"A Very Good Idea...Which Needs Work"

A lot of people have been asking "Is this good? Should I buy it?"

The answer is "It depends."

What Silverfall is is a seemingly "experimental" Role-Playing Game. It takes off of the style of a good many recent ones like TitanQuest or Diablo, but it is tailored to have slight quirks to it as well; quirks which make it a "this could be fun" instead of a "wow I regret spending money on this."

For instance, instead of the typical fighting skill tree, you have a somewhat expanded one which includes your physical combat types tree (Hand-to-hand, Ranged, Techniques), the magic types (Elemental is put in one category, then you have Light and Dark spell categories), you have an alignment tree which includes not only your affinity trees for Technology and Nature (which you have to get a stronger affinity for to unlock higher skills in either) but also includes a race-specific bonus tree, and then you also have a skill tree dedicated to crafting a multitudinous variety of armors and weapons which not only look a lot better than the stuff you'll find on the corpses of your recently-slaughtered foes, but also can become better than the aforementioned types statistically as you invest more of those precious points into the crafting skills, as you unlock them.

In fact, the entire armor/weapon crafting system pretty much kept me hooked on the game by itself. The amount of "customizability" is simply astounding, for instance:

Say you want to make a helmet for your character. Ok, first off you have three "weight" types to choose from, which will determine not only the main looks of the helmet, but also the statistics and materials you will need to craft it. We'll say your a lower level magic user, and you want to keep it light. So you select the "cloth" weight type. Now you have a choice of how detailed you want to make it, either a lower level, lower armor, lower material cost type, or a higher-end, higher armor, higher material cost type. We'll say you're feeling thrifty and want a nice-looking helmet. Well, depending on your affinity to the major dichotomy of Nature or Tech, you have the option to craft a "super" helmet for one or the other which would have slightly better statistics than the other options (and generally look a bit cooler as well). We'll say you're a Nature freak and want to craft a super helm for that class. Well you're looking at a decent piece of equipment already, compared to your run-of-the-mill drops--BUT HOLD ON! There's still more choices to make! Depending on how invested in your crafting tree you are, you can customize your equipment even further, for even more bonuses to the statistics of the armor/weapon (helmet in this example)!

You can have a basic style with no add-ons, or for a few more crafting materials, you can add on jewels, spikes, studs, horns, or any number of other features (depending on what you're making) and each choice has its own advantages! For instance studs would usually increase the basic armor value, whereas gems/jewels usually increase various magic or poison resistances by several percentage points! And it doesn't end there, either. You can also color your various armor and weapon pieces to come up with unique styles. Furthermore, the better-grade materials you use in crafting the armor/weapon, the better the basic statistics will be in the finished product!

When you're finally finished crafting, not only will you look cooler, but you'll also be ahead of the game. Also don't worry about having to craft more after you level up again, you won't have to waste a thing thanks to the creators of the game looking ahead and putting companions in there to accept your hand-me-down gear. You may breath a slight sigh of relief at that, but know that you will be sorely disappointed if you try to sell your unique stuff to the unenlightened merchants who are sparsely scattered through the lands...for all your hard work and toil in collecting rare materials, leveling to invest points into your crafting skills, and finally coming up with the ultimate combination for rad looks and killer stats, their scrutinous gaze will deem your work worthy of only a single gold piece for each piece of equipment...darn!

Well that's the crafting system for you.

Another neat little feature of this game is the customization of the HUD. Simply hold down the N key (default) and the various elements of the HUD will box themselves in and submit to the authority of your mouse pointer, allowing you to rearrange everything to your liking (personally I like the HP/EXP/MP orb in the lower-right where it's out of the way). Nifty. Oh, did I mention that you can do that real-time at any point during the entire game? Well you can. Extra nifty.

Another thing I liked personally (though a great many others found to be dismal) was the frequency of the uber "champion" type creatures in the game. These baddies are found at random (though quite often) among the common sparse groups of critters. They exhibit their seriously boosted hp and damage-dealing capabilities with usually no more benefit than slightly increased exp rewards. Each one is like an isolated mini-boss, and given that ANY non-boss creature can feature this boost makes the game decidedly interesting. A few times you'll probably run into a group of them and they'll whomp you right back to where you started from (I.E. You'll die in a heartbeat if you aren't careful). Like I said, I enjoyed and looked forward to the challenge, but many don't.

Well, having gone over some of the high points of the game, it is only natural to point out some of its faults as well. They're quite obvious and mentioned frequently...like drops from monsters rolling into hard to or impossible to reach places (which is why the X key picking up all objects on-screen {default} is useful, but many seemed to be unaware of that function) or the camera usually being in an awkward angle (though that is solved by either alternating between using the wasdqe keys {default} to move, or the point-and-click to move options, or by simply holding down the center mouse button to actively change the camera angle {mouse 3, default} and again, many seem to be unaware of that capability). Other than that, there seemed to be differentiation in the scripts so some of the voice acting seems off, and there are a fair amount of typos in the text boxes, otherwise. There was also some problem with quest chats during and after boss fights being glitchy (sometimes the chatting sessions are skipped altogether and you're quest menu updates itself arbitrarily). There was also a certain issue with the boundaries of the landscape being..."off" in many places (I.E. being able to walk up cliff faces, or being unable to step over a small or many times non-existent obstacle). Another thing that bugged a lot of people (me included) was the so-called "tutorial" at the beginning of the game. The big issue is that you're frozen in place until you click through the blasted thing, so many people just blaze through it without reading so they can get some activity going. Also, it packs a lot of the important stuff for later on into the very start (like explaining some of the elements of the crafting system, which you probably won't use until you get to around level 10 or so) instead of waiting till you try to use it. Personally, an interactive tutorial similar to that of say...just about every other game out there...would have been more appreciated.

o yes...it wasn't exactly "The Best Game Ever" but it did, and does definitely have some good points to it.

I can only hope they'll resolve some of the more confounding issues if/when they decide to come out with the next one (which has been released, actually, though I have not checked it out just yet).

So, ultimately, this game goes under the category of "High Potential, Bugs Included." Play it if you aren't afraid of a few glitchy moments and misguided dialogue in trade for some unique ideas and fun customization opportunities.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/22/10

Game Release: Silverfall (US, 03/27/07)