Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance
Screenshot of the Sega Master System version
Developer(s)	U.S. Gold
Publisher(s)	Strategic Simulations, Inc., U.S. Gold
Release date(s)	1988, 1990 (NES)
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, MSX, NES, Sega Master System, ZX Spectrum
Media	Cassette, Floppy disk, Cartridge
Input	Keyboard, Joystick

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance is a video game released in 1988 for various home computer systems and consoles. The game is based on the first Dragonlance campaign module, Dragons of Despair, and the first Dragonlance novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It focuses on the journey of eight heroes through the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth, where they must face the ancient dragon Khisanth and retrieve the relic, Disks of Mishakal.

The eight heroes that make up the party are:

Goldmoon, a princess who brandishes the Blue Crystal Staff, an artifact whose powers she seeks to fully understand.
Sturm Brightblade, a powerful and solemn knight.
Caramon Majere, a not-so-bright warrior.
Raistlin Majere, Caramon's brother; a sly and brilliant, but frail, mage.
Tanis Half-Elven, the 'natural leader' of the heroes, and good with a bow.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot, a kender pickpocket. He fights with a sling weapon known as a hoopak.
Riverwind, Goldmoon's betrothed. He's a noble and wise warrior.
Flint Fireforge, a grizzled dwarven warrior.

While Heroes of the Lance is a faithful representation of the books it is based on, it was a departure from the usual RPG style of most Dungeons & Dragons games, and many players lamented its difficult game play interface which consists of using one character at a time in horizontally-scrolling fighting. Each character has different types of attacks and spells making them more suited to fighting different enemies but they merely act as "lives" for the player as in more traditional fighting games, removing one of the main strategies of role-playing games from the game.

Two video games continued the storyline after this game. Dragons of Flame plays very similar to this game. Shadow Sorcerer while continuing the story is quite different.