Lost Lands: Dark Overlord

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Lost Lands: Dark Overlord is a Graphic Adventure originally released on PC and iOS in 2014 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020. In it, players take the role of a mother who must find her missing child who has been swept away from our world into a fantasy world.

Visually, this game’s hand-painted visuals are good, and the pre-rendered cutscenes are decent, although a bit dated (especially noticeable in the character models they use). The music is suitable for the atmosphere of magical dark mystery the game is going for, although nothing memorable. However, I have to say that the writing and story are pretty lacking.

As for the gameplay, the sort of experience you’ll have here will depend largely on whether you’re playing the game in handheld mode or docked mode. In handheld mode, the game’s touchscreen controls work perfectly, letting you simply tap the part of the environment you want to examine or interact with, and the game responds how you want. The puzzles here are good but nothing extraordinary, and much of the game centers around clicking on the environment around you to look for clues, although there’s a nifty hint button to point you in the right direction if you get stuck.

In docked mode, however, this game becomes a huge pain. Here, players control a cursor that moves agonizingly slowly, and menus that should be easily accessible need to be clicked on, or have odd button assignments. And all of that is assuming you’re using Joy-Cons – the game won’t let you use a Pro Controller at all.

Without these control issues, this would be an okay if unspectacular Graphic Adventure, but with these issues, Lost Lands: Dark Overlords becomes a game I can only recommend to players who are fine with an average Graphic Adventure, and only to those looking to play it in handheld mode using the touchscreen. However, there are definitely better entries in the genre on the Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Lost Lands: Dark Overlord is a Graphic Adventure about a mother looking for her missing child, who has been abducted into a fantasy world. When played in handheld mode using the touchscreen, this is a decent if unspectacular entry in the genre, but once you try to play the game docked, the controls become a terrible mess. It’s also hard to ignore just how many great games this genre has on the Switch, so why settle for one that’s only decent at best?

Grade: C-

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