The Legacy - Realm of Terror

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Marco
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The Legacy - Realm of Terror

Post by Marco »

Anyone heard of this? It's a pretty obscure game that came out around 1993, published by Microprose. It was actually the last game developed by the legendary company Magnetic Scrolls, who were mainly known for their graphical interactive fiction games with very sophisticated parsers.

This game is very much in the style of DM, but it's a modern-day horror/thriller. While similar, Legacy's gameplay has a lot of differences, mainly because it uses a primitive windowed interface, where you can adjust the size of your inventory, automap, text block, and so on.

The premise is that you find out you've inherited a huge mansion from a branch of your family you didn't know existed. You go visit it, and find yourself trapped inside with many nasty things. Though this sounds very much like a cliche haunted-house intro to the game, the plot is actually very interesting and well-developed. Little by little, the game reveals more and more about your family's history as you discover how you are being manipulated from beyond the grave by your ancestors. The developers of this game were very heavily-influenced by Lovecraft and Poe, and it shows.

One of the reasons I like this game is because it successfully cultivates the isolated, desperate atmosphere of being trapped alone in the mansion, surrounded by many more creatures than you can hope to kill. If anybody is a fan like me of the "survival horror" genre of videogames (exemplified by Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and so on), The Legacy certainly would fit into this genre, and it predates all these games by several years.

Anyway, if you want something with gameplay similar to DM's, but in a completely different venue, I'd give this one a glowing recommendation. It's a pretty rare bird, but you can find it on underdogs, who rightfully describes it as "hugely underrated", and gives it a "top dog" rating.

Marco.
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