Times of Lore
System: NES
Release Date: May 1991
Developer: Toho
Publisher: Toho
Genre: Adventure
Find the High King and bring him back to power in Times of Lore! It’s been twenty years since the High King left to recharge across the sea. Since then, the land of Albareth has been on the decline. Missing the date he promised to return home, bandits, monsters, and barbarians have all been making incursions on the kingdom. Your parents sent you to the safety of the capital city to learn and take advantage of all the opportunities afforded to you. Choose your avatar from knight, valkyrie, or barbarian. It’s time to prove your adventuring worth and walking downstairs, you’re given that chance immediately!
I remember seeing my brother play Times of Lore on C64 or Amiga back around 1990 and thinking it looked like the coolest thing in the world. It was consequently ported to the NES and though its graphical fidelity has dropped, I think it plays quite similarly to what the computers of the day got. The top down view comes with continuous scrolling and your A and B Buttons attack and bring up the menu respectively. You have to be careful, because accidentally hitting the A Button next to a townsperson will attack them and cause them to retaliate. Quest information has to be paid attention to, because you don’t get to see it again.
Other conversations follow a pattern. When you choose to talk to someone, you press chitchat to open the conversation, then you can question about one of the terms you’ve unlocked through previous conversation. Some terms can be cycled through, but need to be mentioned to the right person in order to move things forward. You’re told to go to certain towns and places, but no one really says what town you’ve come to, only the inns are given names. There was a map poster included with the game, but I didn’t have it, so resorted to a GameFAQs map when I got frustrated. At least the world is small enough to walk across in a few minutes.
Speaking of walking, you begin with momentum based speed, which took a bit to get the hang of. You start out very slow and pick up speed as you continue moving. You can change directions to keep your speed, but it’s easy to be stopped dead. Once you acquire the boots, you get to walk at top speed all the time and enjoy everything a bit more. If you try to change directions 180 degrees, you’ll back up for a few steps before turning. This can be useful if you’re backing up from an enemy and want to continue to attack, but is less good if you need to attack behind you. You begin with a melee weapon, but over your adventure can find a throwing dagger and throwing axe to get some ranged attacks. Enemies pop up on screen quite frequently, but are quickly dispatched. They occasionally drop a bag of gold, potion, or scroll that you can pick up.
You have to follow the hints you receive literally, even if it means standing around until night falls to wait for a sneaking guard. There are a couple dungeons that your quest takes you to. These feature more difficult monsters and light button pressing puzzles. You may find yourself having to travel through them a couple times before having the right things to solve them. But at the end of the day, you find the evil cleric and throw a holy sphere at him in order to find the medallion of Rulership and take your place as the new High King.
Graphics: 2.0
We’re back to the days of a lot of brown and green, which never looks great.
Sound: 1.5
Music isn’t offensive, but unless the gameplay mechanics require it, please do not give me footstep sounds…
Gameplay: 1.5
Walk around, hack at enemies, search out people to tell you what to do next, rinse, repeat.
Difficulty: 2.5
You get a password every time you spend the night at an inn. Enemies are easy to kill. Finding what to do next may be tricky if you aren’t paying great attention.
Fun Factor: 2.0
Eh, it doesn’t stick around too long, but I wouldn’t say it’s more fun than your average game.
Overall Rating: 1.9
Times of Lore earns a C. I’m kind of disappointed. I always had this game up on a mental pedestal, but the NES version is just alright.