Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown from Pineapple Works and Silver Lemur Games is a 1990s infused RPG on Nintendo Switch. Learn more in our Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown review!
Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown from Pineapple Works and Silver Lemue Games is an RPG that takes us for a spin back in time to the 1990s era on the Nintendo Switch. Because of this, you’ll be leading a group of heroes on a quest to find an old crown that belonged to the royal family. The weird thing is that other than a single mention of the crown in the archives, no one seemed to know anything about it. After some digging, the royal Wizard realizes that someone had cast a spell of forgetfulness, which is twice as odd! It’s the Wizard who summons the group of heroes who will search the land for the crown, as well as for the origins of the spell.
In this first-person RPG adventure, you will move with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, rotating the camera around with the right one. Your inventory is set to the Y button, from which you’ll be able to check if you have any items that can aid you in surviving any predicament you might find yourself in. If you need to rest, you can do so with the X button. You also have a map, which you can check with the – button. When in battle, the A button will redo your action from the previous turn, while the X button will activate a character’s unique skill. By pressing and holding down the ZL button, you will be able to access your regular attack, spells, and more.
Before you take on a new adventure, you must select from the four different difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane. For Easy, monsters deal slightly less damage and have lower HP, experience points needed to level up are reduced by 25%, and prices at shops are halved. Normal is the standard experience, and the difficulty for which this adventure was designed. Hard bumps up the challenge by having monsters deal more damage, having the experience points required to level up increased by 20%, and the prices at shops doubled. Insane boosts the damage dealt by monsters even more while also giving them more HP, increasing the experience points required to level up by 50%, and tripling prices at shops.
There are different classes for you to take into consideration when you’re setting out to assemble your party. You have the option of doing a quick start take on the game with a predefined party, or you can go in deep and customize your party so that you have the classes you want to balance things out until everything feels just right. Depending on the class of a character, stats such as HP and MP will be affected, as will be the case for its starting attributes, talents, base damage, and more.
You have the Knight, a strong character that can wear the heaviest armor to make the most of its strength and dexterity. There’s the Warrior, the strongest of fighters who will also be able to have a high HP total from the bonuses he gets with each level up. The Paladin is a hybrid character that mixes some fighting skills along with low-level magical abilities. Then there’s the Bard, which in this game functions as a cross between a fighter and a low-level healer. Proper Healers, as expected, will have higher healing power, while being weak fighters and having low defense. Wizards are similar, but trade healing power for powerful magic attacks that can deal considerable damage to opponents.
And then there are the racial classes, which are only available to certain races and are based on the main classes. The Champion is only for humans and half elves, and it’s based on a Knight, with the bonus being its ability to deal extra damage to sorcerers and warlocks while having lower encumbrance, thus reducing its potential for wearing all heavy armor. The Troubadour, as expected, is based on the Bard class, and is only for humans – it trades some of the Bard’s healing capabilities for better support magic.
The Mage Knight is only for elves, and it trades even more encumbrance for the ability to use magical offensive skills. The Sage is based on the Wizard and is for elves and half elves, trading some of the Wizard’s power spells for some healing spells. The Troll Slayer is based on the Warrior and is only for Dwarves. It has higher HP and will be guaranteed a critical hit whenever dealing with trolls, but has one less accessory slot and can’t use shields. The last one is the Battlesmith, which plays of the Paladin base class but is also for dwarves only. It has higher HP with lower magical abilities, but it gains access to fire spells and some support magic.
Classes are also important for the way your party is built because each class will have a special combat skill that can be used once before the party has to rest in order to replenish the one use. The Knight has Charge, which will target all monsters. Warriors have Strike, which is a guaranteed hit. Paladins have Stun, which will make the target monster skip its next attack. Bards will use Play Song, which will remove afraid from all party members while restoring 10% of their HP. Wizards have Focus, which will restore their MP by 33%. Healers will use Recovery, which will target all party members, bringing fallen characters back while restoring everyone’s HP by 25%.
And on top of all this, there are the Talents, which dictate how knowledge will affect each of your party members. For Knights and Warriors, knowledge will increase the chance of landing a critical hit. For Paladins and Bards, knowledge is added to dexterity for calculating evade chances, as well as for reducing damage from traps. As for Wizards and Healers, the knowledge bonus to Arcane skills will be doubled. As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when deciding what classes to add to your party!
But let’s not forget about the bonuses that characters will get based on their race. Humans, for example, will require 5% fewer experience points for leveling up. Half Elves can usw the Elven Song ability no matter their class, and tradeoff strength for a slight boost to willpower. Elves can use Elven Song and Elven Touch no matter their class, get lower strength but higher starting willpower and a boost of one extra point of magic per level, but will require 5% more experience points to level up. Dwarves are death machines, so they will have lower starting willpower but higher strength, a 10% boost to critical hit chance when using an axe, and a plus one to maximum encumbrance, allowing them to wear heavier equipment. There are also subraces to deal with, such as, say, Wood Elves or Highlander Humans, making for a lot of customization options.
Each of your party members’ stats should always be in your mind when exploring an area since their build can affect your odds of survival. Strength will establish how much damage they deal, as well as having an effect on encumbrance. Toughness will set how many HP they have. Dexterity will affect their hit percentage and evade odds. Knowledge lowers the magical damage received from warlocks or sorcerers. Armor will dictate any potential damage reduction that goes into effect when an enemy deals physical damage to your characters. Arcane for magic users will affect the mastery level of spells, establishing what spells a character can use and with what efficiency.
As you explore the world of Legends of Amberland, you will have a mini-map in the upper right corner of the screen that will help to guide you on your adventure. Different landmarks, such as towns or dungeons, will be presented on it as well. You should always be aware of your surroundings, because every now and then you will need to take a rest to recover your party’s HP and MP. You will need food to be able to rest, and there are two options for resting. You can take a short rest, which uses one low-quality food but only replenishes HP, or a long rest, which uses one high-quality food, takes longer, but restores HP and MP.
Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown is a very fun and addictive game that pays homage to the old-school RPGs of ages past. While the controls will take a bit of time to get used to, it will all click after spending 10-20 minutes playing the game. After that, you’ll be taking on an adventure with a solid gameplay loop that will keep you playing for hours at a time. Legends of the Amberland: The Forgotten Crown is out on Nintendo Switch for $19.99.
Disclaimer
This Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Pineapple WorksPineapple Works.
