6/10
I grew up with the classic CRPG genre, and every once in a while I get an itch to play something one of these. Legends of Amberland is a relatively straightforward romp that satisfied my desire for an open world on 90-degree rails.
LoA lets you spin up a party of 7 characters, choosing from various classes like Warrior, Champion, Ranger, Bard, Cleric, and so on. Class equipment is limited by an Encumbrance score, but your overall "backpack" is infinite in nature, so you never run into the problem of being unable to lug your spoils out of a dungeon. Each class has a special ability that can be used once per rest period, and these were all generally very useful. Monsters move around on the map as you do, and careful movement generally allows you to manage your encounters. As you explore and talk to different NPCs, you receive quests which are tracked in your journal. The ability to fast travel on the world map is also very welcome. I never ran into any bugs or unexpected behaviors, the game seemed to work just fine on Steam Deck and on Zorin OS. Amberland checks the boxes that you'd expect it to check - if you want to play a classic CRPG in the vein of Might & Magic or something like that, it will give you exactly what you expected.
LoA fell short for me in two areas. The first is that the game's pacing felt strange. Despite being dropped in an open world, the game is fairly linear through the first half, as your progression is generally gated by getting access to different boats to move on to a new area, usually be completing quests. During that first half of the game, the combat difficulty steadily increases and eventually gets fairly tough when you're working your way through the desert. Once the game opens up in the back half, it generally feels significantly easier. Some of this comes from being able to choose where you go and making sure you take battles that are easier and soaking up that XP, but there's also a lot of areas that just plain have weaker enemies. The end result is a dynamic where the entire back half of the game feels easier than the first half, and it doesn't even happen with you feeling especially more powerful. You just grind it out.
The other thing that I'd fault LoA for is that it doesn't particularly excel at anything. A really great example of this is in the equipment system. There are some really cool equipment pieces that you'll find with creative mods that force you to make interesting decisions - do I want this chestpiece with more armor, or this one that offers "Protection" (rolls damage against twice and takes the lowest value). That's really cool, and I spent more time than I needed to trying to optimize my "tank" characters' armor loadouts. At the same time, the options for some other slots were pretty weak - my Wizard ended the game with the same weapon he started with, I had three characters finish with the same headgear they started with for lack of better options, etc. Another example is the spell system, which was underwhelming. The Wizard had a large collection of spells, but there was always a "right" answer - use the cheap one if we're in normal combat, use the strongest AoE by average damage if we're fighting three mobs, use the strongest single target if we're fighting a particularly nasty mob. I had a Bard to keep my party buffed and the opponent debuffed, but there are no debuffs at all, and the Bard had only learned two buff songs by level 50 (not counting the one-per-rest special ability).
If you're jonesing for an old-school CRPG, Amberland is a fun game that will give you the fix you're looking for. It's a perfectly good game within its genre, but it doesn't go far enough to set itself as a classic within the genre and it left me wanting "more". I'm optimistic that future releases can compare favorably to some of the late releases of the grid-based CRPG genre, because the bones of this game are absolutely good enough if Silver Lemur keeps building on these ideas.
