Glitchy, janky, mess... It feels SO incomplete and untested. But, I kept coming back to it. I found myself actually looking forward to jumping back into it. I don't really know why! But, I stuck with it and finished it.
The Bad...
To start, the physics in the game are horrible. For example, the object collision is brutal. I died several times, getting stuck in the environment, unable to do anything. Once, I got pressed into a cage door, fighting a monster and couldn't move. I just had to wait while it beat me to death. Once I died, the camera panned out, and my character looked like a rag doll, horizontally twitching within the cage door. Dead monsters' bodies remain where they fall. Too often, blocking your path, so you can't get past. My summoned monsters pathfinding is really bad, too. They constantly block my path and I couldn't get past them, ultimately waiting until their summon time expired. I took advantage of this too, though... I'd summon a monster at a choke point and the attacking monsters couldn't get past. So, I'd just sit back and plink them with magic attacks. Monster AI is pretty bad, mostly because of the pathfinding I talk about. Way too many times, a monster would get stuck on something in the environment, and I could just stand back and repeatedly blast it with magic attacks, 'til it died.
The combat is a bit wonky. Standard action RPG style, with a few twists. I dual-classed as a mage and a warrior. I could've just stuck with warrior and button-mashed my way through almost every fight. Hold down the right mouse button to raise your weapon to defend (not your shield -- weird). At the same time repeatedly left-click to attack. You automatically pull your defense back up after every swing. Easy-peasy. There are special attacks you can develop through skills, and I used them a bit, but all I really needed was the standard attack, followed by the Block Breaker skill every so often to break the enemy's defense. More on the mage class in "The Good..." section (but it ain't perfect).
The controls are pretty bad. On PC, you're locked into an out-of-the-ordinary key-mapping for common RPG access points. WASD movement, but everything else was just weird. Skills, inventory (3 separate windows of it), magic, your map, and quests are all controlled with F1 - F7 keys. (Can't tell you how many times I typed "i" to get to my inventory, or "m" to open the map!) The mouse was way too sensitive when turning, with no real way to adjust. It'd over-rotating too quickly and got me lost several times. I had to keep pulling up the map to reorient myself, 'til I got used to it. The jump (spacebar) and weapon/armor set switch (R or T) were VERY unresponsive... especially the latter. Trying to switch from a ranged mage's gear to my warrior setup, I sometimes had to press the key 2-3 times for it to respond. Got blasted by monsters way too many times because of the unresponsiveness. (Maybe it was by design... How could you switch gear, when you're getting repeatedly pummeled? Wait... how can you switch gear AT ALL? :-))
**SPOILER** [spoiler]The final boss fight just, well... sucked. I spent the entire game building my character with certain stats, skills, and gear, and NONE of it mattered. The battle is more-or-less a mini-game. I won't spoil it completely, but you don't use ANY of your skills to fight it. The things you've "created" that should help you in this fight, don't help. And, that mini-game was a BEAR to beat. Add insult to injury, the ending was entirely too short and unfulfilling. My reaction was, "Wait, that's it?!"[/spoiler]
The Good...
Even though it's wonky, the combat can be fun. The mage was fun... mostly ranged attacks with fire or ice for me, with a defensive spell and a summon... 4 giant scorpions. The magic system is pretty unique, letting you craft your own spells with a combination of different cards. You can make some pretty unique combinations. But, I stuck with those four spells. I also found the magic system to be non-intuitive. Sure there are a lot of combinations, but no real explanation on why you can or can't match certain cards in a spell. Certain skills are supposed to let you use more cards in a spell, but certain spells just didn't support that model, with no explanation as to why.
Your character's voiced reactions after winning a fight -- while repeated over and over -- were still funny to me. "Bet you're glad you met me," "That's rich," or just the resounding grunt of victory. I liked his flippant attitude with most things, never taking anything too seriously, and that came through in his voiced interactions. But, it could be too flat at times... uninspired. (Like the voice actor just "phoned it in.") Overall though, the voice acting gets a C+ (at best).
Character building is good. Nothing ground-breaking, but I felt immersed a bit in developing my character into a warrior/mage. Each class type has its own set of skills that you can dedicate points into as you level up. While you can gear your character up to be a sort of hybrid, when combining classes, I found it best to set up one weapon set up for the warrior and another for the mage. I'd just press the "R" key to switch between these sets to jump between mage and warrior. I kind of liked that I could carry two completely different sets of armor, jewelry (4 rings and an amulet), and weapons in my inventory, and customize them all for each class type. Along with the mage and warrior, there's also what they call a Ranger. It was pretty much just an archer in my opinion. I skipped anything here, because the bow combat was really wonky. By the time you aimed with multiple keyboard presses, the enemy was in your face. I was probably doing it wrong, but I didn't like it.
The characters in the game are good... The ones you interact with throughout the story, anyway. A bit stiff, but still maintained the story well. Some well-acted, some not so much. Too many of them though, had WAY too much to say, droning on and on about some nonsensical stuff. The standard NPCs were annoying, especially the vendors... constantly repeating the same goofy sales pitches over and over. Used Car Sales 101.
The story was decent and there are a ton of side quests. It's a pretty open world with lots to explore and lots of monsters to fight.
The crafting was pretty good. With the armor and weapons, it's just improving what you have. As you continue to modify it, you expose slots for gems and there are a ton of them you can use to boost skill levels, provide extra defense, and add weapon damage. The one drawback to this was the skill gems. For example, a gem gives you +1 level to your fire magic. Each skill has a max level of 10. Once you max that out, the gem is useless... you don't get additional bonuses, above and beyond 10. Good thing is though, you can then remove that +1 fire skill gem and slot in another gem. You could also stop leveling your fire magic skill at 9, keep the gem slotted, and use that 10th skill point in another skill... which is what I ultimately did. The potion crafting was a bit overwhelming... There are SO MANY ingredients, and you can combine them all to make a ton of different potions. While this is pretty cool, I ended up with 14, yes 14 different iterations of a Strength potion. This made management of potions in quick slots, a bit of a pain. Ultimately, I'd find a recipe that worked and I just made multiple bottles of it. Unfortunately though, I barely used any of the ingredients I gathered, and also had a ton of potions in my inventory I never used. But, the system is pretty cool. It allows for a TON of experimentation.
Overall, I'd recommend this game as a decent, nostalgic time-suck. On a number scale, I can't in good conscience give this anything better than a 7 out of 10. With the overall performance issues, and the ending, I should give it a lesser score. But, I enjoyed the core of the game... So, a 7 it is.
