Highly ambitious and immersive, with moments of greatness mixed with some frustrating shortcomings.
- Great combat system, with a variety of ways to exploit your enemies and surroundings.
- Good sized, pseudo ancient Greek themed world to explore filled with rewarding enemies to battle.
- Boss fights and large enemy battles are second to none.
- "Pawns" - A player created sidekick that travels with you throughout the game. If you are online, you can hire other gamers' pawns to aid you, and they can hire yours for themselves.
- The storyline is good, if not great, having its share of memorable moments.
The Bad:
- Voice acting and dialogue leave a lot to be desired. The npc's use of the words "pray" and "aught" is reminiscent of the Smurfs use of the word "smurf."
- Large world is devoid of civilization. One fishing village, One major city, some caves and a few nearly abandoned fortresses are it. Boss like enemies fill the void, but only to an extent.
- Storyline is awkwardly linear, in that if you are not moving it forward, you are likely farming, exploring, or escorting an npc from one location to another. Better side quests would have been nice.
- Inventory/alchemy systems are tedious to utilize. The game has hundreds upon hundreds of items, all to be stored at an inn in the game's major city. With a useless sorting option, finding what items you wish to equip your character with or which items you wish to combine takes far more time than it should.
- Difficulty balance. It isn't rare to be near totally outmatched, especially early in the game, even on easy mode.
- AI issues. This issue is especially problematic. Allied members often do things ranging from odd to unhelpful, such as picking berries during combat or walking back and forth when they should be attacking. Additionally, allied dialogue is highly repetitive. Enemies seem oblivious to the their surroundings, occasionally jumping from ledges to their death. They also see only one enemy at all times: you and your party. This was most evident when I was fighting a giant griffon, a huge bird wreaking havoc on the countryside. The battle bled over to where a group of bandits were standing idly by a campfire. Result: the bandits attacked me! Knocked down by the bandits, plucked from the ground by the griffon and subsequently dropped to an 80 foot free fall death left me wondering why they couldn't mimic Skyrim's dragon encounters, where the recognition of a greater threat prevailed.
- While the storyline is fairly good, your character never adds to the dialogue. This is especially odd, because when you create it, you assign a voice. Facial emotions are all that your character offers as the story progresses. Many of the armors cover your face, so even those are lost in the fold.
Special Notes;
- Ignore the title screen music. It is unquestionably terrible, but makes no appearances in the gameplay at any time, nor does anything from its genre.
- Develop a love interest as you play. Failure to do so can result in some very strange and awkward scenes late in the game. I failed to do this, myself. It wasn't pretty.
- Many reviewers have compared this game to Dark Souls or Skyrim. Without disputing those comparisons, I would add Fable. The game reaches for the stars, and where it comes up short, it can flounder. Your relationship status is developed as it was in Fable, with the giving of gifts making up much of it.
Overall:
This is a highly ambitious game. Its strengths are as good or better than anything in its genre. Few games have ever offered a better base towards a sequel. There are noticeable flaws, and some aspects can be an acquired taste, but these stand out because the game is good. Only a handful of games have reached for a higher level of all gaming aspects wrapped in one package. What is done well here makes it worth playing for a long time.