One of the WORST games out there!
I was intrigued with the fact that AE seemed to be making for an older crowd. The earlier games (PStone or COSecrects) were more for the 12 to 16 year olds. This one is darker and more "adult" in it's quests.
Aiding in all this is a lavious background, with nice detail and imaginative creatures and monsters. The puzzles are fair to middlin. This is the only good things I can say about this game however.
Outside of the art, this game sucks BIGTIME!! With all these lush area's to explore, you get excited to think about looking around and trying to figure everything out! But NO! They should have put a warning on the cover: "You shall not deviate from the path that we programmers have carved out for you! You will not explore what WE at AE deem unimportant or frivolous. You will go forth and do a task and return, forever!"
This game is full of invisable walls, and uninspired tasks or goals.
Go fetch shields, come back buy cards, go out and do something else, come back again, go out again etc. etc.
A natural tendancy now a days is to EXPLORE a game world, not run in some invisable track like a slot car! The walls are so bad in some places, that you can't even get to with in (in-game scale) 3 or 4 feet of a hill or ledge or tree etc. Even when the other AI characters "warn" you about fallling, you can't. There is no rush of almost dying in a fall, because of the invisable walls or floors etc.
Speaking of AI, in this game it seems your "friends" are idiots! While trying to do something combined it is fustrating to the Nth degree to wait for them to clue into what you are trying. i.e. lift a block, open a gate, lift rocks etc. If you need to depend on them for any mini game, forget it! Especially if you're being timed. They take too long to help you in your tasks! They keep running into bad things and are like I said completely STOOPID!
The game play it self is boring, repetitious and utterly fustrating. Not only for the above comments, but also because of the idiosy of the back and forth of task and return, task and return. What makes this like getting your teeth pulled out, is the very looonnnngggg saving and reload times. Hell, just starting the game takes 3 or 4 minutes easy! I timed myself and fromthe time the PS2 began the intro for this game to the time I was actually begining to play the characters was 7 minutes! Ridiculous!
LOADING, LOADING, LOADING!
The "gamecard" while a bit tedious and fustrating because of the saving after every use, if expanded to unlimited card use, (as earned by levels and tasks), would have been interesting. As it is now, you are VERY limited in which cards you can play under certain conditions. It would have been nice to have an ability to combine your cards in various ways to help you on your quests. No 3 card limit etc.
The game claims to have a "camera" button also. What a JOKE! If you move the right anolog stick the camera rocks either back and forth or side to side! Which is a shame because if any game needed a camera angle this one does! You can ONLY see ahead of you. There is NO looking around, no close ups, no panning scanning or general curiosity! About a 3/4 third person behind the back view is all you get! You can't aim, you can't look around for what you need to do,etc.
Of course this falls in line with AE's decision to FORCE you to play the game in a certain way, in a pre-conceived route with no deviation.
Overall this game became too tedious boring and fustrating to care about.
PASS on this one!