"Extremely boring."

I ran out of games to play one day, and I was so desperate for a new game, and I happen to see this game on the shelf. It was new- and it was an rpg. The idea sounds innovative. Nature or technology. Choose from 4 races. Over 130 skills and magic spells. Freely explore a stunning and immense fantasy world. Realistic physics engine blah blah blah was what the box cover claims.

All of those claims are true. But it didnt turn out into what I expected. I thought it was an open ended game, like Morrowind (Oblivion was a great disappointment though), the Gothic series, and it reminded me of this classic open ended rpg, Arcanum, because it revolved around the same theme- magic or technology.

It turned out to be like the Diablo series and Titan Quest.

It was my fault for me for being so impulsive and not checking it up first.

So I tried it. And I played it. And I hated it. So much so that I uninstalled it within a day.

On to my review:

Graphics (6/10): Passable. Fairly nice, but it was too cartoonish for my taste. But it was still *quite* nice. The realistic physics engine they boast to have is quite neat. Enemies can sometimes fly from the impact of your spells, things flung off from them when they die, even when they're dead on the ground when they get hit by something they will be affected, blah blah.

Sound (4/10): Just...bland. It's as though it's there cause the game just needs the music. Not appealing at all, and very unimpressive. Many characters in the game have no spoken dialogue, and the ones that have just barely make it. Bad.

Gameplay (1/10): See title. Extremely. Boring. First of all, if you like games like Diablo II, there's no guarentee you might even like this game.

Okay. The level design really blows. You are just wandering over miles and miles of nice wilderness with the same monsters to kill over and over again. And you know what? Those monsters spawn with the exact same numbers. groups of 3 zombies, group of 2 skeletons and 2 zombies, 3 troll zombies, blah blah. They spawn like, not even randomly, but spaced all over the map with some space in between. So basically you are just killing same groups of them over and over and levelling up.

Minimap sucks real bad. There is no practical use for it except to tell how many enemies you are going to meet and where are their locations, as well as the various npcs. No indication of any boundaries whatsoever, you can tell you are going onto the edge of the map when you cant move anymore. There's not even indications of entrances to areas and all, and you basically dont know where you are going, which is one of the factors blowing this game off totally for me. Like I dont even know how to get back to where I started from on the minimap. Totally sucks.

Quests. Gosh. All of them just requires you to either kill stuff, get this item for blah blah, go to location blah and kill blah and blah blah. What kinda friggin sidequests are these? It's just killing or collectin stuff that you will do anyway. Oh yea. And who wrote the dialogue? It's so long winded and goody two shoes, and you dont have much options to choose from. You are being forced to play a goody two shoes, long winded character who speaks in such monotonous dialogue. Ugh.

Game is so boring. Kill the same monsters. Rinse and repeat. Use the same spells/attack skills. And it's not even as varied as Diablo II. The spells/skills are almost all the same. Diablo II is so much interesting even though I prefer open ended rpgs. Oh, and the monsters drop so much loot too. Too much. And most of them are useless stuffs.

Oh yea, and about the nature/technology thing? It's nothing. If you choose nature by doing nature quests, it just opens up a few skills that you can invest skill points in. Only a few skills. And there's not much difference between nature and technology skills. Oh, and speaking of skills. Gosh. Absolutely horrible. You need to attain a similar level of a previous skill leading up to the next to obtain a similar level of the latter. Like let's say, fireball to combustion. You need fireball 8 to get combustion 8, fireball 9 to get combustion 9. The game forces you to max the skills leading up to the next. At least Diablo II didnt force it on the players. You just need a 1 in the previous skill and you can get a 20 in the next.

Conclusion: Alright. I cant think of things to rant on anymore. Although I like open ended rpgs or those that dont rely on fighting bunch of monsters again and again, I've played Diablo and Diablo II before and enjoyed them while it lasted, and I can say, this diablo-wanna-be clone pales so much in comparison. Even if you liked the Diablo series, there's no guarentee you might like this. If you do, well good for you. It just didnt work out for me.

Overall score: 3.5/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/07