Thus begins "Mystaria: Realms of Lore" as you will attempt to overcome Lord Bane and his army. You control Aragon, the prince of Queensland and his party to try and reclaim the land to free your people. Aragon's mother, the Queen of Queensland, has been placed under a spell by Lord Bane and has handed her country over to him. Lord Bane has complete control over her and she believes that the prince and the others are traitorous rebels.
The group that you will control throughout the game is first made up of four characters. The others that want to help prince Aragon are: Saura the priest of Queensland, Hector who was once a soldier in the Queen's army, and Ferral the last Lion-man. As the game begins, three others from Lord Bane's army will defect to yours giving you a total of seven characters to control. The three characters are Raiko a ninja warrior, Aletha who is a half-fairy, and Katzhai a bird-man. Each of the characters have specific fighting techniques and will develop new techniques with practice.
When a character learns a new technique, you will watch your character practice his new move. The next time you move them, you will need to select the new moves to make them available for fighting purposes.
The game play is easy to learn and very quick once a person has the commands down pat. Until then, the game will seem a little slow. You are able to move all of your players once and to have them either fight, defend themselves, cast a spell, throw fireballs, and more. When attacking your adversaries, a certain amount of their health energy will decrease and a red number will display how much has been released. The same happens to your characters and once the energy level reaches zero, the character will die. Fortunately, Saura has healing capabilities and you will be able to restore your characters to full health avoiding death. You still need to be careful though, as Saura only has a certain amount of power and you wouldn't want to use it all up on healings.
The first two parts of the game are quite easy. The first thing you'll have to do is to head north and leave the forest while fighting off some funny monkey looking enemies. I won't tell you what exactly happens, but you'll end up in a building where you'll need to fight off many guards as you try to escape. Once you escape, you'll be able to visit the center of town and talk with some locals about what is going on. There is also a tool shop where you may purchase or sell various items. You then remember a wise man that your mother, the Queen, consulted for advice and decide that it would be a good idea to ask for his help in this situation. Unfortunately, the wise man doesn't normally talk to anyone and agrees to help you only if you manage to climb the mountain in which he lives on. This is not an easy task and will require much tactful planning.
The graphics are nice and in 3D throughout the game. Three different views are possible for playing the game allowing you to look at your players from above, from their perspective of view, or to look far off into the horizon. It's a nice feature to look ahead in the direction of where you are going so that you can see if there are any enemies in your way. Although you may not see any enemies, they will sometimes appear from nowhere to attack requiring you to remain alert. A grid of squares is also available so that you can see how far you can move your characters forward.
Some of the characters that you control are drawn like the Manga characters. There is a lot of dialog between all the players and this is done through large rectangles where you see a picture of the character and the text for what they have to say. The dialog will help you know where you are suppose to direct your characters and what you should be trying to do in the game.
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