The story is simple: An evil necromancer stole a magical talisman from the village of Tambry, and three brothers, Julian, Phillip, and Kevin, set out to retrieve it. Along the way, they Save the Princess, help a giant sea turtle, and kill a Wicked Witch, before finally confronting the necromancer in his lair. In a unique twist, you only ever control one brother at a time, but should he perish, the next oldest sibling takes up his sword to complete The Quest.
The game was ported to the Sega Genesis by New World Computing a few years later, and ultimately received a sequel, Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II, by The Dreamers Guild in 1997.
The game contains examples of following tropes:
- Action Hero: Julian starts out with the highest Bravery stat, and thus, the most Hit Points.
- Action RPG: The game was one of the earliest top-down Western RPG to feature real time combat.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Julian has dark hair, Phillip's is reddish-brown, and Kevin's is silvery blond.
- Guile Hero: Phillip relies on his smarts and high Luck Stat to complete The Quest.
- Karma Meter: The Kindness stat can be raised by performing selfless acts and becomes important at several points in the story. Kevin starts out with a large boost to it.
- MacGuffin: The magical talisman stolen by the necromancer.
- Necromancer: One serves as the Big Bad of the game.
- Nice Mean And In Between: The three brothers: Julian is a fighter, Phillip is the clever one, and Kevin is the kind one.
- Plot Coupons: In addition to other objectives, several artifacts are required to access the necromancer's home plane.
- Save the Princess: Saving the king's daughter is one of the "optional" objectives.
- Sibling Team: Technically, the three brothers are this. Except they never actually team up in gameplay, instead going off on adventures one by one (as in the classic fairy tale scenario).
- Side Quest: Subverted. Several seemingly optional objectives turn out to be essential to reach the Big Bad.
- Stat Grinding: You raise your Bravery by slaying enemies, letting you slay even more and tougher enemies.
- Take Up My Sword: Should Julian perish, Phillip carries on with his quest. If Phillip dies, too, Kevin picks up the fight.
- Video-Game Lives: The Luck Stat functions as this: Each time a PC dies, they are brought Back from the Dead but their Luck is decreased by one. If it runs out, it's either the next brother's turn (itself an example of Video-Game Lives) or Game Over.
- Wicked Witch: Defeating her is one of the requirements to get to the Final Boss.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: The country of Holm, where Tambry is located, spans over 17,000 screens, with no loading ones in-between.
- Youngest Child Wins: Depending on how well you play (i.e. whether it's Kevin who completes the quest), this can be either subverted (if Julian or Phillip succeed or Kevin dies, too) or played straight.
