edition does a complete install to your hard drive and once installed you can run the game without the CD in your CD drive. Using the multi player option on a home network is thus facilitated.

As others have noted, the game plays only 800X600 resolution in non-zooming isometric view but the graphics were colorful and imaginative. The characters seem to be fully 3D and even cast shadows. The result is that this game is a lot easier on your eyes than the Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.

Miscellaneous: Sound track music is good though not memorable. Spell effects are not terrifically spectacular but there is an interesting variety to them. Game ran well on an older AMD Duron driven system with FX 5200 graphics board under Windows 98SE although I had to turn off overclocking on the graphics card to get to El Calle Perdido. Perhaps because it is part 3D, the game make considerable demands on the graphics subsystem and overclocking the FX 5200 notably improved the rate of motion and action.

Back in the day... [Posted on 2007-05-13]
I worked my way from beginning to end on this. I got it because I saw this was the last in line of it's type from Black Isle. I ran this on an 866mhz, 133 bus(off a vitural DVD/image file) and I don't think it could have run smoother.

One of a kind experience. [Posted on 2007-09-25]
I had this for years before really playing it. I would start a game, and lose interest. Hearing the negative reviews didn't help either. Recently, I reinstalled it and decided to stick with it this time... and I'm so glad I did.

I've played every similar ( 3/4 view, 2D point and click RPG ) game to death. The Baldur's gates, the Icewind dales, even going as far back as the gold box D&D games, and every non-D&D one I could find. And I can truly say that this one stands out from all the rest as a unique, and superior title.

As a matter of fact, I think people were expecting another DnD game here, or didn't play enough of Lionheart to appreciate it, hence the amount of less than stellar reviews out there. It's the only excuse that makes sense to me, as this should have been at the top of every RPGers list of faves.

Game-play is as smooth as glass, and creative. How many other games let you target specific areas of the enemies bodies? Or decide how reckless to fight? The perk system is truly inspired, as are many items and weapons in the game. Using weapons that cause continued damage over time, wearing items that cause enemies to take elemental damage. There are even items that reflect a percentage of magic damage back at the attacker.

Lionheart starts off a little hard, and can be difficult in spots later on, but if you stick with it, and play smart, you are greatly rewarded.

The graphics are the cleanest, smoothest, and most detailed out of Black Isle's previous titles. The music is a real treat for the ears, as is the voice acting. And character developement is fun and rewarding.

All in all, one of the best RPGs I've played. And worth numerous replays, as well. If you're a fan of similar games. Stick with it... and completely ignore the negative reviews.

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