Legends Of Iona RPG (2007 arcade mod)

[b] Camera Is Awful And Bugged [/b] Camera breaks this game completely, no any wish to play this game with it. Also when you click "free camera" button you can't go back and you don't see your character and can't really move like this. Tried all buttons. Fix this bugged sheet, nobody will play it like this, bye until then

The developer made this game available on Steam for FREE, which is cool. I didn't get a promo copy or whatever, it's just free for everyone. This game clearly was a labor of love made not for profit but for the experience. As such it's alright I guess, but just too many little things wrong with it that make it annoying to play. Let me break it down for you. [b]The CAMERA is always at a weird angle, this is the BIGGEST PROBLEM I had with the game. [/b] It is impossible to see the enemy that you are actively fighting. It might be behind you, directly under your feet, or RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU BUT BELOW THE CAMERA'S VIEW. You'll be taking damage thinking "what the heck is biting me? I don't see anything!!" Plus they did a decent job on the level design, the scenery is interesting from far away but the camera angles won't let you see it properly once you get close to it. Even if you use the camera controls to zoom in/out and look around, the angles are so bad it made me seasick. And I don't ever get seasick. You also have to get REALLY CLOSE to a monster to attack it, or to a person/item to use/talk with them. The active distance seems to be about the length of your character's little toe. And you can't see the path directly in front of you either, can't tell if you're about to walk into a wall, down some steps, or fall into a hole. The camera angles are TERRIBLE. If this was better, I would have liked this game!! The quests are all fetch quests. "Hey man, go get this thing from this other guy and come back, then I'll give you something you need for another quest." And they all take you essentially to the same place, but you have to do them one at a time in many cases because certain doors will be locked until you go back and talk to the person who gave you the quest... so you just run back and forth eighteen times when twice would have sufficed I think. This can get a bit monotonous, but it's not too bad I guess. The dialogue usually tries to be sarcastic or goofy, but they tried too hard most of the time so it falls flat. It's either serious stuff (which is absolutely fine) or when they try to be funny it is just too corny. And the original developers seem like English is their second or third language so a lot of the menu descriptions, quest journal entries, and dialogues are worded in strange ways. [b]Aside from those things, the game is decent. And it's free, so maybe you want to give it a try anyway? [/b] The main quest is you fall down a well and can't get back up so you have to go deeper into the well/mines to find another exit. Along the way you discover a village full of the descendants of other people who fell down the well. They even put up signs that say "Stay away, don't fall down the well." You will collect new weapons and armor, kill monsters and gain XP to boost your basic stats, buy and eat food to heal yourself, and explore a magical combat system with several elemental effects based on the type of crystal you use. Combat is pretty easy, just click to attack or R-click to block. But as I mentioned earlier the camera angles make it almost unbearable to play. BOTTOM LINE: This game is cute, has decent level design and an interesting look to the world. Overall, considering it's free it's an okay adventure game, but the horrible camera angles make it almost impossible to tolerate for more than fifteen minutes, and the writing is weird because a non-native speaker wrote/translated it. So my advice is give it a try, maybe you'll be more patient with it than I was. But don't expect greatness here. I can appreciate the effort they made, and it's a neat little combat system with an interesting little world, but half the time I couldn't even see where I was going because the camera angle cuts off in such a way that I can see fine if things are 100 feet away, but anything up close within 20 feet is really hard to see. If they had put in a bit more work to make the camera better, I would have given this game a thumbs up instead of a thumbs down. I just don't like playing games that make me so blind that I start walking into walls and can't see what's attacking me.