I played the full game too, hated it.
See, lets start with what they did right:
Barcelona, the city itself looks nice, there's some NPC interaction and even one or two funny things (going to Leo's workship and using the organ for example if you love music).
However, then you get the npc's that stick along with you:
-They make the game crash if you take them further than intended
-There is no interaction with them, you can talk to them before they join, but once joined, they just follow you and fight. All you can do is tell them to wait, or keep following.
-They attack the enemy kamikaze style, not listening to your sneaky style or ranged attacks. No, instead, they unsleah entire hords upon you, causing them to die within moments.
-If an NPC joined you with a quest, don't worry, besides the chance it'll make the game crash, they never come back to it.
There's the story:
-They refer to China, yet you never go there
-They refer to the battle between the Spanish and English armada (you talk to a few spanish captains and so), yet you never get involved in it
-They even talk about the "new world", yet you never go there
There's combat:
-Yes you got magic, it's also useless since all spells either don't do enough damage to kill even weak creatures, or take at least 3 seconds to reload (usually a combination of both). The only useful spells seem to be in the Fire branch, or in the healing branch.
-You can handle one or two enemies on your own, but if you walk ahead too much (say, by one or two steps), the entire bunch will sack on you, killing you with ease.
-There's healing potions, a spell (if you take it) and "spirits" floating around *certain* killed enemies that restore health. There's quite a few blue spirits floating around too, giving mana. There's no resting option however. No more health potions? Used all blue spirits? Too bad, you'll have to wait a few minutes/hours now to regain all those things.
There's a few other things:
-No humour, the SPECIAL system lead to funny descriptions of perks and skill, none of that in Lionheart, the only humour I saw so far was in Leo's workshop.
-Automap sucks, utterly. You can't add notes, nor do any notes get added automatically, leaving you clueless unless you're good at remembering maps - thank god they're not that big huh?
-No nametags, anywhere. You have to press "tab" (the key) every time (after reloading for example, the option doesn't get saved) to see names on NPC's. Certain shops have signs, but you can't read em, if you're lucky, it has a nametag with "tab" on, if you're not, you'll either have to figure out the nametag, or go inside and risk it. I have gotten attacked on several occassions by entering houses without me knowing what was inside (they could for example say either a streetname and number, or the family that lives there (Arcanum did it, BG2 did it, why not Lionheart?)
There's more things, but I can't remember all of them from the top of my head... I did hear the rumour that a bit after Barcelona, the game turns into a very lineair dungeon crawler, with no roleplaying anymore, just hack 'n slash.
All in all, it feels like Lionheart was rushed, because Interplay needs money. So all in all, I concur with much of the negativity. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />
