I played the demo version, and although the graphics are not bad at all, the layout design is laughable. Firstly the lower third (almost half) of the screen is hidden by the interface and a very small area is visible from the world’s map. Enemies with ranged weapons shoot at you off the screen and you have no way to target them accordingly.
Your character cannot run but the foes seem to be only running or better said sliding. The pause key (spacebar) is disabled during dialogues while the game is not disabled and anything could happen while you are thinking about the odds of answers. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />
The forests are graphically generated in a fabulous quality. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />
The game design on the layout problem was not bad but not good either.
The world had been cut down to rectangles with portals between them or roads connected at the edge of the screen and no scrolling was available.
The characters are based on two T3D models, one for the male and one for the female. Customisation seems to be focused on the head style and the colours of jackets.
The inventory was well laid out, with a strip for body equipment at the bottom, which one could hardly know exactly what is that, especially that there is no popup statistics on items. A similar strip is permanently visible to be populated with items you wish to use during battle, like potions etc.
The skill system is all open from start, but 15 skill points are to be added for your distribution on every event of promotion without a clue on the level of points that promotes your skill to the next level up. This means that one could end up distributing a lot of points without gaining any effective skill results.
This game was hardly beta-tested at all and I would rate the playability very low.
Ranged weapons are meaningless when all your melee wielding foes could come making you in their reach in less than a second from whence they were in your reach and your character is forced to shoot at point blank most of the time. So it takes the pleasure away completely.
The game has no Game-Speed-Control and it is too fast to play without having stress and committing every silly mistake that exists in the dictionary of silly mistakes. The quest interface compared to that of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> is an absolute failure, but it is not absolutely bad either.
My all in all decision is that I would not buy the game.
Cheers.
