(This review contains minor spoilers, written in italics.)
Virtues
- The game has the attractiveness and atmopshere of old first-person games. It features a pleasantly pixelated 3D view, intricate levels and well hidden secrets. You always wonder if you missed something, somewhere.
- Original quest system: each quest (or level) can be undertaken at any time from a main interface, and the interface store section expands once they are completed. The store, when fully expanded, contains unique, powerful items (but not all of them).
- In addition to the narration from the main interface, lore-related content is scattered accross the levels and assembled into a journal. For players strongly focused on gameplay, this is actually more compelling than a full-fledged interactive adventure (it kind of reminds me of King’s Field in this regard).
- Combinations of runes for casting spells must be found or guessed.
- A class system in a first-person RPG remains highly debatable, but the implementation here is quite diversified and seems balanced enough (more than in The Elder Scrolls: Arena, for instance). Especially, each class is restricted to a single magic “school”, out of the existing three.
- The game includes an appealing hopeless boss fight. As stated by one of the developers, the Aegean God is only nigh-invulnerable. Technically, he can be killed.
- Unique feel, definitely in a good way.
Flaws
- Enemies don’t respawn nor regenerate when you die, meaning you can brute force any level. The slightest damage dealt actually brings you closer to your goal.
- Levels give a fixed amount of experience when completed, but can be completed repeatedly. This leaves the door wide open to powerleveling.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: combined with the semi-randomly distributed attribute points — if I’m correct, there is one chance out of 4096 to increment the same attribute 6 times when leveling-up —, it may require too much luck manipulation for a legitimate min-maxer building a specialized character.
- There are a fair number of bugs (like the “crossbow machinegun”), but nothing major or sneaky, as far as I can tell.
Game-Breakers
- You gain experience with each hit, whether you inflict damage or not. But at least one enemy is immune to normal attacks… Thus, all you have to do to receive experience points while being AFK is to equip food and water rings, get the immortal stuck in the environment, and put a few coins on your keyboard to slash him endlessly. This can be a blessing or a curse, depending on where you draw the line of fair-play.