Let's take a quick look at our cast of characters.
Goldmoon: The idea must be to use her mind-numbing beauty to stun enemies while she bashes them with what is essentially a stick. This strategy doesn't really work though. Goldmoon must really be full of herself. Being the lead woman of the group does have its advantages though. Whenever she's in any sort of danger, one of the sexually frustrated males will come to the rescue.

Sturm: I think he's human. So he's not supposed to be that ugly, or have a name like that.
Riverwind: Say what you will about elves, but they are not gay! Except this one.
Tanis: One of the filler characters who comes with his own bow and arrows. That would be great if I knew how to use them.
Tasselhoff: The style and suave of the group, Tasselhoff owns a kickass talking car and hangs around on a beach with a bunch of half-naked supermodels who solve any conceivable problem by bounding in slow motion across a beach in their skimpy outfits, carrying floatation devices and giving CPR.
Flint: The token dwarf. Insert own penis joke.
Caramon: I don't know who he's supposed to be, but he's definitely not a rip-off of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Unless, you know, he is.
Raistlin: The ugly one.

The gameplay is chunky. Try hitting an enemy with any sort of weapon, or try dodging their attacks. It's not as easy as it should be. Try playing doom on a 386 and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about.
To duck, you need to hold A and press down. Simple enough, but for something like ducking you really do want it to be easy. Bozaks are breathing magic dust at you and somewhere down the line you're going to need to duck fast.

Take into account the game's inherent chunkiness and the need to press A first, and Sturm is a dead man. Okay, well Sturm is not a big loss. Bad example.

Along the way, you'll also find items lying on the floor. Arrows, sacks of gold, and other such things.
Now, you're walking along, doing your funky little walk thing there, and you find a sack of gold! Cool.
Now guess what you need to do to pick them up? Well, naturally, you'd say to just walk over it. Good thinking! But it's wrong.
Okay, press down? No.
Hold A and press down so that you duck? Ah, now we're getting somewhere. But that doesn't do it either.
I can go over a few other steps I went through in this futile persuit of trying to figure it out on my own, but I think it's about time I cut to the chase.
What you really need to do, is step over the sack of gold. Then press select. Then move the cursor over to the word "take" which is one of ten commands and one of the hardest to find because it's only four letters.

It's like it shouldn't really be there. An afterthought.
So you press A. And it brings up detailed info about your character. Press A again to confirm this is the character you want to give the sack.
Then a screen saying "pouch". Essentially, it's asking you "Are you sure you want to pick up a sack of gold?"

No, I really hate money and never realized it until I hefted this conveniently abandoned sack and rifled through its contents. Thank you for asking. I could have really made a mistake!
It may interest you further to note that it is equally difficult to switch your main weapon from a sword to bow and arrow.

GRAPHICS

The opening intro to the characters contains the best graphics in the game. It lasts about thirty seconds, and even then it seems too long because you want to get on with the freaking game. So I can't really count this is being a good point.
The in-game graphics are terrible. Look at me beat up a dragon.

Oh, excuse me. A Bozak. Here. Let's see this shot on extreme closeup.

In case you're wondering, the Bozak hasn't reverted to his injury frames. He has no injury frames. He always looks like a deer caught in headlights.

SOUND
Mute your TV. You are doing a favour not only to yourself, but also to anyone in a one block radius and to the people who wrote the game's music who are probably now in hell being tortured for every time someone is subjected to it. We might as well lessen their eternal punishment.

For these reasons I do not have an MP3 of the music here. I think there's enough suffering in the world. If you really want to expose yourself to terror beyond terror, I suggest you buy (or dare I say download) the game and play it yourself.

In light of this, the sound effects aren't really so bad. So 2/10 for the whole deal, agreed? Good.

SO, WHAT MAKES IT ENTERTAINING?
Heroes of the Lance is a masochist's birthday present. This elaborate dungeon goes nowhere. Sometimes you find yourself in a room (the very first room is an example) where there are only two exits and both lead to the exact same place. Exploring on your own is impossible without writing down a map or looking up GameFAQs. Enjoy wandering aimlessly, while of course holding down the "up" and "down" buttons really hard in order to enter a door. And not all doors work so when it doesn't work you have yourself guessing if your controller finally broke on you, or if you're not pressing hard enough.
As long as I'm setting the scene for you, let's send in the midgets!

These guys defy reason. They're half your size and unarmed. They attack with their fists and with very low kicks to the shin. And yet, these are your deadliest enemies. Every punch and kick takes the same amount of damage as a sword or Bozak magic dust.
And to make matters worse, your attacks go right over their head.

Luckily, we have Flint, everybody's favourite dwarf. He's just as small as them, and he weilds a powerful axe. As you can see the axe buries itself in the midget's neck. And yet, no damage. Apparently, even the dwarf is too tall for these infuriating pygmies, even though you can clearly see the axe connecting with their puny faces.

You must now resort to the downward attack. You hold down B, and hold the control pad down and in the opponent's direction. There, you've done it! How gratifying! But wait . . .

Yes, it works. But only at the right distance. If you're too far or too close, your weapon completely misses Mr. Midget. The difference between too close and too far in this case is a few pixels. Good luck.
So basically, these clumsy unarmed little people are damn near invincible. Watch FOX for the resultant documentary "When midgets attack". It can be very educational.

The moral to this story:
Dungeons and Dragons does not translate well to video games! Stop trying it! It doesn't work!

GRAPHICS	2	/	10
SOUND	2	/	10
GAMEPLAY	1	/	10
GETTING HELPLESSLY FLOGGED BY MIDGETS	7	/	10
OVERALL	3	/	10	012345678910