Legends of Valour

Legends of Valour is a 3D RPG created by Synthetic Dimensions and released in 1992 for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST.

The game's main feature is the engine, which is entirely 3D. This technology was not new but wasn't used in RPGs yet. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, released the same year, is commonly credited as the first 3G RPG, but Legends of Valour was developed simultaneously. Most of the other RPGS were using a pseudo-3G view like Eye of the Beholder or an isometric view like Ultima VII (another game released in 1992).

Kevin Bulmer and Ian Downend designed the game, but we also see the name of Ben Daglish (The Last Ninja) for the music. Additionally, the Amiga programming was done by legendary Paul Woakes, author of the Mercenary series.

In 1992, making a 3D RPG for the PC was somewhat feasible, but making it for the Amiga was almost impossible. That's why the work of Woakes and the other programmer (Graham Lilley) was so excellent. The two developed replaced the texture mapping of the PC version with an advanced new algorithm of ray-tracing for the Amiga, plus several other optimizations, to make the game playable on the 16-bit commodore computers. In the end, the Amiga version was even more advanced and allowed features not even present in the PC version (for example, the ability to look through a window). Ok, maybe on an unexpanded Amiga, the performance was not so good, but an A1200 was enough to play it without problems. Thank god now we have emulators, so we don't have to worry anymore.

Unfortunately, if the game engine was perfectly fine-tuned, this is not so true for the gameplay. The world of Legends of Valour feels a bit "empty," and it's more based on exploration than combat. You will spend a lot of time exploring the big cities, talking with the citizens, entering all the rooms, find places to sleep, eat or trade. You can also join Guilds and do many other things. In fact, Legends of Valour is more similar to an "open-world" game like The Elder Scrolls series rather than Ultima Underworld.

In short, it's not an action RPG, but if you like the genre, Legends of Valour is a game you cannot miss.