Tarnum is known as the immortal hero, but before he achieved that status, he embarked upon quest after quest. His legacy is written in the blood and spoils of countless battles.

Ok, we are getting way ahead of ourselves. Heroes Chronicles: Warlords of the Wasteland is a continuing series from 3DO. It is a turn-based adventure game that combines elements of war strategy with civilization-building games to present a program that can be played by novice and experienced gamers alike.

The story is thus: Tarnum discovers his people’s true history and puts together an army to fight the oppressors of his tribe. Jarg is the legendary hero that spurs Tarnum on. Through a variety of landscapes, against enemies small and large, Tarnum will either surpass the deeds of the legendary hero, or die trying.

Well, that’s not quite true. Tarnum doesn’t actually do the fighting. He sits on his horse on the combat screen and watches his army battle. The idea – remember this is turn-based – is to tactically attack, move and defend. Overextending your forces, or picking a foe that you aren’t ready to battle, can be a big mistake.

The program is fraught with many different aspects. The boss enemy are spellcasters. So not only do you need to maximize the forces of your homeland, but you must begin to learn the ways of magic, or resisting it, if you hope to have any chance at victory. A battle loss and that particular program ends.

Boasting eight scenarios and enough difficulty levels to appeal to everyone, this program is a progressive march through a myriad of exotic foes. Wolfriders, giant eagles, treasure chests and artifacts all come into play. A nice feature is that this game will give you an indication of the strength of the enemy before you actually engage it.

As mentioned, the game also requires that you take care of your stronghold. That means collecting the resources to build and hire mercenaries and other heroes.

Game play takes place on a map featuring large icons and definite limits to travel distances. A mounted warrior represents Tarnum and you simply click on your destination to travel there. Sometimes the distance requires more than one turn. Remember that when first starting out – you don’t want to be too far from your stronghold before you have built it up.

Controls are not intuitive, but can be quickly learned. Most of the action is mouse driven, making it very easy to jump in and start into the game.

Graphically this program is not the best in either turn-based strategy or adventure programs. The combat scenes are a little weak, and the characters tend to move primarily horizontally or vertically.

This is very much a two-dimensional program.

The sound is average.

Heroes Chronicles: Warlords of the Wasteland is harmless and not a bad outing. While the graphical quality is not up to some of the other games on the market (Icewind Dale or Baldur’s Gate II: The Shadow of Amn – both of which feature some of the same type of elements in a turn-based setting), the program is, nonetheless, interesting.

This program is rated for Everyone though it does contain harmless animated violence. It does not support multiplayer gaming.

Install: Easy. This program only wants 230 megs of hard drive space, and pops right onto your system.

Gameplay: 7. Turn-based with a big game board to explore, the program moves smoothly through all phases of each quest.

Graphics: 6.5. Nothing exceptional here. The program does feature great cut scenes, but falls down a little in game play graphical elements. Two-dimensional is still quite nice, but it can’t compete with the three-dimensional look of other games in the same genre.

Sound: 6. Some of the ambient noises are good; the cut scene elements are strong, but overall nothing exceptional.

Difficulty: 7.5. You can set your difficulty level and fare rather well at the low end of the spectrum. Venturing forth in the king class (the difficulty levels are labeled like chess pieces – which should give you an idea of the structuring behind this program’s game play) can be quite challenging.

Concept: 7. Utilizing one central character and then building the legend through a series of products is an interesting idea. It gives you familiarity with style of game, and builds a continuity through several adventures.

Overall: 7. If this product has a failing point, it has to be the graphical elements. But then again, this program is built so that just about anyone with a Pentium computer can play it. The minimum system requirements only ask for a Pentium 133 processor and 32 megs of RAM – both very low. That makes this an accessible adventure for anyone. And while it is, technically, an add-on to the Heroes of Might and Magic III series of games, it does stand alone just fine.