This one was a bit of a disappointment for me. I remember having fond feelings of the first game, but absolutely unforgivably bad tech issues. This game hasn't crashed once for me... yet... I'm not enjoying it. (And according to other reviews, it's probably as crashy as the original and I'm just lucky)
I described the first as Chinese Balders gate crossed with Diablo. This version kindof reverses that formula. Where I felt like I was exploring the world and fighting some in the original... I feel that I'm fighting lots of mobs and rarely RPG'ing here. It may just be a really slow start... but dang... it's a SLOOOW start.
In Seal of Evil, you take on the role of the Chieftain for Baiyue village. The Qin empire is attempting to claim ownership of the land and they're diplomacy turns a little less diplomatic. This adventure has you fighting through fantasy china to save your village.
Gameplay is a real-time with pause system and techically works. But the game tends to both use enemy spam from diablo and tankier enemies found in more traditional RPGs. This means that I spend alot of time just clearing out a few enemies, waiting for natural regen, clearing a few more, and looping endlessly.
This is made worse by a kindof broken level of awareness in the AI. Your allies will often rush to fight an enemy on the other side of a wall, but to get there... they'll rush around the unexplored map to the doorway triggering every enemy along the way. But equally, I often found enemies aggoing on the other side of the dungeon.
Unlike the first game, much of your starting party are wizards instead of fighters. This means that ranged combat takes a front seat and line of sight becomes an issue. The AI doesn't automatically move to get a clear shot, and that means you might be unintentionally shooting a random pillar. Enemy mobs also block shots, meaning that the enemy spam spreads out your firepower. Later game you do earn some AOE effects but its a VERY slow way to start this game.
Both of the above issues meant that I found myself babying the party. I needed to micromanage every moment to make sure the AI wasn't killing itself or wasting resources. I needed to swap between heroes to force the party to retreat or reposition safely. Pause... make sure the AI isn't screwing up... run... pause because the AI was still screwing up... run... oh I made a mistake... etc/
Really, the breaking point for me was when I fought the second boss and all the enemies in the dungeon respawned. Stepping out of the boss room seemingly triggered around 90 enemies at once. So in and out I'd dash picking them off where I could... until I'd spent over 45 minutes... and gained over 4000 XP (With ~10XP per foe) and still found myself no closer to the end of the horde.
Yeah, I CAN make progress but its tedius and considering I haven't seen a second town in over 5 hours of play... I haven't found non-combat motivations yet either. It's absolutely not a BAD experience, but its also just not a very good one.
One day, I would like to return to this and try playing on easy to see if I can make it play a little more like the Diablo it seems to think it is. The manual suggests that easy is expected to take 30 Hours of play, and Normal is 70 hours of play... so that lack of damage sponge might allow it to flow a little better.
