Lynn's Legacy by Josiah Tobin and Cha0s, 2006.

Written by Lachie Dazdarian(September, 2006)


Introduction

I apologize if you already read several reviews 
of this game. Being a beta tester of Lynn's Legacy, 
loving the chapter one demo so much and the fact 
this is convincingly the best FreeBASIC game so 
far are plenty enough reasons for me to feel 
obligated to review the game. I think I would 
compile this review even if I didn't have anyone 
to show it to, simply for the sake of recording 
all the conflicting thoughts I have on the game.

This review was written while playing Lynn's Legacy 
version 1.1, downloaded from sourceforge.net. If 
any of the bugs/features I mentioned were fixed/improved 
in a later version, I was not aware of them while 
writing the review.

I contemplated a lot about the most fitting review 
format for Lynn's Legacy. After finishing the game 
this sort of review, sans categories, seemed the most 
suitable. I think you'll realize very soon why. 

The Review

The release date of Lynn's Legacy came as a 
surprise too me, since the final version arrived 
very soon after the chapter one private demo(3 
dungeons). I knew that the demo was only a portion 
of already completed work, but I got the impression 
that they still had a lot of work ahead of them. 
Also, the summer was on the doorstep so the time 
seemed perfect for improving the full product and 
fixing possible flaws, as much as it takes. Extensive 
beta testing of the full game probably should have 
happen, taking the size of the game into consideration. 
I recommend this to everyone. If you have completed 
a huge project, beta test the full version once more. 
The flaws of Lynn's Legacy illustrate why this is 
necessary very clearly. 

I was also surprised to read(more skim-through) a 
notable amount of negative critics in the FreeBASIC.net 
forum regarding Lynn's Legacy. I was ready to give 
those people piece of my mind in this review, still 
under the positive effect of the beta demo, only to 
realize later I partially agree with them. I cannot 
know how much since I didn't take the trouble to save 
the mentioned forum posts and burn them on a CD(I'm 
writing this offline).

After finishing the beta demo I was quite eager to 
play the final product. The 3 dungeons demo was 
such a sweet and enjoyable ride. Perhaps too good. 
Deep inside I felt it would be very difficult to 
maintain the quality and fun gameplay from the 
first third of the game. Still, I hoped the game 
wouldn't lose much of its initial shine and momentum.

We all know how the game starts. Lynn is flying 
over a sea on a Wyvern Ray, escorting a mysterious 
package to the mainland. After the package 
explodes, Lynn appears unconscious inside a forest, 
on an unknown location, with some of memory lost. 
There is nothing I can complain on the very intro. 
Everything works fine until the part when Lynn 
enters a small town and encounters a group of people 
gathered around a strange portal. I just didn't 
like this scene. Lynn's confrontation with the 
town mayor felt forced and staged, but I guess 
the designers simply were fixed to start the plot 
like this. To make Lynn a ball-busting type of 
character and the mayor a loser. Anyway, the story 
picks up quite fast and redeems for the awkward 
start. At least for those people who find the scene 
preceding the first dimension awkward. 

Perhaps I should say that Lynn's Legacy plays 
like any other Zelda-style game, featuring real-time 
battles but no real RPG experience growth system. 
It's mainly an action game.

I'm still not sure how to construct the review but 
I think I'll break it into two parts. In the first 
part I'll be describing my experience of playing the 
entire game, because I think that's the best way to 
convey my impressions about it. Second part will have 
the more common, category-based structure.

The first three worlds behind the portals(let's call 
them dungeons) are small masterpieces. They all work 
perfectly, providing enough challenging enemies, 
well thought-out maps and intelligently designed 
bosses. Each dungeon features wonderfully drawn tiles 
and enemy sprites and introduces new type of enemies, 
requiring from you to learn and change your fighting 
tactic. The ice feature in Geldius(dungeon 2), for 
example, is a brilliant idea. That was the toughest 
dungeon to beat.

Up to this part I felt everything was going great 
but kept wondering if the game can actually go any 
higher in providing excellent gameplay. Is there any 
room for a better experience or I got the best of the 
game already? In other words, will the rest of the 
game live up to its great start? I was sad to discover 
that the answer is...no.

The first sign that not everything is going to be 
a-ok was the moment when I visited the tailor and 
was able to buy all the suits but one(which can't be 
bought at that point anyway). I had over 500 gold coins 
after dungeon 3. I'm not sure if the designers imagined 
for the game to develop like this. So for the first 
3 dungeons I only had the default suit, while after 
dungeon 3 I suddenly have 4 extra suits. From this 
moment in the game I could run faster using the cat 
suit or heal myself using the regeneration suit. I 
don't know if other two suits have special properties. 
Maybe the leather suit makes you swing faster. I wore 
it all the time though I couldn't make out if that is 
the case. Also, I almost never used the cat suit so 
I'm a bit confused with people commenting how it makes 
playing the game much more enjoyable. Anyway, at that 
point you feel the game is unbalanced. The moment you 
buy suits you are momentarily much more "powerful". 
Maybe the designers predicted that people would spend 
more money on buying extra health points from the 
"salesman" and not having enough to buy all the suits 
right away. Again, I'm mentioning this moment in the 
game only as a sign to me that the game will decline 
in quality and not necessarily as a bad thing itself. 
After finishing the first 3 dungeons another part 
of the main world becomes accessible - the desert. 
It's quite large and a nice place to explore.

The 4th dungeon/dimension mainly disappointed me 
in being too easy. Yes, the story backed up the 
non-aggressive behavior of one part of the enemies 
in the diaries scattered around the dungeon, left 
by the previous explorers of it. Still, this doesn't 
change the fact that the dungeon was way too easy to 
beat. The dungeon boss is designed satisfactory, but 
I felt he could have used more attack powers/modes. 
Definitely easier to kill than the previous 3 bosses, 
but at least to kill him I had to run around employing, 
that well known but always fun, hit and run strategy. 
A note that I was killed only once in this dungeon 
and pretty much on surprise.

The 5th dungeon, called Nerme, is somewhat more 
difficult but still not enough. I never felt cornered. 
All I had to do was to be careful. Definitely less 
difficult than dungeons 2 and 3. So you can guess 
already that the progression of difficulty after dungeon 
3 simply disappears. Also, quite few enemies were 
recycled from the main world and placed inside Nerme. 
The map design of Nerme is good, with I note that I 
started to notice a certain lack of inspiration. You 
see, the Nerme map design relies too much on the 
concept of going far to a certain location to get some 
key, then getting back to a door which now you can 
open, just to repeat a similar procedure in another 
part of the dungeon. The Nerme boss fully displays the 
obvious loss of inspiration, going from its dubious 
graphical design too unimaginative and unchallenging 
attack pattern. The easiest boss to kill yet. After 
the 5th dungeon I was able to explore another part 
of the main world, which is quite well drawn and 
designed. In it I found a material necessary for the 
tailor to create the last, missing suit. Since the 
tailor's house was way in the other part of the main 
world I decided to skip returning to the tailor and 
proceeded to the next dungeon, only to discover later 
that this was the last chance for me to visit the 
tailor. After I finished the game I did use an old 
save game position(I was smart enough to zip the 
save games every now and then) and acquired the last 
suit. I did make me swing faster but since I finished 
the rest of the game without it and without much 
hassle, the trip back to the tailor is obviously 
not worth the trouble.   

The 6th dungeon, called Divius, while featuring 
new enemies with new attack patters, does not deliver 
in challenge and difficulty. It is quite large, I'm 
not sure but maybe the largest of all. It features 
several tilesets but not nearly well designed as the 
tilesets in the first 3 dungeons. It disappoints again 
with few poor enemy designs, notably a small mosquito 
looking bug which fires a huge circle of fireballs, 
quite unsuitable feature for such a small creature. 
Divius boss is also poor, being completely static(it 
the first phase) and attacking you only when you 
attack it, which makes it almost non-lethal, having 
in mind you have a regenerative suit. Its second phase 
features a moving creature, but it can be killed in 
4-5 seconds, if you attack it in the right moment. 
Again, it's not very lethal since you can freely use 
the regenerative suit while keeping yourself on a 
safe distance. I was killed only once by the mosquitos 
in this dungeon.

I remember the designers describing the last two 
dungeons in QB Express #17 as "somewhat ambitious 
final section" so I was expecting for the game to 
finally redeem itself for the fall of quality after 
dungeon 3. The last part of the game does feature a 
lot of dialogues and story twists but fails again 
in the most important element - gameplay. Boring and 
mostly not very threating enemies, more or less 
poorly designed. The boss in the 6th dungeon did kill 
me several times. I even started to fear I didn't 
buy enough health points to be able to beat it(I had 
15 health points at that point). I was dreaded for 
a while with the thought I will have to play dungeon 
6 and 7 again. Still, after few tries I killed it 
and was left with one health point. The second phase 
of this boss is terribly designed and very tedious(not 
challenging) to kill. I should say that after 
finishing the game, I went into killing few bosses 
again just to get the story a bit better. While doing 
this I figured out a better tactic to kill the first 
phase of the boss in the 7th dungeon/dimension. It's 
simple. Approach him, face him, stand still and swing. 
And that's it! This time I had some 6 health points 
left. That's plain ridiculous. Another reason why the 
full version of Lynn's Legacy had to be beta tested.

The last dungeon is quite short and one could say messy. 
Again, the story conveniently backs this up. The final 
battle is, I'm sad I have to use this word, pathetic 
and in a way symbolizes the entire decline of the 
game's quality from its great starts to such 
disappointing finale. I'm not happy I have to render 
the last portion of the game like this since it's 
obvious that Josiah and Cha0s invested a lot of effort 
in that very section. But effort alone doesn't count 
much.

Now I'm ending the most negative part of the review. 
I just implore Josiah and Cha0s to stick through it. 
Anyway, if they skipped to the final score then they 
could have seen I didn't hold this decline of quality 
too much against them. Actually, I sympathize with 
them. This thing happens to best. I don't how many of 
you remember/know about Shadow of the Beast 2, a 
beautiful adventure/action game from Amiga platform. 
It features brilliant art and graphical design. A 
classic. But its last portion is quite poor while the 
very ending appalling. Horrible, I would say. Most 
likely done in 15 minutes. And we are talking here 
about a classic and professional game designers who 
were paid for their work. That's just one example. 
So I understand.
 
Nevertheless, I had to diagnose these flaws clearly 
as I eventually want to give an objective conclusion. 
I hope Josiah and Cha0s are not too irritated 
with my observations. Being a game designer I know 
how this feels. You are aware of the game flaws but 
somehow hope people won't make too much notice of 
them and will concentrate only on the good things 
and the huge effort put in the entire product, which 
is the case with Lynn's Legacy. Once you realize 
this didn't happen(and it rarely happens) you are 
annoyed at best and blame people for not respecting 
hard work.

The graphics are excellent and there is no doubt 
about it. Some parts of it, namely the animation 
of characters, are close to being great, in the lack 
of a better word. I wish I had a thesaurus. :P
As the game progresses the very graphics don't really 
lose in quality, as it is the case with the design of 
tiles and sprites. Josiah is obviously a talented and 
skilled artist but is he an equally good graphical 
designer(at this point) remains a question. Again, 
I think the size of the game is here the biggest problem. 
I believe he fell into a trap of sizing the game 
without thinking if he can fill it with enough varied 
and thought-out content. I suspect the design team 
was fixed on having 8 dungeons and didn't want to 
compromise on that. Perhaps it doesn't seem logical, 
but I think Lynn's Legacy would feel much more even 
and complete if one or two dungeons were discarded 
during production. One more thing on the topic of 
graphics. Since I'm already talking about graphical 
design(more or less) I should mention I didn't like 
the look of the health salesman and his name. I mean, 
Salesman?!? If you would ask me I would take some 
townsmen character, put a pointy hat on him and refer 
to him as to a wizard or a magician. I mean, what's 
a health salesman?

The music is very nice. I was never annoyed with it 
and few tracks, strangely the less "rich" ones, 
create a quite powerful atmosphere. The environmental 
sounds incorporated into some music tracks are a 
full hit. I guess the only negative comment I can think 
of is - I wish each dungeon featured its own track. 
A pathetic comment, I know.

The sound effects are truly excellent. I especially 
liked the Lynn's attack and hurt sound. For some 
reason I didn't hear her speaking in the game, though 
I noticed these sounds in the package. If I ever 
endeavor into making an ambitious project I might ask 
Josiah and/or Cha0s for tips on creating proper sound 
effects. Just browsing through the net for sounds 
similar to those you want is obviously not enough, as 
everyone who played my games can testify(ugh).

The story is very good, but not impressive. I'm sure 
Josiah and Cha0s didn't aim that high. It's relatively 
original and well written(developed). I remember 
reading someone comparing it with Matrix but I highly 
disagree with that comparison. There is really only 
one small element connecting these two stories and 
that's it. I mean, when I think of the zillion brain-dead 
simplified stories from other QB RPGs these kind of 
remarks seem tendentious. The strongest feature of the 
story is its carefully constructed development throughout 
the game. I did personally felt that the story was 
slightly stretched and over-told, but these are just 
trifle remarks. How they say it, I'm grasping for 
straws. The truth is that not many people tried to 
construct such a long and developing story in a QBasic 
game and it will probably take some time before 
someone attempts a similar thing in FreeBASIC. So, 
respect! :P

The very gameplay is excellent, which I pretty much 
stated while describing the experience of playing the 
first 3 dungeons. This is, in part, a result of 
Cha0s' excellent(and fast) engine. Wonderful code and 
far beyond my capabilities. I'm discovering a new 
respect for him. My honest admiration Cha0s. Second 
is the fact Josiah can draw all the frames of a 
character in order to enable proper multi-frame swing 
animations. The lack of this killed certain games 
by certain someone(cough-cough). Third element that 
makes the gameplay is the design of enemies which 
functions perfectly for a while. It's obvious that 
the gameplay is not equally excellent throughout the 
game, but that is only the result of poor and 
under-tested enemy designs in the later dungeons. 
Nothing I disliked in the very engine and game 
mechanics. Some people complained on the collision. 
While there is no reason to be anal about it, the 
mock-angled view(in the sense that it's not a top-down 
view) tends to confuse and makes it hard for the 
player to decide when to swing when an enemy is 
attacking from down. I could never get to hit that 
small black monster with a fork(I don't know how you 
call it in English) in Evernight before it would 
hit me, if it was attacking me from down. Technically 
the collision is perfect, but can visually fool 
the player. Anyway, I didn't mind this much, but 
since some people complained on the collision I 
wanted to express my thoughts on it.

Oh yes, there are few bugs I noticed. Few came 
as a shock since they didn't appear in the chapter 
one demo. These include Lynn not being animated 
while she pushes a rock and ghost-type of 
characters(cloak wearing) not being animated when 
tracking Lynn. Also, when you give an object to 
a certain character in the game(like the Nerme Idol) 
it does not disappear from the items switch icons. 
I tried to ignore these bugs with hopes they will 
be fixed in a future version.

Most reviews include replay value section so I guess 
I should say something on that. As with most of the 
games I reviewed, I really don't feel like playing 
this game over and over. And I'm sure such long games 
don't need to accomplish that. Since the story is 
complex you will probably want to beat few bosses 
once more, just to re-read few parts it. Due the 
size of the game it's definitely worth being played 
after few years, for the sake of nostalgia.

The game took some 8-9 hours to complete, in two 
sessions, with a note that I was playing it quite 
franticly in order to leave myself enough time to 
write a proper review. I don't value play time as 
something terribly important, but Lynn's Legacy sure 
deserves compliments on this. The thing is, the game 
almost never robs your time by forcing you to 
repeat certain tasks over and over or perform some 
unnecessarily long missions(with the exception of 
few long key hunts). This is the case, for example, 
with leveling-up in Mattress Warrior and many other 
QBasic RPGs(I dare to say it's the case with most 
of them). Lynn's Legacy doesn't do that.

Apparently, this game ended up being thrown into 
the RPG genre which is quite wrong. Lynn's Legacy 
is a pure action game with some adventure elements, 
or better yet, exploration elements. Where people 
see RPG elements in this game escapes me. Perhaps 
in the fact that Lynn can buy extra health points. 
But that's all. No other features that characterize 
Lynn(like stamina, dexterity, defense points, etc.) 
or any experience points. I doubt people will listen 
to me and Lynn's Legacy will most likely belong in 
the RPG category to majority.

So to conclude. Excellent game but not great. A huge 
accomplishment to respect and admire. The best 
FreeBASIC game yet. It will definitely be a classic 
in our community. Did it had a chance to become a 
freeware classic? We can only speculate. Josiah and 
Cha0s had a great game in their hands, but somehow 
it slipped them. Lynn's Legacy failed to deliver what 
it promised. I hope Josiah and Cha0s learned something 
from the development of Lynn's Legacy. Mainly, not 
to over-size a game if they don't have a ready 
content(conceptually worked-out) to fill it in. 
Accepting the constructive negative critics as valid 
is one of the steps to grow as a game designer and 
release an even better project one day.

If I would have to summarize all of my thoughts into 
one sentence I would say - I really liked the game 
but did not love it.


Graphics: 88%
Sound: 90%
Gameplay: 78%

Total score: 85.33 %