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Another long download and install... Why does this game take so long to install? 1.8 gig... I've downloaded larger demos that went much faster.
OK, fire up the game... Rated M... Press Start (already knowing X won't work, heh). Bypass info gathering.
New Game... big load time here. Now select class and gender
Class: Warrior, mage and rogue are the classes, each with male and female. It does not say if there is a difference between the two other then the look. The classes appear to be standard - Warrior for melee, Rogue for arrows and picking locks and mage for spells. I'm going to go with the female rogue.
Video - Two guys dragging someone... and dragging them... He gets plopped into a chair with a book and is threaten by some woman looking for a champion. He starts reading the book... huh? Cut to a broken and barren land with some hero's fighting bad guys... ooo, nice head chop. They will make their stand... and the game begins...
I dispatch the rushing bad guys as best I can while instructions on how to do combat flashes on the top of the screen. There is another person fighting with me but I really have no idea who she is. We take out the first three bad guys and a few more come up and... The game locks up...
Restart - ahhh, a note told me to pause during battle to issue commands to my party, I did not realize I could control the other person there.
This time I get through the two waves of baddies and my side kick says "We can't keep this up forever" and I have choices to reply... ummm... I'll go with "I'm right beside you"... lets see what that does... In a cut scene, I kill one bad guy by slicing him in half, then back to game and still more baddies come. We kill them even though I can't seem to get the orders menu to come up in pause, so she is on her own, heh. Finally a big boss bad guy comes out with a bunch of minions. A decent length battle ensues and I discover a cool move that lets me disappear and reappear behind an enemy and stab him in the back, heh, too cool. I kill the big bad guy and it goes into a cut scene and I... holy shit, am I trying to skull fuck this guy? Before I can really tell, a crapload more bad guys come running up and It looks bad for us... but we are saved by another cut scene that shows a dragon rising up and scaring them all away... cut back to the woman threatening the guy with the book. "Bullshit" she cries, "Thats not how it happened". The guy agrees to tell her the truth... wait... WTF was I doing then... combat training? Could have been better presented.
Anyway... on to customize your character.
Appearance - Lots of options. I play with them, I want to make my character look like Kate from LOST... oops, none of this is available in the demo but there are really a ton of options to customize your character, I like playing with crap like this and it would be a big plus for me in the actual game.
Portrait - Same as above.
Name - Name your character. For this I'll stick with the default.
Cut scene - enemies invade... lots of people die... villages get burned... the champions family escapes... They stop to argue a bit while a fire holds back the bad guy so you talk them into going on through some more talk choices. These talk choices have symbols that I assume mean something but I don't know what so I just keep choosing the top one.
Ahhh, I can now access things in the pause menu... oh man, craploads of stuff here as well, quest log, stats, abilities (skills/spells I think, it is built like a tree), a way to set tactics, resists, inventory, the works. I do not seem to be able to save right now... Not sure if that will change.
You continue down the only path available, killing bad guy, leveling up and finding stuff. The demo does not let you manage inventory. You come across a guy and his wife and save them. The guy still hates you but they decide to join you anyway. It's funny, in the guys stats there is a little bar gage that tells you he is your rival... It moves more toward friend as you fight together. heh, I wonder if at some point you have to team up (and decide level up for) someone that will never like you and eventually turn on you, that would be funny.
Your team eventually reaches a big clearing and a big ogre comes rushing up. Your brother charges it and gets squashed. The battle commences and eventually you slay everyone. Another cut scene... jesus this is a big one.
The dragon from the beginning rears up again as a hoard of bad guys come rushing in, you realize this is the true story from the beginning. The dragon slaughters all the bad guys and then transforms... into Captain Janeway... or a damn good impression of her, just how many Star Trek captains are making video games these days? Anyway, Janeway offers to take them to the city they want to go to if they will deliver an amulet to some elves. They agree but first they have to kill the guy they met on the road because he has "the curroption", so they kill him. Cut back to the guy reading the book and the angry woman, she still thinks its a lie but he assures her it is true. Cut to a voice over that tell how Janeway took you to the city of chains and how you meet Captain Isabella (not from Star Trek, thats her name, heh) you agree for no reason to watch her back and then meet her later where a fight happens with some people I have no idea why I kill them. After this battle you don't lead the way, you follow Isabella and she does not like to explore or loot corpses, she just runs from battle to battle. You eventually reach some guy that wants a relic that Isabella lost so Isabella kills the woman with him and a battle begins, you kill the guy and his minions without much trouble then you offer to help Isabella find the relic, then she offers to keep you company later that night... nice :D
End of Demo
Game Play - The game controls ok except that the camera often seems to get in the wrong place and you have to stop attacking to swing it around. There may be a way to adjust that in the options... not sure. The controls are complex but I think with a little practice this is not a problem. The demo is completely linear but I expect that changes as you get into the game because you have the ability to select your quest. The forced party changes are a bit of a pain, why let me have a guy for only a few battles then lose him. I hope you can have better control over who stays and who goes as you get further into the game. My biggest complaint would be the very long load times and pauses during cut scenes. Since all the cut scenes are done within the game engine, I guess they have to keep putting in character movement and speech.
Graphics - Ignoring the camera control issue, the game looks great. The environments are very "dungeon crawl" so there is pretty much zero pop-up or seeing through things. The character models for everyone, including enemies are very detailed as are all of the environments (though there seems to be nothing destructible in them). There is lots of blood splatter... especially after battles, during cut scenes everyone has blood all over them, it's pretty funny. Beautiful game.
Story - There are a lot of cut scenes... a real lot. It gives you a lot of story but it also kind of hampers the flow of the game a bit because the play is very much action RPGish. It's like they wanted to give an action RPG lots of story depth, which may sound like a good idea but, to me at least, got in the way of the action. Especially since some of the story is told pretty so so. The whole bit between Janeway saving you and meeting Isabella was very WTF... Just joining up with her like that made little sense but they spend a good deal of time on it. I was also not very impressed with the constant going back to the guy talking to the angry woman... With all the time spent on these two, I feel like I should have some idea why this woman wants the true story of the hero. The time spent killing, looting and leveling up is very enjoyable though.
Characters - There seems to be a lot of variation to creating a "look" for your character and also a real good amount to customizing their stats to make for a lot of variation. The real question comes in where does it end? There does not appear to be more then one difficulty level, which could be ok if the monster level scales to you and you are able to wander about freely later in the game. I also do not know what the max level is.
Bottom Line - I'm not sure this is a great representation of the whole game... at least I hope it's not. If it opens up more to pure game play and slows down on the cut scenes a bit... and does in fact allow you to build up your characters then I think this could be a game I would buy without hesitation. If the game stays linear and ends when the story does, this might end up in the rental category.
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