Lost Lands: Dark Overlord (Free to Play)

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Lost Lands: Dark Overlord is… a game I already reviewed. This is an odd case of a game that’s released twice on the eShop – once as a normal $7 release, and a second time as a free-to-play release with microtransactions included. This actually seems to be the only significant difference, and as such I will be copy-pasting most of this review and only changing the parts that are applicable to this version.

Anyway, Lost Lands: Dark Overlord is a Graphic Adventure originally released on PC and iOS in 2014 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2020, and then released again in 2021 as this free-to-play version. 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.

As for the changes made to the free-to-play version of the game, this game replaces the hint system of the original release with a system that requires “coins” for hints, and with players being able to pay real money for those coins. It’s an interesting approach to monetization in the Graphic Adventure genre, and it essentially means that this makes a previously paid game completely free for those who prefer to play without hints at all (or who are fine with looking up walkthroughs on the internet). As such, I find it hard to complain too much about this change in monetization, especially when the full-priced game is still available for purchase.

However, even for those who see this double-dip as an opportunity to get this game for free and ignore the microtransactions, Lost Lands: Dark Overlord is still a pretty mediocre game. Without its 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 – This Free-to-Play version of Lost Lands: Dark Overlord, a Graphic Adventure about a mother looking for a missing child abducted into a fantasy world is an interesting experiment in monetization, but it doesn’t change that this is a pretty mediocre game. 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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