This game is weak for the first 10 hours until you get more powerful armour and weapons to modify; than the fun begins.
This game was originally in Russian language, and the poor translation shows. People speak everything in unabbreviated words. “It is very annoying”.
The armour and weapons in this game don't seem that good at first, but once are 10 hrs or more into it, and than you are able to buy spells and metal than forge them together. You can get some awesome and powerful combinations by doing this. You can construct armour from high quality metals you find or buy - further more, you can put spells to that armour before you construct it. This is the best item and armour construction I've seen in any game before. There is some trial and error when trying to attach spells to a weapon or armour, so you can quick save it before you waste money. You can spend hours making amazing armour mixed with healing and regeneration spells. For example, putting weakening spells on a weapon, there’s just so many interesting combinations you can do with this in Evil Islands.
The storyline is below average, but it’s not to surprising, considering how crappy the voice acting is. The story maybe isn’t great, but the game still kept me interested in playing it. Some of the characters you meet in towns are kind of funny.
I'm not really sure why they called this game "Evil Islands", because they're more like different worlds than islands. There were 3 different main areas in the game. The first part is the least fun of the three, just fighting crap in a swampy area and some forests. The second area was an Icy snowy place; probably I had some of the most fun here because I had lots of money and armour to modify. Third place is sort of a slave world, its not too great, but are tons of things to kill using your powerful weapon and armour. So there are 3 levels, which are much longer than you think. I spent at least 50-60 hours on this game. That’s probably around 20 hours per level/section. The skill gains were so fun, the quality of this impressed me.
Worst part and most disappointing is the very last guy you fight, you can't do any damage to him, so all you do is heal the mage you’re fighting with, and let him kill it. It’s the crappiest battle ever, and then the game ends with short cut scene. So expect no reward or anything if you beat the game, the only fun part I had was the skill gains and armour constructions throughout the game.
The graphics are nicely done if you’re zoomed out far. Dead bodies stay on the ground till you loot them (automatic looting too, which makes things fast). Also, there is no weight to items you carry, the only weight that you have to worry about is the armour and weapon that are equipped. The path finding is amazing in this game, you can zoom a mile out and click somewhere on the map, and it will never fail to get there. You just sit back and watch them travel. The graphics were blocky in cut scenes when they zoomed in really close... but zoomed out, they easily beat many games that are much newer.
8-10 for the game overall. If to judge on gameplay like fighting, skill gain, armour, play control etc, I give this game 9.5-10. But this games crappy voices, storyline, random crashes and poor game ending, really hurt this game (PC games usually have terrible endings anyways). Expect many crashes, you will need the quick save button... and pretty much the only way to finish the game is to use quick save lots to prevent being over run by enemies. This can happen easily.
If games like Dungeon Siege, Divine Divinity, Neverwinter Nights, and Baulders Gate all used smooth controls and graphically clean zoomed out look, that are in Evil Islands, they would have been playable. The awesome zooming in and out and the isometric view was perfect in Evil Islands. You can never back trail once you move onto one of the 3 worlds, so get all you can before you head to the next world.
I'd love to see a Evil Islands 2, and espeically if it was made from the same people. I can definately see myself playing through Evil Islands again at sometime in the future. If this game only had better storyline and voice acting, it would of been a huge success. Don't let your hatred for the the main character stop you from playing through this game. He's more fun to laugh at than hate.