Kyn

In my mind Kyn is more Dungeon Siege than the abysmal Dungeon Siege III, so if it's DS you're looking for then give it a spin. Developed by essentially a two man team, who still keep improving it even years after release.

Right off the bat, I adjusted some settings. It started in a small resolution, which was not full screen. Adjusted that, changed some sound settings so the music isn't blaring, and pressed new game. It ignored the settings I just put it into, and shrank the window back down, and started blaring the music back at me. It said to select something, but there was no obvious option to select anything. After shutting it down and bringing it back up, it seems that the settings were actually saved, and the new game option worked. However, some of the controls don't. Like rotating the screen. It's not intuitive and I had to look up the hotkey for it. It doesn't work. Wanna control attacks for each of the characters? You can't apparently set them to auto fire, you have to switch between them every time they use a special attack. No thanks. I've had enough right from the start.

I would give this a neutral rating but that's not an option. The game does have some good things going for it but is marred by janky and unresponsive controls. For example, I could move the cursor around the map to other areas with arrow keys but they would stop working a little while later then start working again. The camera is really bad also, moving at different levels in areas with platforms making movement very hard to get right. It feels like an alpha rushed to production...

An unbalanced nightmare with clunky controls and a weird battle system. I played on the highest difficulty, as I usually do to test the balance of games, and it is almost impossible to do anything once you get to the 4th mission, on which I quit. The game looks pretty enough, but it has plenty of small problems that, combined with the bad balancing of difficulties, just leads to frustration. For example, each mission takes place in a separate area that you can explore, yet there is pretty much no reason to explore. All you will find are dead ends or chests that are mostly filled with either useless loot (because you can craft it yourself), gold (that is not really that valuable) or materials (that are dropped in abundance by the enemies already). Every exploration is stifled, so you just try to focus on getting from one mission marker to the next. New equipment is not that exciting and all looks very samey. Now to the battles. You control two characters that attack in real time, but you can hit Space to slow down the combat and give individual orders. Sounds all good and fine, but here is the problem: not only are the difficulties balanced by simply giving the enemies more health and damage the higher you go (which, coupled with the fact that you almost always fight groups of 5+ enemies, really makes for a ****show), but fighting is boring. Every character can only use two skills at a time, and you only get new skills every 3 missions (so around 2-3 hours) because of the way the point distribution works. However, those new skills are not necessarily stronger. Only being allowed to use two skills (and one "super skill") really destroys any tactical value the combat could have had, because on higher difficulties you always need one healing spell and one AOE spell anyway, and even those do not protect you from dying in two hits before you can do much. The reason I quit on the 4th mission was that mana refills impossibly slow in battle and you need a revive spell to pick up your second character while not out of battle; but on this map you are constantly in battle because of archers on the buildings. If I take a revive spell, I do not have an AOE spell or taunt spell (on my tank character) and I will lose, since I also NEED a healing spell. Even if I take a revive spell, it costs essentially all your mana, so my characters are as good as dead afterwards. Ugh. Even on lower difficulties, most of these problems persist. Exploration is just not rewarding and the battles seem stiff and awkward. The story is not that engaging and the only saving grace are the visuals, which are usually very well done. Areas are pretty and there is some good atmosphere, but what is the point of that if everything else is mediocre to rotten? Personal Rating: 2.5/10.

A sort of hack'n'slash with some big problem, first the game could often crash during opening and changing level, second the game become quite hard quite quickly, the control are really medium, but the worst fo me is that not a true hack'n'slash for me, no xp level (character don't gain level by killing enemy, only by finishing ''main quest''), and no loot system (enemy don't drop equipement but only material), not recommended Final Note : 9/20

Bad controls and buggy game.

Very interesting take an a action RPG which gives you a slowdown mode so you can give orders without getting pommeled by enemy's I really like the game it looked like your average ARPG but was quite empressed with the game mechanics the story isn't that empressive but the game is a blast to play I do recommend this one and for the low price it's going for I think it's well worth the purchase. 7/10

bad game, nothing new just hack and slash

Nothing more to add from other reviews in the neutral opinion camp. I just think it deserves a nod rather than a thumbs down. It's really not a bad game for the money if you get it on sale. It just has its flaws. I still generally enjoyed it. My biggest annoyance... I just wish holding right click would allow for constant group movement in the direction of the mouse pointer instead of all the click, click, click, click, click....click, click, click, click....