A simple, but engaging, title that was widely overlooked in its time.
For its time, a beautiful looking game similar to some of the King's Quest games. It was also one of the first games to feature extended voice acting. The voices themselves were solid, in particular the druid Allanon's deep timbred baritone and the soundtrack substituted quality for quantity. The storyline is a solid one with a best selling author collaborating, and the characters are real enough to provoke true emotion out of the players. The puzzles are entertaining.
The Bad:
Combat is unimpressive, never making you feel like you have much control. Gameplay is a little simple. The game is short, clocking in under 10 hours from start to finish for most folks familiar with the genre. It is also quite easy.
Shannara is an adventure game based on the books that share the same title by best selling author Terry Brooks.
Specifically, this game adds an extra chapter inbetween the two books "The Sword of Shannara" and "The Elfstones of Shannara" and a new character, Jak Ohmsford, that once again gets used as the druid Allanon's tool to save the four lands from the threat of The Warlock Lord, who was believed to be destroyed once and for all at the end of The Sword of Shannara. But this game needed a bad guy worthy of smiting so here he is again.
While knowledge of the backstory from the book is not explicitly required in order to enjoy this game, it certainly helps, so your helpful reviewer is going to provide some. You play the role of young Jak Ohmsford, first approached by the druid Allanon and dragged into the adventure to help out. For those who are unfamiliar with the book, many generations ago, when The Warlock Lord first became a threat to The Four Lands, Allanon's father, the druid Breman, created "The Sword of Shannara" to battle him. In the book by the same name, Allanon explains that his father erred by giving the Sword to the elf king Jerle Shannara and not to the people of The Four Lands. This created a situation wherein only those with Shannara blood can wield the sword.
The Ohmsford family qualifies. And, in fact, are the only ones that do. Many human generations ago, young Jak's family intermarried with an obscure offshoot of the Shannara clan, which has since been wiped out. This leaves Jak's family as the only one who can wield the needed weapon.
You'll be joined on your quest by a very strong cast of memorable characters. Great care is put in to make each addition to your party feel like a real person, and indeed is one of the strongest parts of the game. Part of the way the game draws you into it is with the soundtrack. It is sparse, and could use some more breadth, but what there is of it is well suited to the mood of each location it plays in. Not once does the player scratch their head and wonder why a particular piece of music was chosen for a specific situation. It all fits in nicely and blends into the background as a good soundtrack should.
Filling out the rest of the audio is some fine voice acting, which adds to and improves on the already top notch character development. Your companions are first presented by good looking designs and well-written dialogue, but the voices presenting the dialogue are what really bring those characters to life and give them greater impact. One particular sequence about two-thirds through the game drives home their emotional weight on the player like no other.
As you journey through the beautiful lands on your meandering quest to both find the sword, and the companions that will help and protect you, you'll be entertained by a solid, but short offering that is nevertheless easily recommendable to anyone looking for a nice, old-school, overlooked title.