Gameplay- If you've played an RPG recently or at all for that matter you may be disappointed right off the bat by the intro sequence. Basically it shows goblins throwing some kind of summoning dust on a star engraved in the ground. The summoner walks in the room and a goblin trips and moves some of the dust. The summoner summons s huge monster from hell and being that the sealing dust was moved, it escapes, sound familiar? It probably is and it gives you a slight sour feeling of what is to come right from the start.
One cannot review this game without comparing it to Diablo 2. The style, feel, and general look are all the same, but the game does move for some creative innovations. Combo spell executions, expanding quickslots, using a horse for transportation, to name a few. You can choose 6 characters with preset looks and genders. These range from Wood Elves, to Gladiators and magic users. Character development isn't too interesting, as there is no set curve for gaining new abilities, you basically must kill enemies to gain scroll-like objects which you use to gain new spells/abilities. There is also no level limit on these abilities (i.e. you could technically pickup a high level spell right from the start). It really just doesn't feel right to be gaining your core combat effectivness from loot instead of leveling. There are of course skills you add points to, to help increase those spells/abilities, as well as gaining 1 point for an attribute each level (i.e. Strength, physical regeneration). The character development process is flat and doesn't lead you to look forward to new abilities.
The spells/abilities you do aquire can be combined in 4 combo icons. Like you could have a combo such as healing yourself, castng a fireball, and using teleport, all in a quick execution. This is a real neat feature, but oddly you cannot use these combos while riding a horse. In the end though you'll find yourself combining repeats of one single spell/ability that is your best, like a triple fireball combo.
The world you are in is actually pretty vast and detailed, the story progesses as non-linear so your free to explore the world map as you please. It also needs no loading time aside from when you start the game, so no loading between areas. So you have this big world and everthing, but the only bad part is a bad story execution. The summoned hell-beast out of control story is very unoriginal, but this game shows how you can really mess it up. The first 3 chapters in the game don't even have anything to do with the hell monster. In fact if you never watched the intro movie to begin with you'd never know a hell moster was even the main problem.
The thing that will keep you from playing this game is the progression. All you do to advance the story is travel the world map from one location to another. Thats it, you get to one point, talk to the character, and travel some more, it sounds exactly as I described. I found myself wondering why I was wasting my time on this game.
Overall Gameplay: 5
