MR67

Decent game and way better than the last Spiders game I played, Bound by Flame, which was pretty abysmal. This game feels a lot like Dragon Age Inquisition but with a better combat system which reminds me of the Witcher 3. I think this one is worth 7/10, but I'm subtracting a point owing to the following somewhat janky features: - Really dated facial animations (game should maybe have been called "Teethfall" instead?), though you tend to get used to them after a while. - The game has a day/night cycle but NPCs just go about their routines 24 hours a day. Merchants will still bark at you to come and check out their wares when you run past their stalls in the dead of night, some townsfolk just stand around staring blankly and all the NPCs who walk around occasionally get stuck on obstacles which they continue walking against until you bump against them. - No children to be seen anywhere, even in native villages, which ruins immersion somewhat. - Copy/pasted interiors for all the major buildings, like the governors' mansions and the native chieftain huts. If this sort of thing really irritated you in Dragon Age 2, then I would recommend you avoid this game. - Companions who repeat the same lines endlessly in combat. - Ridiculous difficulty spikes for some boss battles. - Lots of poorly designed, tedious fetch quests (eg the infamous Logging Camp one) which have you running back and forth repeatedly. In summary, this is worth picking up on sale if you enjoy Bioware type RPGs, but don't expect the experience to be as polished. I think Spiders is a developer that comes up with some great ideas for their games, but tends to fall short in the quality department as they simply don't have the resources to compete with the bigger studios. Hopefully that may change in the future....

I finally managed to finish this one in around 60 hours without playing any of the DLC, as I probably plan to do another playthrough at some point. It's an improvement graphically from the first POE, but suffers from the same poor optimization issues as the first one; frequent lag and stutter while exploring or in combat, frequent and overly long loading screens, CPU getting a tad warm, and a ridiculous amount of hard drive space consumed. POE1 (and all DLC) uses up just over 40gb on my drive, while POE2 (and all DLC) uses around 51gb - that's more than the Witcher 3 (and all DLC)! The game is also somewhat easier than the first one (I played on Classic difficulty in turn based mode) - you would probably want to be playing this on Veteran or higher if you've played the first one extensively like myself. Zipping around the Deadfire Archipelago in my ship made me feel like I was playing Sid Meier's Pirates game all over again, though unlike that one, ship to ship combat is done via selecting text options instead. I never really bothered with this as it seemed very clunky, so I just opted to select the 'board' option instead, which takes you straight to a big melee involving the crews of both ships. Consequently, I never bothered upgrading my starting sloop, as my crew was sufficient to manage all boarding battles. You can find yourself swimming in loot if you end up attacking other ships on a regular basis, though it's a bit harder to find really good stuff that your party can use. The main story of the game is quite short compared to POE1, but the open world nature of the game encourages you to go off the beaten path somewhat and explore the world at your leisure. The new companions introduced in the game are mostly on the bland side, and you have nobody nearly as interesting as Durance from POE1. Thankfully the return of some of the old companions from POE1 helps to soothe things somewhat. More characters are voiced than in POE1, but whoever decided it was a great idea for a number of the characters to have southern American accents deserves to be keelhauled. *** The TLDR section *** Pros: - Graphically superior to POE1 - Fun open world gameplay - Option of turn based or real time combat Cons: - Poor system optimization - Short main quest - Some iffy voice acting It's a good game and certainly worth 8/10, but I'm subtracting 1 point because of the optimization issues.

Fairly enjoyable turn-based RPG set in the historical Viking era around 800 AD that will make you feel like you're in the Vikings TV series, except this game begins in Denmark, not Norway. Basically you play as either the son or daughter of a recently deceased thegn (or chieftain), and you have to build up your wealth and power by either raiding or trading with the British Isles in order to protect your lands from the machinations of rival thegns. You begin in Denmark and have a set period of time to get a crew (or hird) together, arrange a ship to travel aboard and build up some experience and resources, before you have to then leave for the British Isles, where you can decide whether to forge alliances, establish trade routes or else just pillage the place, before a second timer expires and you then return home to wrap up the story. You generally travel with all your companions (some of which are, by necessity, custom characters) but only up to 5 of them can be used in combat situations, which are handled using a turn based system that feels a bit like a poor man's Divinity Original Sin 2. There is a clever camping system where you assign duties like guarding, hunting, scouting, resting to all your companions over 4 shifts when you need to rest while travelling overland. All your story companions have their own backgrounds and personalities, and behaving in certain ways may decrease their morale, which affects their physical and mental resistances in combat. Romances are also possible. What's good? - Feels like you're playing the Vikings TV series! - Camping system is quite involving and different from the usual "just rest for 8 hours" in other games. - Game music is pretty good. What's bad? - Developers seem to have omitted some "quality of life" features that normally exist in this type of game; if you're travelling through an area where combat can take place, there is no compass and no display of the current date or time; this info is only shown on the main overland travel screen. Unless you have quest markers turned on, finding some people or objects on the map can be almost impossible. You can't rest or heal any injuries in towns or villages, only at set "camping sites" on the overland map, which is a bit strange. - Combat often seems set up to give you the middle finger, even on medium difficulty. Most fights begin with a so-called "surprise round", where you can only move your characters a short distance to position them before the fight starts, often with no cover being available for most of them. The enemies then get all get to attack before you do, and the AI tends to target your most squishy characters first. Characters without shields or decent armour can go down in one or two hits, and you can regularly find yourself with at least one of your team down by the time you get to take your first turn. Closing down enemy archers quickly is a good idea, but enemies seem to have invisible traps all over the place which can knock you down or take off half your health, unless you have a character who can spot the traps by moving really close to them. Enemies also seem to succeed at their physical or mental resistance checks (eg. to resist a stun attack) more often than your characters do. Some strange combat mechanics mean that melee attacks always hit, but ranged attacks have a chance of missing. - Stingy loot system. You can't generally get weapons and armour off enemies you kill, generally just a random crafting item or a scripted item off a more powerful enemy. Merchants and blacksmiths do not generally buy or sell weapons, armour or usable items like torches or potions, just resources like wood, salvage, or hides. If you want a suit of armour from a blacksmith, you have to pay him (in valuables and salvage or hides) to craft it for you, and this is ridiculously expensive. You will usually destroy your spare weapons to create salvage, as even repairing a slightly damaged sword or shield costs 1 unit of salvage for each point repaired, and you only generally get 1 or 2 points of salvage for destroying a spare sword or knife. The *TLDR* section: - In summary, a fairly enjoyable turn based historical RPG for fans of games like Divinity Original Sin 2, that's perhaps let down a bit by a lack of polish and an often difficult, tedious, and frustrating combat system.

This game has some lovely comic book type artwork, but ultimately is let down by really poor gameplay mechanics. When travelling overland, an icon shows you the position of enemies. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to check their level, or how many there are (apart from a symbol that shows more than 1 wave of enemies), or the type of monster (apart from the first one in the group) so you can easily end up wandering into a battle where you have no chance. The game throws tons of crafting materials at you, but oddly enough, you can only craft items inside a dungeon, at a specific location. When exploring a dungeon, you only get to control one of your characters at a time - the other members in your party just "disappear". It's a bit stupid as you get some platform and lever type puzzles which would be made easier if you could have all the characters in your party participating, but you only get to control one. Combat is really boring with your party of 3 against up to 3 enemies at a time in a turn based format where you typically spam the same abilities over and over. The enemies seem to do more damage than your party but typically have lower health, except for bosses, which are frustrating to fight against as they often have area of effect abilities that can take off half your party's health or a special attack that can one-shot one of your characters. Grinding is forced on you as your characters will inevitably be underlevelled each time they get to a new dungeon area, and fighting enemies of higher level than your party is not a good idea, as they tend to do far more damage. The monsters on the overland map respawn after you rest at an inn so you often just find yourself aimlessly wandering the countryside of search of extra experience points. Dialogue is very simplistic and seems to be aimed at preteens, plus the music is almost nonexistent and the voice acting quite limited. I got this game on special off Steam and played for about 12 hours before getting fed up and uninstalling during a frustrating boss fight. With a better combat system and less need for grinding, this game could be pretty good, but in its current state, it's probably more suited to being played as a mobile game when you have some time to kill during a boring meeting at work.

A turn based shooter that plays a bit like Hard West or Divinity Original Sin 2 (but with guns). If you're a fan of the Fallout series but prefer the turn based combat of the older Fallout games then this could be worth picking up. I would have rated the game a 7/10 as it's good but not great (owing to a bit of a budget feel to it as it was funded on Kickstarter), but I'm deducting 2 points because the game does not allow you to flee combat, which is a complete deal breaker for me. I discovered this the hard way when my party engaged in combat with a couple of automated gun turrets near a gate I needed to get through. After my sniper got two shotted in one round of combat, I moved the party away from the turrets, figuring that combat would end automatically once there was some distance between us, but nope, combat just carried on. I then Googled this and found out that this is indeed the case, as the developers decided not to cater for it owing to "issues around scripting", etc. What a lame excuse. Kind of ruins immersion when my 5 surviving characters can't run away from two stationery gun turrets! As I'm the type of player who does not believe in save scumming, I quit the game in disgust and have not bothered to go back to it since then.

The best way to describe this game is that it plays like a cross between Trine and Diablo. You play as a demon who has the ability to absorb the souls of others and this then gives you the ability to switch between the demon and up to 3 other characters at will (typically an archer, warrior and mage class character), though you only actually control one character at a time. Each character (including the demon) has up to 8 unique abilities (with up to 3 skill ranks in each) which they can learn, though only 3 of these can be mapped for use in combat at any given time. You begin play as the demon (known as the devourer) and then explore this strange mausoleum where you get to choose your first soul from one of three tombs nearby. Depending on your play style, you may opt for Kalig (a warrior), Jasker (an archer) or Evia (a mage). Once you have chosen one of them, the other two can never be recruited in your current game. The demon and your chosen character can then never be removed from your group and can later be joined by up to two other companions, who you may come across in your travels. I'm nearing the end of the game playing as Evia, and I kind of regret choosing her as her abilities seem quite underpowered compared to those of her companions. Combat is quite fun and plays out in a similar way to this studio's earlier title, Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, with the two main differences; firstly, you can switch between any of your 4 characters on the fly to make use of their abilities or to remove a character who has taken a severe beating. Secondly, as the devourer does not exist in the material world, you immediately find yourself in the shadow world when switching to him. This means you have additional enemies to fight who are native to that world, though some enemies exist in both. You also gain the ability to see certain things, like clues to puzzles, that would not be visible in the material world, and you may also be able to travel through areas that would be otherwise restricted. This makes combat a bit more interesting and adds more of tactical element as you switch between your active characters to combine their abilities. Boss fights can be a bit frustrating though, as you will often be forced to kite them just to survive. The game's weakest points are its story, its puzzles and the camera. The story is a bit vague, even right at the start, and I still don't understand it completely or my characters' motivations for travelling together as a collective group of souls owned by the devourer. Some mysterious mage who summons the devourer at the beginning of the game wants to overthrow some order known as the Inquisition, who have taken over the known world and banned the worship of any gods. Apparently your job is to defeat them and prevent the end of the world, but it never seems clear as to why or how this is going to happen until near the end of the game. The lore which gets presented to you in the game, in the form of books and notes you come across, is somewhat unintuitive and does almost nothing to pique your interest, sadly. There are seem to be numerous spelling and grammatical errors in the game's tooltips, particularly when compared to their earlier Vikings game. The puzzles are my second gripe. It seems the developers put these in to extend the length of the game, unlike Vikings which was almost purely a hack-and-slash title. These puzzles typically involve flicking some levers in a certain order, or walking across a series of tiles in a certain order to open a locked door or gate. In some cases, switching to the devourer lets you see some runes in the shadow world which indicate the sequence of tiles etc to follow, but in a lot of other cases, you will have to use trial and error to figure out some of the puzzles, which can be time consuming and irritating. It would have been better if more of the puzzles involved logical thinking, or if there were just fewer of them instead. My third gripe is that, just like Vikings, you also still cannot rotate the in-game camera, nor can you zoom it. This means you may still have your character partially obscured by a wall during a frantic boss fight, and you won't be able to zoom in close to admire your character's nifty new set of armour except from their character sheet. Summary: - A Diablo/Trine type game with some nice level design, a decent soundtrack, acceptable voice acting and a combat system that is made more interesting by the ability to switch between 4 different characters on the fly. Sadly, it's let down a bit by a somewhat short length, vague story, numerous spelling and grammatical errors, irritating puzzles and a horribly limited in-game camera. Would normally be worth 7/10, but subtracting 1 for the gripes above. Definitely worth picking up on sale if you like games like Diablo or Grim Dawn though.

I bought this game based on the good reviews, and while it has some nice ideas, I gave up playing it out of sheer frustration and uninstalled it from my PC. - Interesting story, but the writing could be better, even for an indie title. A lot of the in-game lore can be really dull to read. Setting and characters are very generic. - Very linear gameplay. You play a party of specific characters, with your main character (simply referred to as "You") having a telepathic link with them. You start off with 2 characters and can find up to 5 more. Basically, you start at the top **** upside down ancient tower and have to find your way to the bottom, where some supposed solution to your world's environmental problems awaits. No grinding for extra loot as all encounters are set. Skill trees for characters are also limited. Hence, this game would not have much, if any, replayability. - Random loot and crafted items mean it can be difficult to get the type of gear you need. There are no merchants to buy gear from, so you have to find it or else craft it. - Difficulty of encounters is quite unbalanced. When you walk up to a bunch of hostiles on the exploration screen, an info screen shows their stats but not really their numbers. Your characters can waltz through a number of combats, then have their butts suddenly handed to them when they end up fighting a lot more enemies than they had anticipated. - Music is very limited and repetitive. On the plus side, the combat system is quite original with its slow motion option (though I don't like the fact you fight in a predetermined arena) and the storyline is somewhat intriguing. I would not buy this game if you are like me and don't like to have to constantly reload from earlier saves if you end up losing your entire party in a battle. In this case, rather wait for a sale. I think the game does have potential though so it will be interesting to see what the developer can do for a sequel with a bigger budget.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Fairly enjoyable Wild/weird West tale with elements of the occult that follows the adventures of a family struggling to make a living on the Oregon Trail. The main story consists of several interlinked campaigns which must be completed in sequence, and as you cannot save your progress, checkpoints are instead automatically taken during your progress through each campaign. Gameplay essentially consists of a travel section, where you move your party (represented by an ox skull) to various locations on an overland map, and a combat section, which uses similar mechanics to the XCom or Shadowrun games. While travelling overland, you explore new locations, find treasure or shop at various stores. Sometimes you are given a choice as to what you want to do (eg. shoot the bandits or let them flee), otherwise events that happen at certain locations are resolved automatically. There is also a rather poorly implemented food system, where you have to purchase food supplies and then have each member of your party consume a portion of food each day (you have to do this individually for each person via a menu) or else have them go hungry and suffer penalties later on. Strangely, this system is only used while travelling in one of the campaigns and not in any of the other ones. Combat takes place on a large 3d map like X-Com or Shadowrun and typically has your main character and up to 3 followers engaging in gunfights with enemies. The combat system is a bit more simplistic than either of those games, though - you simply equip 1 or 2 guns, 2 single use items like healing herbs or bombs, and a single equipped item that provides certain bonuses in combat like a pair of boots which increase your movement speed or a shirt which makes you more resistant to damage. Taking full or partial cover is mandatory as characters can be one shotted by enemy attacks if they are not careful, so combat can be quite challenging. You generally get 2 actions each turn, one or both of which can involve movement and the other which involves firing or reloading your chosen weapon. Using an item or a card ability is generally free. Enemy AI is not the greatest and occasionally enemies will finish their turns outside of cover when moving, making them easy targets. There is also a clever card system you can make use of where you earn playing cards for completing certain objectives in the campaign and can then make use of these cards to give your characters various active and passive bonuses which can be used in combat. The main game is quite short though (and very dark), consisting only of 4 linked campaigns which you play though in sequence. A full playthrough of this will probably take about 10 to 20 hours at most, though there are several other separate campaigns which seem indirectly related to the main story and can also be played through once you have completed the main game. The game is definitely worth getting (on sale, which it currently should be) if you enjoy tactical XCom type combat, but is let down a bit by its budget graphics, somewhat clunky interface and short game length. The game also has some performance issues, as it frequently lags when opening the inventory screen. The music is OK though (if a bit sparse) and the voice acting from the main narrator is pretty good, if a bit limited. It would have been better had they focused on fleshing out the main characters more and made the main game a bit longer.

I spent over a week on this game but just got fed up with it and uninstalled it as it was just becoming too much of a chore to play. This is an old-school RPG with combat like Might and Magic but a travel interface like King's Bounty or Diablo. In a nutshell, you play a party of 6 characters (5 of which are customisable) who travel to an island called Xulima to investigate what happened to the temples of the gods who used to live there. The main character of your party is called Gaulen the explorer, a ranger type who receives a vision from his god which then results in him rounding up 5 bold companions and travelling to Xulima to put things right. The game then opens with your party landing on the beach. Pros: - I love the music for this game (at least what I've heard so far). - There is a lot to do (but it can get quite repetitive). - The minigames for lock picking and trap disarming are simple but effective. Cons: - Harsh difficulty. Some people might not see it this way, but getting into the game is difficult, as combat is unforgiving and money and resources are very tight, at least for a while. Enemies can one-shot even your front line warriors with a lucky critical hit early on, and even after a few levels, your squishy mages and clerics can still be one-shotted by ranged or magical attacks. An enemy that should be a reasonable challenge can end up wiping your party out if it happens to get lucky with its RNG rolls. Your party needs to consume food as they travel, so this has to be carefully managed. You also have to ensure you keep a good supply of healing potions, torches and lockpicks, and this is made even more taxing by the fact that the developers decided it would be a great idea to have some of these items increase in cost as the party gains levels, so a lockpick that costed 40 gold pieces when your characters were 1st level goes up to over 200 gold pieces by the time they're about 10th level. Consequently, money is fairly tight most of the time. Also, the game forces certain encounters on you periodically which cannot be avoided, which is a real pain in the butt. - Loot. Very limited. Merchants will typically only stock around 10 each of randomly generated weapons, armour pieces, and cloaks/rings/amulets, and this only refreshes every few days. It will take several levels just to get your characters reasonably outfitted with suitable armour/weapons because the merchants will not stock what you are looking for or else you can't afford it. Weapons and armour are also stat and skill locked (eg. a longsword might require a Swords skill of 6 and an Agility score of 16 to use) which also restricts their usage. Enemy loot drops are pathetic, but this is a problem in a number of CRPGs. How many times have you defeated a small army of heavily armed and armoured soldiers just to get a couple of dozen gold pieces for your troubles? - Game mechanics ****. Speed is by far the most important character attribute as it affects how soon your character takes their turn in combat as well as how many times they can attack during a battle. Even with you regularly putting points into your characters' Speed stats every level, you still encounter super fast enemies like giant wasps that literally attack several times before your fastest character even gets to take their turn. Min-maxing is encouraged over role playing as even your doddering elderly mage ends up having to become a literal speed ninja just to remain reasonably effective in a combat. Dual wielding or bonuses for just using a single weapon are not supported so a thief character ends up having to be played like a warrior, either using a shield or a two-handed weapon. The RNG system in combat seems (to me, anyway) to favour your enemies, as your characters seem to end up missing or fumbling their attacks (which causes damage to themselves) more often than what enemies do. - Writing - could be better, as there are a number of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Story seems quite thin. Almost no backstory given for Gaulen and his companions just to flesh them out a little more and better explain their background, motivations etc. - Repetitiveness. Combat gets very repetitive after a while, as the process remains mostly the same with just the numbers increasing. Towns seem fairly similar - same merchants, same places to explore etc. Even the main quest itself is repetitive in what you need to do. - Gaulen: You're stuck with him in your party as he is critical to the main story. He is the only character in your party who can take the Explorer class, but thankfully you can decide where his skill points go as he levels up. Unfortunately, even though he possesses a number of very useful non-combat skills, he never ends up being as useful in combat as your other characters. Summary: Old-school RPG which you will enjoy if you're familiar with the older Might & Magic games and are prepared to put up with frequent game saving and reloading.

A somewhat underrated action RPG that can be best described by comparing it to Grim Dawn, which is a pretty similar game. You play the part of a male or female viking warrior whose home village gets devastated by an army of giants at the start of the game. You then end up becoming chieftain and embark on a long quest for revenge. Graphics, combat and character customization are better than Grim Dawn. The combat has a more dynamic feel to it and the attack animations are more fluid. However, Grim Dawn is a better game overall in terms of overall character development, loot, story and scope. Vikings is let down somewhat by its extremely linear gameplay, limited skill trees for your character, shortish length (which results in the player being underlevelled later in the game and having to grind through previously explored areas), dull loot drops and equally dull characters. There is also strangely no ability to rotate the camera or zoom in on your character. The diffculty curve at the start of the game is also a bit tough but things improve after the first 2 or 3 missions. Despite its flaws, it's a fun game that doesn't force you to think too hard and is worth picking up if you enjoy this type of game, especially as it seems to be heavily discounted on a lot of platforms nowadays as well.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The graphics, voice acting (now fully voice acted) and writing in this game have improved from the first one, but the combat system has taken a step back, in my opinion. Enemies now have separate ratings for their physical and magical armour, and you have to reduce either to zero before you can start damaging their health or affecting them with your special attacks. Remember the joy of having your knight charge through a horde of enemies in the first DOS game and knocking them all over? You can't do that any more if your damage doesn't exceed their physical armour score. Combat now ends up becoming more of a war of attrition where you grind down enemy armour while trying to conserve your special attacks for use when their armour is finally gone. Tactics no longer seem to matter as much as it often comes down to whoever can inflict the most damage in a shorter period of time. The Disneyland amusement park type battlegrounds are still there as well, with barrels, ladders, and platforms all over the place in areas where combat is likely to occur. A nice touch is the introduction of elevation, where you can climb up to a higher vantage point in a combat to gain a substantial damage bonus against enemies below you, but it puts slower characters without any kind of teleportation ability at a bit of a disadvantage. The difficulty also seems to have been ramped up from the first game. Enemies often outnumber you significantly and have an irritating habit of focusing their attacks on the squishy characters, moving just out of range of your special attack that you find yourself 1 action point short of using that round, or else moving further than you expected and somehow being able to target you with an attack or two even though you were sure a wall would give you cover. Just when you think you're doing well, the game throws you into a boss battle which has you pushing up daisies and having to reload or restart (looking at you, ship battle at end of act 1). Some of the **** problems from the first game have still not been sorted out though; townsfolk will still constantly repeat the same lines over and over in the background while you are trying to concentrate on dealing with a merchant for example. There are still way too many items to pick up and having to manage your inventory constantly becomes a chore. I don't want to constantly end up picking up nails, branches, skulls and other junk all in the name of crafting. Can we not have a decent RPG without crafting in it - please??? Character models still lack any kind of facial animation which looks a bit strange when you hear them talking but you zoom in to see their lips aren't moving at all. Probably understandable though, considering this game was funded on Kickstarter. It's still a good game though, but you can clearly see where this is not an AAA-type title. I would really love for Larian to be able to put together a big budget title in the near future! Pros: - Good writing - Fully voice acted - Fun turn based combat - Lots to do - 4 player multiplayer support (if you like that sort of thing) Cons: - Steep and unforgiving difficulty level compared to similar PC RPGs - Bloated inventory system - Maddeningly repetitive background dialogue - Lack of facial animations

In my opinion, probably the best PC RPG released since Dragon Age Origins nearly 10 years ago now (though I haven't yet played Divinity Original Sin 2!). I was not a fan of the first two games in this series, but I think the developers have made this game a lot more accessible for newcomers to the series. If I have to compare this to its closest competitor, Dragon Age Inquisition, it's superior in just about every way. The story is way more interesting, the quests and side quests more involving, the combat more fluid and enjoyable, the graphics are better, the cut scenes, voice acting and animations are more polished, and the world environment more immersive. Does Dragon Age Inquisition have weather effects for example? Or day/night cycles? Or even children running around in the towns and villages? Nope. Finishing moves in combat? Nope. An addictive, in-game card game you can play? Nope. The only real criticisms I have of this game are that there are still some minor bugs - graphical glitches such as two merchants or horses standing in the same space, items floating in midair, and peasants carrying non-existent crates around, or the occasional exit to Windows. I felt DAI, in this regard, was more bug free. Also, for some strange reason, the developers disabled the jump option in combat by replacing it with a sideways dodge instead, so you can literally be trapped in a corner surrounded by enemies because there is a low fence in front of you which you cannot jump over! And, there is no auto-walk or run option, so if you are travelling either on foot, or by boat, or on horseback, you have to hold down the movement key/controller button if you want to go anywhere when you're not using the fast travel option. The loot system is also a little underwhelming, as the game makes use of lots of crafting for gear, potions and oils, so most of the stuff you find will be crafting components such as string, diamond dust or various monster body parts. There is also still quite a steep learning curve, particularly for the combat. Conclusion - if you enjoy action RPGs and haven't already got this game, what are you waiting for? Get the Game of the Year edition which comes with all DLC included. This was recently discounted at 60% for an entire week to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Witcher series, but should still be available at a reduced price, seeing it was originally released in 2015.

I honestly cannot understand why this game is getting so much hate. Admittedly, Bioware did drop something of a clanger by releasing it too early considering the monumental expectations it had to live up to with the Mass Effect name attached to it and a 5 year wait for this title, but to their credit, I think they have done their level best to listen to fan feedback and implement patches as quickly as possible. I've played around 40 hours total in the game (starting over multiple times owing to untimely deaths), so I think I can give a bit of a qualified review on this. Cons: - Absolutely no options to select your companions' gear or to control them in battle apart from directing them where to go. Their AI is not great either. - FPS style gameplay means you can only map 3 different powers to your controller, which encourages you to play more as a soldier type character with firearms. You can specify 4 "favourite" profiles with 3 powers mapped to each, but the gameplay makes it a bit tedious to have to pause combat to switch between these profiles. - Character animations have improved from the initial release, though some minor characters still look a bit patchy and the quality of the dialogue is not the greatest, though not as bad as some critics have made it out to be. - Your own dialogue options are limited and result in more or less the same outcome, regardless of what you choose. Scrapping of the old Paragon/Renegade system means you always end up giving generally bland, inoffensive responses, even when you want to be an utter **** towards somebody who deserves it (looking at you, Addison). - Enemies tend to respawn too quickly and often unrealistically. Example was when I went down into a vault to finish a side quest by retrieving a dead scientist's lost research notes. Vault was guarded by a huge robot which took ages to bring down. I defeated the robot, searched the vault, found some stuff and departed. Barely 10 minutes later I noticed that quest tracker was still active, so I returned to the vault to search it again more carefully as it seemed I had not yet found the research notes. Guess what? Huge robot is back again.....! Pros: - Combat system is more dynamic and more fun than in previous Mass Effect games. Ryder can use a jet pack to zip and jump around all the place while enemies tend to be more mobile and will try and outflank you where possible. - Open world type setting allows you to go off the beaten track, explore to your heart's content and gives you more freedom to finish quests as you see fit. I reckon you could easily sink 200+ hours into a playthrough if you so wished. - Nice new touches such as extreme planetary conditions (which cause damage to your vehicle and space suit), forward stations (where you can replenish your gear and change your loadouts while exploring), option to send other teams on missions that you can either participate in as a multiplayer game or else have these happen in the background in single player (and these earn you loot and credits), and a customisable vehicle that is more fun to drive around than the Mako from the previous games. Overall, I think this is a good game, but not quite a great one. I would say it is marginally better than Mass Effect 3 but not as good as the first two.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I've played both Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas and have to admit both of those were better than this latest iteration in the Fallout series. At least with those two games you had something to hook you into the game and spur on your interest. Fallout 4, like Fallout 3, uses the missing family member plot to try and draw you into the story, but the ridiculously rushed, sloppy intro does nothing to build up your interest in the game at all. I've only spent a few hours playing the game but just cannot get into it while I wander around aimlessly just looking for things to shoot as I have absolutely zero motivation to care about anything in the game. Add to that the somewhat dated graphics, environments that seem to seem to belong in an LSD addict's colouring book, terrible facial animations, boring settlement building, **** dialogue system and dumbed down RPG elements, and I really wonder how the so-called critics could rate this game so highly. Maybe I'll be able to force myself to sit down with this game for a bit longer sometime and revise my rating, but I doubt that. It really seems like this was a side project for Bethe$da just to keep the Fallout franchise going and cash in on the hype with minimal development effort while they focused on other projects like Elder Scrolls Online. Rather spend your money on Fallout New Vegas if you haven't already played it and spruce it up to your personal taste with a few choice free mods from the Fallout Nexus or someplace similar. It really is something of a travesty when a company like Bethe$da is raking in the money with these so-called "AAA" titles while the likes of Obsidian who seem to have a much better idea of what constitutes a great CRPG game have to use Kickstarter to fund their projects.

An enjoyable CRPG that can honestly be called a true RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate, Planescape or Icewind Dale and not yet another console-crowd-pleasing faux RPG mishmash of MMO and FPS. It's really refreshing to see a proper CRPG up there in the PC sales charts again. If you enjoyed the Infinity Engine based games like the Baldur's Gate series then it's 99.9% certain you'll enjoy this one. Pros: 6 person party with full management of characters and all their gear? Check. Traditional dungeon exploration with the party having to sneak around and watch out for genuinely lethal traps? Check. Interesting companions and party banter? Check. Additional party hirelings you can create yourself? Check. Your own stronghold? Check. Nice in-game options like trial of iron mode (one saved game only which is deleted upon party death) or expert mode (all in-game feedback disabled)? Check. Cons: - In-game Kickstarter backer content - as ShinsFortress mentioned below, backer content gets foisted upon you in the game and it does break immersion a little, even if you choose to completely ignore it. Almost half the NPCs standing around in any given town or tavern are backer creations who serve absolutely no purpose in the game other than to relate a completely meaningless short story to you if you click on them. And then there are the numerous gravestones scattered around the game with real-world backer names on them. - Graphics and voice acting could be better, though this is a minor gripe as the game is a Kickstarter funded game that delivers a lot of quality and gameplay considering it was produced using probably less than 10% of the budget of certain other games in this 'genre'. Voices occasionally don't speak their lines or start midway through the text paragraph currently displayed on the screen. - Lack of balance between some classes. The chanter has to be hands down the worst class in the game while the druid seems a bit overpowered. - Combat would have been better if it had been turn based. It can be a bit overwhelming to keep track of things when your party is fighting many opponents at the same time and your party members can hit the turf before you know it. - AI and pathfinding not the greatest. Can sometimes be a chore trying to move your squishier party members away from the front of combat while moving your tanks forward as they have this wonderful knack of trying their utmost to run into one another instead of around one another. Archers can sometimes just toodle off completely by themselves if they can't get at their target and may end up just wandering into a second group of monsters far away from the rest of the party. - Selling lots of loot in your stash can be a pain in the butt as you have to individually click on each item to sell it. An adjustable "sell all" option would have been nice. - No romance options in the game. Collapse

If you're like me and you like to go for realism in CRPGs and play through the entire game "Ironman" style, i.e. without your character snuffing it and then repeatedly spamming saved games, then this game is going to disappoint you. There is a half-decent storyline there, but the game is let down by poor balance and unpolished production. Pros: - Somewhat more interesting storyline than some other CRPGs out there. - Combat is more gritty and realistic than some other CRPGs out there (but see below). Cons: Where to start? - Gameplay is poorly optimised and can be frustratingly difficult. Most enemies can typically kill your character in maybe 5 or 6 hits, so you never really feel powerful, even later in the game. Lack of mana means you have to use your magical abilities really frugally. Some boss battles can have you using up virtually all your healing potions, mana potions and traps, and still only just **** through. You can only travel with 1 companion at a time, and they contribute almost nothing to most fights, inflicting very little damage to enemies and getting knocked unconscious within a minute or less of beginning most battles. - Voice acting is not the greatest and the facial animations are even worse. Dull conversations and poor exposition result in you learning little about the game world so you feel somewhat disconnected from the setting and storyline. - Loot in the game is really dull. Most enemies drop components which can be used for crafting, and the occasional ho-hum weapon or piece of armour. You seem to spend a good deal of the game trawling through your inventory to see what upgrades you can make to your gear once you've accumulated a number of different crafting ingredients, which gets tedious. - Game is too short (can be finished in about 20 hours or so), but given the frustrating gameplay, maybe this is not a bad thing! The final boss battle is ridiculously difficult - I gave up in disgust after dying about a dozen times, and then uninstalled the game from my PC. Worth picking up on Steam if heavily discounted (75% or so), otherwise steer clear. In any event, you would have to be something of a masochist to be able to put up with more than one playthough.

More of the same really if you've played any of the previous games in the series, though now with the added twist of being able to play a bad guy (or girl). Your special units are very limited at the beginning, so you'll only have a handful of these to make do with until later on. To flesh out your army, the game has a lot more spider and snake eggs for you to pick up and use, as well as some bottom-of-the-pile troop types at the first safe castle you get to. Apart from that, there is also a new system where you can sacrifice prisoners to create new demon and undead troop types, but it looks like you need to have a LOT of prisoners to create anything really good. Your rage powers are now provided by a strange looking little companion creature named Blackie (though thankfully you can change this name), who can also teleport you to various places in the game as well as handle the sacrificing of unlucky prisoners to create new troops. Character skills are now structured slightly more differently - there are about 5 or 6 levels of skills from the top down, with only the corresponding class having access to the last tier of skills; eg. only the warrior character (the Orc) will have access to the last tier of Might skills. I tried all 3 characters and it seems easiest to play (at least initially) as the Demoness character (owing to her higher Leadership score and the more powerful demon units she has) and hardest as the Orc (lack of offensive magic and decent missile units). However, the Demoness' last tier of skills (in the Spirit tree) do not seem all that great compared to the last tier of skills in the Might and Magic trees. The storyline seems a bit dull (though this may change later in the game) and involves you fixing a sudden imbalance which has come about between evil and good in the world, though each of the characters (the Orc, Demoness and Vampire) has a backstory of their own which makes the game a bit more interesting. Pros - same enjoyable tactical turn-based combat as the previous titles, different experience playing as a villain. Cons - little overall difference in graphics or gameplay from the previous games in the series, more difficult (at least in the early part of the game) than any of the previous games, still some minor translation issues in some of the in-game text, playing as a villainous character might not be to everyone's taste. Game also still suffers from a number of bugs (crashes to desktop occasionally when playing for a long time and entering a new area or starting a big battle, or enemy units' attack, defence and initiative scores inexplicably get reduced). Game seems overly long and gets tedious after a while and certain quests are poorly done, eg collect certain items with no indication of where to get them. I have spent over 120 hours playing as the Orc where I reached level 53 but have given up owing to boredom and frustration with the bugs. Have revised score from 7 to 5.

My comments on Dragon Age: Requisition..... I've spent the last couple of weeks playing this on PC, and while it's not a great game, it's certainly not a terrible one either and all these 0 ratings are just ridiculous and not objective in any way. It's not as good as Dragon Age Origins though, and probably ranks about the same as Dragon Age 2. Pros: - Graphically, the game is wonderful to look at. Forests, beaches, mountains, castles etc are wonderfully rendered, though sadly there is no day/night cycle which ruins the immersion a little.. - There is a lot to do in the game and I would think a dedicated playthough should take 100+ hours. - Your main character and followers can equip all sorts of gear and the gear is highly customizable as you can create your own and even change the tint of armour and clothing. - You get your own stronghold a while into the game which is really detailed and changes as time passes. New rooms get built, people move in etc, and you can also customize some of the furnishings. Cons: - Even playing with a controller, the tactical camera is not great. There is no zoom capability (I think this was fixed for keyboard and mouse though), no ability to select all characters at the same time except for certain default actions like holding position, and no ability to automatically pan between the 4 characters in your party. You move the cursor around freely and the game treats it as another character for pathfinding purposes, so it gets stuck when characters are at differing elevations on the battlefield. - Combat does not seem to feel as "epic" as in the previous 2 games. There are no finishing moves, no option to hide the interface when you want to take an in-combat screenshot, and none of the new combat abilities seem to evoke that "wow" factor when you use them. You do not get attribute points to assign each level anymore to your stats like Strength etc, so about half the abilities in each skill tree do little more than grant a +3 bonus to the relevant attribute and a somewhat naff passive bonus. For example, the two handed skill tree has a skill that grants you +3 to Strength and also reduces your cooldown times by a measly 1 second ON A CRITICAL HIT. Wow. They have also introduced a mechanic called "guard" for warriors which grants them an additional shield against damage which they accumulate by using certain abilities and smacks a lot of Mass Effect. It really makes no sense to me from a gameplay point of view. - Combat tactics for your companions have been dumbed down. You no longer have any options to tailor certain actions to certain conditions, but only to specify their preferred abilities to use in combat (which doesn't seem to make any difference), which other character they follow or defend, and the stamina percentage thresholds they stop using their abilities or the hit point percentage thresholds they start using healing potions. Ranged characters still have a tendency to rush into melee combat, and when even walking around in town, your companions just cannot stand still and rush back and forth like headless chickens before deciding to stand on top of a table just for the heck of it. - The game throws too much lore at you in the form of books, messages etc, a lot of which is not even directly relevant to the game's story. Do I really want to read a journal entry about some well known Orlesian play based on a thief who saved some noblewoman from being offed by her lover??? Do I really want to do another fetch quest based on yet another message I just stumbled across in the Hinterlands??? - There is too much emphasis on gathering ingredients and resources in order to craft gear or complete a number of quests in the game. It becomes terribly repetitive after a while. My character is developing a crick in her back from having to stop every few seconds to pick up yet another elfroot/blood lotus/iron deposit etc. It's not fun finding some great unique item on a boss monster you've just dispatched only to compare it to your existing crafted gear which usually turns out to be better anyway. - The voice acting and companions in the game are not as good as they were in the previous 2 games. Apart from Varric, I have not really become emotionally invested in any of the companions or advisors in the game. Your main character's dialogue is nowhere near as entertaining or as well written as Hawke's (particular sarcastic Hawke's was) in Dragon Age 2. - Long loading screens when you travel between different areas. Take a break and go and make a cup of tea because that's how long it seems to take sometimes. - That's about all I can think of for now. Despite my gripes, it's still a decent game, and I would have given it a 7 if not for some irritating combat bugs that still haven't been fixed, like the famous one where one of your characters will just freeze up in combat in tactical mode until you make them jump. Final verdict: 6/10

I enjoyed the hex-based tactical gameplay in the King's Bounty games and bought Blackguards in a Steam sale as I enjoy CRPGs and thought this would be more of the same. It uses the Dark Eye RPG rules in the game, the same as some previous CRPGs like Drakensang and the Arkania series. I've spent around 20 or 30 hours playing the game so far, and this review is based on my impressions while playing the first quarter or so of the game. Pros: - Storyline seems quite interesting. After a rather short, strange, surreal intro, you find yourself trying to escape from prison. At that point, you have no idea what is actually going on in the game, but later flashback sequences start to fill in the blanks for you, and this keeps you going (despite the game's other shortcomings) as you strive to find out more about the game's background story. - Some decent voice acting and funny moments in the game's dialogue. Love the dwarf Naurim! Cons: - The game mechanics. This game uses the ridiculously complicated Dark Eye RPG rules, which I'm not going to go into here. Suffice to say that most actions in the game involve a check against the relevant attributes of the character performing the action to determine whether it succeeds or not. Spells, for example, are not cast automatically, but are subject to this check. This system seems unfairly biased towards your enemies, who seem to land melee hits and cast spells in combat successfully way more often than what your characters do. Enemies also seem to land critical hits more often too. A lot of the fights are set up to be played a certain way and the game punishes you if you don't toe the line. It punishes you anyway as the random number rolls are almost never in your favour though. - Lack of clarity. For example, nowhere does it seem to show you what the chances are of some of your talents (like treating wounds or setting traps) succeeding or not. If you use poison on your equipped weapon before a battle, it doesn't show anywhere that your weapon has actually been poisoned. if you have a high strength score, it doesn't indicate what difference this makes to your weapon damage. - Clunky and tedious gameplay. You can't use a healing potion, mana potion, trap, or poison in battle unless these have been added to your belt, which, depending on the belt's quality, can only hold 1 to 4 of these items. You can't use anything that still happens to be in your backpack during a battle, so if you forgot to change the contents of your belt slots, tough luck. You have 3 different weapon sets you can change between during a battle, but it takes a whole action to change your weapon set, and if you want to switch to a weapon currently in your backpack instead, too bad. - The sheer stinginess of the game. It may improve later on, but most of the early part of the game, you find yourself using whatever you salvaged from the prison you escaped from as most other gear is way too expensive. Merchants only sell a handful of different (and expensive) items so it can be difficult to equip your characters with decent gear. Combats reward you usually with a small amount (25 or 50) adventure points which you use to improve your characters' skills and attributes. You get a piss-poor amount of treasure from a typical combat. For example, early in the game, you go off scavenging on some old battlefield for armour and weapons, and promptly get attacked by 4 or 5 bandits in leather armour, 2 of which are using bows. At the end of the fight, you get a bastard sword and a couple of other small items. Yippee. What happened to all the gear the bandits were carrying? - Exploration ****. Your main map is an overland map which you use to travel to various towns and villages there. Each town has a single screen which shows the various people (blacksmith, healer, merchant, trainer, quest giver etc) which you can click on to access. That's it. Dungeons consist of a simple line map with a number of different locations which you can click on to go to instantly, and this takes you straight to a battle map where you slog through another (usually tedious) battle. In concluding, I'm giving this game 5/10 as it has its good moments, but is let down mainly by the utterly frustrating combat mechanics, overall difficulty level, lack of equipment, and general lack of any fun factor. Unless you're a hardcore Dark Eye RPG fan who doesn't mind constantly reloading saved games to get through some of the combats, I'd advise looking elsewhere for a decent CRPG in this price range.

OK, I haven't played the original XCOM, so you at least won't get to read about me harping on and on about how great it was by comparison with this version. XCOM Enemy Unknown is a fairly enjoyable strategy game where you are in charge of an organization tasked with defending Earth from mysterious alien attacks. You'll be spending most of the game controlling a squad of hand-picked soldiers in various missions where you respond to alien incursions, and amidst all of this, you'll also be trying to manage your HQ and building up your resources while trying to keep your member countries happy by keeping their panic levels from getting too high, as well as trying to find out the ultimate reasons for the alien invasion. Pros: - Game plays smoothly and has been entirely bug-free for me over about 40 combined hours of gameplay or so. Not a single crash that I can remember. - Fun building up and developing a squad of soldiers with specific skills to suit your strategy. Fancy playing with two support soldiers, one a dedicated medic and the other a rifle jockey? Or a tank type assault soldier with 3 long range snipers backing him up? Go ahead! - Ironman mode is a nice extra challenge for people like me who don't believe in reloading from a previous save when a mission fails. This allows you only 1 saved game slot which automatically updates during the game and only allows you to save when exiting the game. Cons: - Limited number of maps for missions. There are a couple of forest areas, city areas, spaceship areas, factory areas, and that is about it. Maybe about a dozen different maps in total. No map randomization. Gameplay tends to get quite repetitive after a while, primarily for this reason. - Tedious movement in some areas. Some maps, like the inside of large alien spacecraft, have long empty corridors which can be an absolute pain in the butt to move all 6 of your soldiers along turn by turn. Some areas also have multiple levels which mean your soldiers are obscured by the floor from the level above until you scroll the mouse down to their map level to view them properly. When your soldiers get their next turn, the display has reset itself, meaning you have to scroll your mouse to view the level your soldiers are on again. Aarrrghhh! - Little freedom to play as you choose, as you have to advance the current date in the game and wait for events to happen first before responding to them. Panic levels high in the UK and you need to do something to reduce them? Tough. You can do squat about that unless you happen to get a specific mission there, such as an alien abduction to respond to. The game also forces you to follow the main storyline as soon as possible as the missions start to get more difficult (and repetitive) fairly quickly, so you are often left feeling a bit rushed throughout the game. - Limited soldier development and loadout options. Apart from cosmetic appearances where you can change the colour of their outfits and their haircuts etc, there is little to distinguish one Colonel-ranked sniper from another. Soldiers can be from a number of different countries yet all speak perfect English with a nice American accent (I believe this was addressed in the DLC XCOM Enemy Within though).There are only 2 skills you can generally choose each rank (sometimes just 1) and inventory is ridiculously limited to just a few slots, mostly for weapons and 1 extra slot for the backpack, which will typically be for a grenade, medkit or protective vest. A couple of the soldier classes grant an extra backpack slot at higher levels but that's about it. What makes it more frustrating is that the game mechanics do not allow you to retrieve gear from any fallen soldiers during a mission. Urgently need an extra grenade or medkit and your dead buddy just happened to have both in his backpack? Tough. - Unbalanced difficulty levels. The game has 4 difficulty levels - easy, normal, classic and impossible. Most people will play on normal or classic. The problem is that normal gets too easy after playing for a little while and classic is too difficult. All the aliens get bonuses to their aim and critical hit chances in classic mode and tend to one-shot your soldiers, especially in the early part of the game.

A nice little indie game with a decent storyline and some charming Anime style graphics. If you like ogling scantily clad Anime characters, this will be right up your alley. Unfortunately the game is rather short (it probably took me around 20 - 25 hours or so to finish), there are no animated graphics or proper cut scenes in it and there is little in the way of exploration. You get a quest, you go straight to the relevant destination on your map, it shows you a graphic of the room you are currently in, you have a couple of fights, and that's it - quest done. This is basically an interactive story with a few turn-based fights, a bit of shopping at merchants for new gear, a lot of text to read and that's about it. The quality of the writing is not bad but the text is a bit infantile in places and there are a number of grammatical errors. I also found the interface a bit tedious when shopping at merchants and comparing what they had in stock with what my characters were carrying when I wanted to upgrade their gear. All characters have 2 sets of skills which can be raised through 4 levels. For mage characters, the skills are very similar and could have been more varied - only the damage type varies (eg. 300% x your normal damage to one enemy but with fire or ice or earth etc). MINOR SPOILER - if you have the Castle of N'Mar expansion, you can get a companion named Chambara who is a necromancer with the ability to change her form (when you meet her), but nowhere is this ability reflected in any of her skill trees! Weird. You can also have in-game straight or gay romances (a la Bioware) and the nice thing is, when you finish the game, it gives you the option to replay using a cheat mode, so you can quickly get through the story if you want to experience alternative outcomes. All achievements are tracked and logged via nicely illustrated cards which appear on your achievements list. I agree though with the other reviewer that the game would have merited a higher score had it been pitched more at the budget end of the market.

For a veteran PC RPG gamer like myself, this is a refreshing throwback to the days of PC RPGs like the older Might & Magic games or the Eye of the Beholder series. Like those games of yesteryear, you end up playing a party of 4 adventurers who make their way through the world tile by tile and engage in combat turn by turn. Pros: - Challenging yet well balanced gameplay that keeps you on your toes tactically. You're encouraged to think carefully and plan ahead before engaging in combat, particularly with regard to boss fights. - The bestiary is a nice touch. This is basically a journal which your party keeps of each monster encountered that lists all its stats like attack bonuses and resistances to various types of magic. The entry on each monster does not have much info to begin with, but as you encounter that particular monster type more often, more stats are revealed. This helps you plan your combat strategy when next you happen to meet that monster type. Cons: - Poor performance. Despite the game not being particular graphics-intensive, it occasionally lags while you are travelling through the countryside, and entering any dungeon or city involves a loading screen (with the same picture every time) which takes ages to go away. Crashes occasionally occurred after I had been playing the game for a few hours at a time and was waiting for a loading screen. - Dull storyline and somewhat lifeless, generic fantasy world which you feel very little connection to. - Character customization is very limited. You only have a choice of 4 different races, with 3 different classes unique to each race that focus on combat, magic or a combination of the two. Each race and gender only has a total of two different voices to choose from, and two different character portraits. I really feel the developers could have made more of an effort to include more portraits and voices but I suppose the budget was fairly tight for this title, given that the last Might and Magic title came out years ago and was not a success back then. - All characters have a fixed portrait on their inventory screen, unlike the proper paper dolls used in some previous M&M games that reflect the actual gear the character has equipped. It ruins immersion somewhat when your mercenary is toting a greatsword, chainmail and a nifty horned helmet, yet you're stuck with a default portrait that shows him/her in plate armour with a shield and no helmet. - My main gripe is that there seems to be no option to flee from combat. It is all too easy to venture into a dungeon, cave or castle off the beaten path and come face to face with an enemy that can obliterate your entire party in a couple of rounds. A good example of this is when I decided to check out what was described as a "dangerous cave" and found myself facing a huge Cyclops who was a square or two away from my party. I fired a couple of arrows at him and when I found out how much health he seemed to have, I decided to try and flee as the exit was literally right behind me. However the game would not let me exit the cave so I had to fight gamely on for a couple of rounds as he proceeded to beat my party to a pulp. My advice? Be cautious and stick to only entering buildings when you need to for specific quests, or else explore the nearby wilderness for monsters to take on. Steer clear of everything else unless you absolutely cannot. - Combat does get a bit repetitive after a while. There are two spells you will inevitably find yourself using until your eyes bleed (yes, I'm talking about you, Celestial Armour and Regenerate) and health and mana tend to deplete very rapidly, leading to tedious levels of potion guzzling almost every round. - The hotbar on the screen for the currently selected character only contains 10 slots. This is ridiculously meagre as you will typically use 3 of these slots for the attack, defend and missile actions, leaving you with only 7 to map spells, special abilities or potions to. Inevitably you will not have enough space for everything and you'll have to keep opening your spell book repeatedly during combat to access other spells or abilities, making combat even more tedious. - Poorly staged encounters. Monsters will often spawn out of nowhere in response to specific events, such as the party finding a certain item in a dungeon. Typically they will be right next to the party which means there are limited opportunities to use missile weapons as these only do 50% of normal damage against opponents adjacent to the party. This seriously devalues any of the classes that specialize in missile weapons. Conclusion: Not a bad game, and a refreshing old school turn-based alternative to PC RPG gamers seeking a more tactical experience who are tired of the realtime RPG action games that the market seems to be flooded with nowadays. Sadly the game has something of a rushed feel though.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]