It’s a really fun game and I’m very glad I bought it. But it’s not
really much of a role playing game. It IS an RPG in that you do quests, gain XP
and level up but the RPG elements are quite thin. When you gain a level your
main attributes, health and stamina, go up automatically, you don’t assign
points yourself, which is lame. The only thing you actually need to do is choose
your skills. And all of the skills are combat maneuvers or enhancements to your
physical prowess. There are no sneak, lock picking or speech skills or anything
like that. It’s not that big of a deal but it makes levelling up a bit of a
non issue. You can take on tougher enemies but it robs you of the pleasure of
customising your character to some extent. But luckily there are other ways to
do that. You can customise just about any detail of your physical appearance,
and there is a fairly wide range of clothing and armour options. And
what’s cool is you can wear both clothing and armour on your upper body and
legs to further customise your look.
There are a lot of quests but here again it falls a bit flat as an RPG. Most
of the quests are taken from notice boards and they are simple “kill
44 undead” quests or random escort missions. Filler in other words. The story
missions are better, and you occasionally find some from NPCs but the vast
majority are the notice board quests and they quickly became boring for me to
the point that I stopped even looking at them. The main focus of the game seems
to be exploring the world and combat. Combat is done really well. It’s fast
and fluid and animations are excellent. Different weapons offer different skills
and types of attacks allowing you to string different combos together. And
fighting the various giant monsters is really fun as you can clamber up them to
stab at their heads and eyes, or target various parts of a monster to disable
it, like attacking a cyclopes weapon arm to make it drop it's club.
The dialog is fairly limited and your character doesn’t speak or have the
option to ask questions. An NPC will say what he has to say and you can either
accept or decline the quest. But the writing and voice work is very good, and
the dialog is in ye old English with lots of “Prey, is there aught I can do
for you, ser-” Which I love.
The game looks wonderful. Although the graphics are slightly dated the art
design and gorgeous landscapes are a visual treat and it runs perfectly smoothly
on the 360. Dungeons are well detailed as well. The art design has a sort of
realistic look that I like a lot.
The only things I really don’t like about the game (besides the filler
quests) are the respawn and the hinky save/load system. Everything in the world
quickly respaws, from the monsters and bandits to the plants and mineral
deposits (which you use for crafting) to the contents of chests. You get sick of
battling through the same group of mobs over and over and the constant item
respawn is just silly. All I’ll say about the save/load system is I recommend
regularly copying your save file to an external source to avoid pulling your
hair out in frustration.
The game world isn’t overly large which is a bit disappointing and there
are only two settlements including the village you start at. But there is a lot
to keep you busy and the game is just fun to play. I’d say if you’re
interested enough to be reading this then you should just go ahead and buy it.
Just go into it with an open mind and try not to compare it to anything.