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Rise of the Argonauts Review

After suffering through at least one delay, Rise of the Argonauts was suddenly released with very little warning or fanfare at the end of 2008. Partially due to this, the game flew in under most people's radars. The question then is: should it stay there, or is it one of those titles that's worth taking a look at?

Setting & Story

With a name like Rise of the Argonauts, there's no ambiguity in what one is to expect. Presented as one of its major drawing points, the foundation of the game is its setting, based on Greek mythology, in particular the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. This well-known Ancient Greek legend tells of Jason's quest to become king of Iolcus, to which purpose he must find the Golden Fleece with the help of a group of heroes referred to as the Argonauts, which included Heracles, Atalante, Orpheus, and Peleus the father of Achilles.

Jason is the rightful king of Iolcus and his tale is heroic in that sense, but the story does contain many elements that would not sit well for many these days. Even ignoring Jason's tendency to sleep with every woman he meets, one of the legend's most evocative segments is where Jason escapes Medea's father by taking her brother on board his ship, the Argo. Jason kills Medea's brother, cuts his body into pieces and drops the pieces into the sea, obliging the father to stop to fish them up (as you need a complete corpse to perform burial rites), allowing Jason to make his escape.

I can understand Liquid Entertainment would feel little need to take on these elements of the tale, but perhaps unsurprisingly they change the story quite a bit more than that. Rise of the Argonauts presents us with a thoroughly American and thus sanitized version of Greek mythology, much like many recent films have done. The morality is clear-cut, the main characters are unambiguously good and dedicated to core American values to the point where Jason, rather farcically, becomes angry when talking to an implied slave master. How much harm there is in such reimagining of ancient legends is up for debate, though you can't help but feel sorry to think that some people might only ever know this version of Jason's tales.

You see, the plot Liquid Entertainment created to replace the original is just not that good. It is a rather cheap love story in which you're expected to work hard to find the Golden Fleece to resurrect a badly setup love-interest, Alceme. This is combined with a battle against a shallow, one-dimensional evil cult of Blacktongues, dedicated to Hecate the Goddess of Childbirth, only now she's some kind of Goddess of Evil.

Surprisingly, the characters, a good chunk of the dialogue, and quite a few set plot events (such as the end of Jason's first encounter with Achilles, or the whole segment surrounding Medusa) are really quite good. The four Argonauts Hercules, Atalante, Pan, and Achilles are enjoyably recognizable archetypes, and the characterization is well fleshed out in banter and dialogue. It is not of high quality throughout, but it has quite a few attractive moments. Since the characters are fairly divorced from their mythological roots, you can't help but wonder if Liquid Entertainment would not have been better off dropping the idea of calling this a version of Jason's tale, and instead building on a setting based on Greek mythology to create a whole new plot with a new set of heroes.
Graphics, Sound, Technical Polish

The graphics are decent, but they don't stand out compared to other games released in the past several months. The game is powered by Unreal Engine 3, and I've certainly seen prettier games running on this widely used game engine, such as BioShock and Mass Effect. The world design is quite good if a bit uneven, but where the bottom kind of drops out is in the character modeling and animations, which range from acceptable to just plain weird, accompanied by a bevy of graphical glitches.

The music supports the mood per location well enough, and the various weapons and sound effects are all fair to above average. The voice acting suffers a bit under occasionally stiff writing and sounds slightly disinterested at times, but is pretty good overall.

The technical polish is poor in more ways than one. Stability issues aside the game crashed to my desktop more than once the biggest issue this game has is a very poorly thought-out interface for the PC, smelling strongly of (consolitis). The game has poor menu functions, such as having to go through the pause menu to get to the map or aspect screens. Other interface issues include the double use of the third mouse button as a weapon selection and shield attack button, the absence of an option to freely remap keys and the wonky mouse sensitivity setting that cannot be adapted. This game screams (not made for PC) throughout.

Gameplay

Rise of the Argonauts tries to copy Mass Effect. I can't stress enough how much of the game is described by this statement, and not just in defining its overall gameplay approach as in stressing the word (tries). Some examples of this can be seen in your ability to carry a steady set of three interchangeable weapons, the dialogue system that is based on four different (attitudes), the fact that you have no choice in who goes along with you in your journey but can pick who goes along on individual adventures, the linear isolated (islands) where you play, and, to a lesser extent, the fact that you can only fight when the game allows you to. This isn't a unique hack 'n slash - it's Mass Effect with swords, in mythological Ancient Greece.

The basic setup of the game is that you follow its linear introduction and ending areas, and in between you can choose between three major areas that you need to get through. The game varies heavily in how much it asks you to fight, as many locations - a good chunk of Iolcus (the starting location) and Mycanae, or Saria - are combat-free.

Combat itself is enjoyable but doesn't really shine in any meaningful way. Interface issues tend to discourage you from experimenting too much, not to mention most of the standard fights are fairly easy, meaning there is nothing to stop you from just click-click-clicking your way through them. The use of executing moves (when you finish off a shield-less opponent with a powerful right-mouse button attack) and God Powers (special powers granted by character progression that can be used in intervals) do offer some respite. More importantly, the game features a handful of boss fights which are occasionally quite interesting, like the fight with Achilles or Isisyphus, but sometimes it's kind of unclear what the game wants you to do, or the fight is just plain boring, like the battle with Medusa or the game's final confrontation.

Inventory and character systems are simplified about as far as they can go. Inventory essentially doesn't exist, with the game only handing you new items when it feels like it. There is never any freedom to loot items from your dead foes or buy them from a merchant. You can switch your armor and your three types of weapons (spear, club, sword) aboard the Argo (your ship), but there is no inventory system outside of that point. Why an action RPG would be missing a core element like this is a head-scratcher.
Character progression is wrapped into the game's aspect system. Four Diablo-like skill trees are available, one for each god: Athena, Apollo, Hermes, and Ares. Each god represents a certain combat style and favored weapons, Ares being brutish and favoring the club while Hermes specializes in dodging, speed, and using the sword. You can gain points to invest in these trees by making the appropriate dialogue choices or by attributing personal achievements to the god of your choice whether it be finishing a quest or killing 10 soldiers.

This is one of the few elements of Rise of the Argonauts that could have conceivably been interesting. However, you can't lose favor with gods and the dialogue choices rarely lead to different outcomes, meaning they're just (select your favorite) options. Equally, you can dedicate any deed to any god, so Ares will be just as pleased with you dedicating (found boy a happy family to be adopted into) to him as he is when you dedicate (knocked down 20 opponents) to him. Rather than a linear XP scale, this favor system could present you with difficult choices in winning or losing favor, and in-game decisions actually pleasing one god and displeasing another. Instead, a potentially unique system ends up being nothing more than an XP-and-skill tree system disguised as something else.

You spend quite a bit of time outside of combat. A good chunk of this game is spent in dialogue, which either gets you information or quests, or it serves to gain favor with the gods. The lack of actual consequences to most of the dialogue choices means the dialogue becomes functionally equivalent to monologue. Coupled with the fact that it is often not particularly evocative or well-written, this makes dialogue a chore rather than a positive part of gameplay.

The rest of your non-combat time is spent walking. The game is designed to be linear and the world is designed around that linearity, giving it a constricted, claustrophobic feel even when you're outside. The wonky camera and overly sensitive collision detection mean the walking back and forth over tracks you already covered is yet another chore to deal with.

Conclusion

The odd thing about Rise of the Argonauts is that it is not really a badly executed game. It does what it was designed to do fairly well. The problem lies a step below that; what it was designed to do doesn't really work in the first place. Take the basic design of Mass Effect, put in a functional but not particular inspired combat system and make the rest of the gameplay uninteresting, without offering enough narrative strength to make up for any of it. No doubt it wasn't planned like that, but it doesn't seem set up to focus on making any one part of the game particularly enjoyable.

As a result, not a single element of design is strong enough to carry the game. However, switching between normal fights, boss fights, dialogue, and walking alleviates some of the tedium and the handful of boss fights and gameplay moments mentioned above help to redeem the game a bit more. But even so, I lost interest in the game long before I reached the end, and I have a hard time imagining that many people will enjoy this game all the way through to the finish without getting bored.
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Fallout 3: Operation: Anchorage Review

Operation: Anchorage is the first DLC (downloadable content) pack for Fallout 3. Since it's a DLC rather than a standard expansion pack, it's only available on-line, and, perhaps worse, it's only available via Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live (sorry PS3 owners). This is probably just fine for Xbox owners, who have to use Xbox Live for all sorts of things, but it might be a little confusing for PC owners, since there wasn't much reason for them to pay any attention to GFWL before this. But fortunately, while you have to create a Live account and purchase (Microsoft points) in order to download the content, you can play the content while not logged into Live (provided you log into and out of Live first, to load the content into your game), and so you can use your existing saves and characters.

Operation: Anchorage involves the Outcasts, the group of soldiers who splintered off from the Brotherhood of Steel due to philosophical differences. At some point while you're exploring the wasteland, you'll receive a distress call from the Outcasts, and when you fight your way to them, you'll find them in a military installation. They'll explain that the installation contains an armory with lots of high-tech goodies inside, but that the only way to get into it is to beat a VR simulation about the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from the Chinese. The reason you have to help is because the simulation requires a computer interface that just happens to match your Pip-Boy 3000.

The set-up is decent enough, if a little unlikely. It was nice to see the Outcasts get into the spotlight, since they got so little play in the main campaign, and fighting Chinese soldiers in the mountains of Alaska is also nice, just because it's so different from everything else in the game. But the problem, or perhaps I should say one of the problems, is that Bethesda created the content so it could be completed by almost any character (you can actually trigger the quest at level 2, immediately after leaving Vault 101), and that means everything about it is easy for advanced characters.

Let me give you some examples. You start the VR simulation with a knife and a 10mm pistol, which aren't exactly the most powerful weapons in the game. But you can complete the entire simulation with just those two weapons if you want, and not have too many troubles. If you actually use the assault rifle or the sniper rifle or the new gauss rifle that you can find, then the Chinese soldiers will go down like weeds versus a weed whacker. Or how about this? Bethesda actually took out the need to scrounge for bullets, or to collect stimpaks, or to keep your equipment repaired. Instead, you find (health dispensers) and (ammo dispensers,) and the dispensers are so liberally placed that you can spray bullets around all you want, and you don't have to bother with sneaking or using cover at all. If you like playing action games in god mode, then this is about as close as you can get without having to use a console cheat.

One nice thing Bethesda did in the DLC was to hide some (intel cases) inside the simulation. If you manage to find all ten of them, then you'll gain a perk that will increase your lockpick, science and small guns skills. It was sort of fun to hunt for the cases and to wonder what the reward for them might be, but even here there are some problems. For example, everything that you can interact with in the simulation (including the cases and the dispensers) pulses red. Since the color palette for Alaska tends to the white and gray side of the spectrum, that means everything you can use is pretty easy to spot, and so it's not exactly a challenge to find the intel cases. Also, most of the cases are hidden in locked storage rooms with (easy) or (very easy) locks, which is just another example of how unchallenging the new content is.

Also disappointing about the DLC is how linear it is. Bethesda must have been playing a lot of Dungeon Siege prior to creating Operation: Anchorage, because there's basically a straight line from the beginning to the end (the only decisions you get to make are of the (should I got left first or right first?) variety), and your companions, such as they are, don't add a whole lot -- and that's even if you can tell what they're saying, which I couldn't most of the time.

Operation: Anchorage adds four new quests that will take you about five hours to complete. There are also some new items that you can find, such as the gauss rifle, which is the energy weapon equivalent of the sniper rifle, and some of these items can even be taken with you after completing the simulation (thanks to the armory that the Outcasts are guarding). But otherwise there's little to recommend about the DLC. It's linear and it's easy and it adds almost nothing to the Fallout 3 universe. To me it sort of felt like a quarter of an expansion pack at half the cost, which isn't a good thing.
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Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader Review

Despite the limitless nature of imagination, many RPGs are based on a cliché high fantasy setting, usually based on medieval Europe. Of those that aren't, most still find their inspiration in an equally familiar science fiction environment. Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, released back in 2003 by Interplay, is one of the few titles that try something different - it is based on an alternate history version of Renaissance Europe.

During the Third Crusade, Richard Lionheart unwittingly tore the fabric of the universe by his executions of prisoners after the Siege of Acre, which released magic and demonic creatures upon the unsuspecting populace. The story picks up four centuries later, with the player taking the role of one of Richard's many (bastard) descendants. He is thus thrust into a world where the Spanish Inquisition fights magic users, the Mongols are actually goblins invaders and Shakespeare is a down on his luck writer, who lost his muse (actually a fairy).

The game starts in a slave pit outside Barcelona, from which the player escapes with the aid of his spirit and the timely arrival of Leonardo da Vinci. Barcelona itself is amidst war preparations, as the Armada prepares to sail against the heathen, magic-using English. Many famous historical figures populate Barcelona, including Faust, Galileo, Guy Fawkes, Cortes and others, while da Vinci and Nostradamus play a more significant part in the storyline. Magic has left its scar on the world, and citizens of Barcelona will look down on the player's character if he displays traits of the Taint. Regardless, the player must join a faction - the Knight Templar, who guard sacred relics, the narrow-minded Inquisition, and the Wielders, a banned, prosecuted sect of magic users, are the available options.

Played from an isometric perspective, gameplay is perhaps most reminiscent of Diablo. Yes, unfortunately, Lionheart is at its core a hack and slash game. While Barcelona is filled with interesting quests, and important choices are ruthlessly thrown on you (something lacking in many RPGs), most other areas have nothing but enemies. The wilderness around Barcelona maintains some semblance of design, but as soon as you pass the first town in France, it's predominately monsters. Of course, there's more depth than Diablo in some aspects - searching for hidden doors and caches is an important element of the game, as well as unlocking of various treasure chests, but Diablo wins with the sheer number of combat skills offered. Unfortunately, that is a key element of the hack and slash experience, and Lionheart just can't compete.

Character development is based on the SPECIAL system, complete with the Skilled/Gifted trait combination we all loved in Fallout. There's a choice of race (pureblood, or one of the three tainted types of humans) plus a mandatory racial trait, but skill tagging and rising costs as you invest points remain. Skills are divided into five categories: one combat, three magic and a thieving category (involving lock picking, sneaking, speaking and finding hidden objects). The magic skills are further divided into four branches, each of which offers five spells. Perks offer a wide range of bonuses, though you will probably run out of meaningful choices by the end of the game.
Unfortunately, the numerous skills options are mostly just wasted - all the fighting required immediately precludes a focus on thievery (though sneaking does give experience, up to 75% of the worth of a kill), and playing a mage character is almost impossible. Namely, while there are some hard battles requiring a maximally optimized character build, mages must also wait for their mana to regenerate, and the tedium involved will dissuade all but the most determined. Slain enemies leave behind health and mana spirits, which does help with the pacing, but mages will run out too fast regardless. In the end, a character focused on melee, with enough knowledge in magic to heal himself, is the only realistic option.

{loadposition content_adsense250} Collecting loot, a mainstay of most hack and slash titles, could have been better implemented in Lionheart. Since there isn't a huge number of available equipment, nor a plethora of magic modifiers (a la Diablo), you will probably get all you need fairly soon. The rest of the game will be characterized by minor advances ("My goodness, a +18 lock picking bonus instead of a +16 one!") and hauling loot back to (the few) vendors. You might want to hang on to some resistance-boosting items though, as there's a whole nine damage types - the other way of dealing with damage is through appropriate perks. It is possible for enemy attacks to actually heal you (once resistance rises over 100), and you can also increase the damage you do with a given attack type (which is the only possible way to play a mage - focusing on fire boosting perks and items can more than double your fire damage output).

Graphics are again most easily described as similar to Diablo, if maybe crisper in general. The fixed resolution will limit your view range (making ranged characters is a bad idea), but sprites age much better than any 3D engine, so you will likely have no problems adjusting. Most named characters have superb voice acting, though sound effects in general are lacking - the fighting grunts and sword clashes are tiring, while the music is missing through most of the game (though it is also excellent).

Lionheart is a flawed game, for the most part. It is unsure of its focus, and because of that it fails both as a hack and slash title, and a more traditional RPG. However, the unique setting and compelling design of Barcelona make at least the first several hours worthy of play.
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Anachronox Review

Anachronox was released in 2001 by the Dallas office of ION Storm, authors of the infamous Daikatana flop (compared to the Austin office, which developed Deus Ex). Anachronox was primarily modeled after console RPGs, such as the Final Fantasy series, and has received mostly positive critiques over the years, though no significant financial success.

Based on a futuristic, cyberpunk setting, Anachronox features the standby of such plots: the discovery of mysterious alien technology, named simply MysTech here, enables space travel and has intrigued scientists ever since. Anachronox itself is a planet, once home to some ancient alien race, and now the crime hub of the universe due to being well-positioned near the largest of the Senders, which make space travel possible. The player takes the role of Sly Boots, a failure of a private detective, just as he is thrown out of the window of his own office by a debt collector. Desperately seeking employment, you'll be hired to investigate some ruins for a pittance, where an unlucky set of circumstances will drive Boots to investigate further. You'll be joined on your journey by various characters, and will also have the company of your virtual secretary, Fatima, who is also the in-game cursor and manages various menus - a nice touch of immersion.

The game is played from the third perspective, using WASD to move and the cursor to interact with the environment. Consistent to its JRPG roots, Anachronox is a mostly linear game - it's hardly small, but there's very little freedom left for the player, short of not choosing to do a side quest. Speaking of side quests, there's a lot of them, and a lot of interesting encounters to be had too - despite its linearity, Anachronox still places a lot of emphasis on exploration. Unfortunately, this is somewhat of a double-edged sword, because the game is surprisingly stingy with giving out equipment (there's only a handful of weapons for each of the characters), and missing a piece could make the next leg of the journey much more difficult.

The side quests are usually interesting, though they as a rule involve a lot of running around; in addition, since Sly, as all good PIs, carries a camera with him, you'll often be tasked with photographing various objects or aliens. Unlike some more recent games, in Anachronox the "quest giver" is almost never obvious, so you'll be spending a lot of time talking to virtually everyone. Thankfully, most of the characters have something interesting to say and some are outright funny. This humor permeates the whole game, giving it its own unique charm and is probably the game's greatest strength. When you're not talking or wandering around, you'll be using one of your characters "world skills", which are implemented as easy minigames, to gather information or complete a task. Boots can pick locks and other characters will bring their own expertise into the mix (the most interesting, by far, will be the Yammer skill - Grumpos will incessantly talk to the "victim" about all sorts of unrelated things, which is often hilariously funny).
When diplomacy fails, or you're just exploring hostile areas, you'll be whisked into combat, which is real-time: your characters will spend varying amounts of time getting ready for their next action, which could be moving, using an item or a special ability, or just plain attacking an opponent. The combat arena is based on a grid, and characters can block ranged attacks against those behind them, which brings some depth to the system. Additionally, as the game progresses, you will gain access to magic (in the form of MysTech artifacts), which will further broaden the number of options available. Unfortunately, while you're choosing who to attack or where to move, time will still be flowing, which makes the combat somewhat hectic - the game really could use a pause function, or pseudo-realtime based combat, because as it stands currently, it requires a surprising amount of agility to do everything in time - on the other hand, the game is easy enough that only perfectionists will be bothered by this.

{loadposition content_adsense250} Character development is very streamlined, which is a bit disappointing. While there are a number of different stats, you can't choose which to improve - in addition, the stats themselves are only explained in a tutorial at the start, which you're bound to forget, so you'll spend some time wondering what each does. There's also very little loot management - the characters only have five equipable slots each, and weapons aren't interchangeable among them - though you will gather consumables and various miscellaneous objects as you progress. Characters' special attacks (the three not available at first) are gained by talking to the right people, as is the single world skill upgrade.

Anachronox is based on a heavily modified version of the Quake II engine, which wasn't too new then and is obviously outdated now. The art direction has a definite cyberpunk tone and is interesting, if a bit dark, but the low quality textures and low polygon counts will make this hard to notice. Unfortunately, the long, winding corridors combined with such textures can cause a mild headache, so you'll need some time to adjust, or will just have to take it slow at first. Sound ages considerably better, and is another strong suit of the game. The music is good, though not particularly memorable, while the voice-acting is excellent when it's present during the cutscenes.

Anachronox offers a console RPG experience, infused with an extraordinary amount of quality humor, and is worth playing for that reason alone; the actual gameplay is nothing revolutionary. If you do decide to play Anachronox, my only advice is to bear with it for a while - the old graphics and slow start might turn you off, but those who stick with it will be rewarded with some good laughs and a generally enjoyable time.
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Fallout 3 Review

Introduction

I don't think I've ever seen a press release generate so much dismay as when Bethesda Softworks announced that it was going to develop Fallout 3. Fallout fans don't have much in common with Oblivion fans, and the Fallout games were nothing like the Elder Scrolls games, and so it was an odd pairing to say the least -- except for the fact that it combined a popular developer with a popular franchise, and was almost guaranteed to generate oodles of money. A lot of people, including me, feared that Fallout 3 would turn into Oblivion with guns, and while that didn't precisely turn out to be the case, it ended up being close enough for the fears to be justified.

Or at least that's my take, being one of the stodgy older gamers who still thinks that Baldur's Gate 2 is the best role-playing game of all time, and who wouldn't put Oblivion on a top 10 list. I'm also one of those gamers who only plays PC games, and who only plays games that offer a third-person perspective -- two areas where Bethesda doesn't excel -- making me not exactly in the target demographic for the game. And so while you might be getting the hint that I didn't enjoy Fallout 3 as much as some of the other reviewers out there, I recognize that this review isn't (at least entirely) about me. It's about whether the game is a good fit for you, and whether you should spend your money to buy it, and for that you'll need to keep reading.


Background

Fallout 3 starts out in the year 2277, 200 years after a nuclear war between the United States and China. Many people in the United States hid out in special vaults when the missiles started flying, and they managed to survive and stay healthy, but others weren't so lucky. Some people absorbed so much radiation that they turned into ghouls, others were captured or transformed into supermutants, and still others -- the (lucky) ones -- found themselves in an upside-down world where they had to scavenge whatever they could to stay alive.

The first two Fallout games took place on the West Coast of the United States, but Fallout 3 takes place in and around Washington D.C. You play a character who was born in Vault 101, one of the vaults in the D.C. suburbs. The game begins with your birth (where you choose your name, gender and appearance), and then it quickly moves you through some of the key moments in your life (such as your 10th birthday party where you receive a Pip-Boy 3000) until you hit the age of 19 and the game really starts. It's at that point that your father disappears from the vault, the vault's Overseer starts hunting for you, and you decide that it might be a good idea to leave the vault and see what's going on outside.

The (growing up) phase of the game is nicely effective. It introduces you to the world you're living in, it shows you with your father so you can form an emotional attachment to him (and actually care when he goes missing), it acts as a tutorial so you can see how to interact with objects and fight things, and it gives you a chance to define your character. For example, when you hit 16 you have to take an aptitude test, and the test decides which three skills you should tag (tagging a skill gives you a bonus with it).

The downside to the introductory sequence is that none of your decisions have any real consequences. As I was playing it, I kept thinking of Ultima IV, which started out by asking you a series of questions, and then it chose a class for you based on your answers. But in Fallout 3, either you can undo what the game picks for you (such as the tagged skills in the aptitude test), or the game pretends that you did something else. For example, you have a (best friend) named Amata, and even if you're totally rude to her every time you talk to her, and even if you help some thugs make fun of her, she still gives you a gun and helps you escape from the vault when you turn 19. I would have liked the early years better if people in the vault had remembered how I'd treated them.
Character Development

Bethesda incorporated a lot of familiar concepts from the original Fallout games into their system of character development in Fallout 3. The (special) attributes -- strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck -- are all back, and they control roughly the same things. Bethesda also brought back perks and skills (but not traits), and many of them should sound familiar. For example, you can hack computers using the science skill, you can pick locks using the lockpick skill, and you can improve your resistances with the toughness perk. Some skills (like stealing and gambling) disappeared, and the perks got rearranged (partially because you now get a perk every time you level rather than every three levels), but I'm guessing that anybody who played the original Fallout games will be right at home putting together a character for Fallout 3. 

Probably the most interesting change in the character system involves action points. The original Fallouts were both turn-based games, and they needed action points to determine how much you could do during a turn of combat. But Fallout 3 is a real-time game, and obviously it doesn't have such a need. So what Bethesda did was introduce the Vault Assisted Targeting System (VATS), which allows you to pause combat and target different parts of your enemies' bodies. VATS makes combat much easier (some might say too easy), especially with moving targets, but you can only queue attacks into the system until you run out of action points, and then you have to wait for the action points to (slowly) regenerate. I thought this was a clever transition, since Bethesda kept the definition of action points about the same, but they figured out a way to incorporate them into a real-time game.

Sadly, not all parts of the character system are as well thought out. For some reason, despite allowing characters to select three (or four) times as many perks as in Fallout 2, Fallout 3 actually has fewer perks to choose from, which is just odd. For any sort of perk or bonus system, it's always better to give players too many options rather than too few, and Fallout 3 has too few. Melee characters in particular get the short end of the stick here, since no perks were created for their playing style at all (what happened to the slayer perk?).

Bethesda also dumbed down the character system a bit, which I found to be kind of sad but not entirely surprisingly, since games seem to keep going in that direction. For example, the traps and throwing skills of the original Fallout games were combined into a single explosives skill, and even with a low rating in the skill I never failed to disarm a trap. I'm not even sure if it's possible to fail. Then there's the minimum strength requirement for weapons, which doesn't exist any more, and so characters can use any weapon they want, even if it's bigger than they are. And finally, the prerequisites for perks were reduced. Fallout 2 had some perks that required an attribute rating of 10, but in Fallout 3 the highest attribute requirement is 7. That might not sound like a bad thing, but it means that most characters can learn all (or nearly all) of the perks, and you're not forced to make any choices. A good character development system should always require you to make choices.

But the biggest problem with the character system in Fallout 3 is the level cap. Even without selecting any perks to add levels or experience bonuses to my character, I hit the level cap after exploring only half of the world, and since there's little variety to the enemies and equipment, that gave me little incentive to keep visiting optional locations. Bethesda in particular, with their goal of providing players with huge worlds where you can wander around for hundreds of hours, only shoot themselves in the foot by implementing a level cap. They either need to be much more careful about how they reward experience points to players, or they need to dump the cap altogether.


Gameplay

For gameplay, Fallout 3 has a lot in common with Oblivion. You're given a large world to explore, and there are numerous quests to complete, but mostly the game is about combat. As you make your way around the D.C. wasteland you'll encounter ghouls, supermutants, deathclaws, and more, and you'll have to fend them off using a variety of weapons. For ranged attacks you might use a Chinese assault rifle or a sniper rifle, and for melee combat you might use a baseball bat or a combat knife. You can also fight enemies with your fists, or use special (unarmed weapons) like brass knuckles.

Fighting creatures is pretty easy. The mouse controls your targeting cursor, and you just need to point it at an enemy and then click the left mouse button to fire (or swing) your weapon. If you hold down the right mouse button then you'll aim your weapon, which will give you a better view of your enemy, and if you press the V key then you'll enter VATS, which will allow you to automatically target different parts of the enemy's body (and show you the odds of hitting each part). Most of the time your goal is to shoot the enemy in the head, but some enemies, like giant ants and crab-like mirelurks, are vulnerable in other places as well.
Surprisingly, Fallout 3 has far fewer quests than Oblivion, but it compensates for this deficit by making its locations far more interesting to explore. If you played Oblivion, then you might remember that it included a bunch of oblivion gates and elven ruins that were all about the same. Fallout 3, meanwhile, has monuments, museums, libraries, metro stations, and more to explore, and not only are they all a little bit different, they also often have story elements involved. For example, early in the game you can visit a school where raiders are hiding out. The raiders figured that they could dig from the basement of the school to reach a nearby vault, but in the process they disturbed some giant ants. So when you get to the school you have to fight raiders and giant ants, and you can see the start of the tunnel.

The quests themselves are sometimes fun and sometimes not. Most of the quests involve going somewhere and killing anything that gets in your way, and that gets old after a while, especially when the trip involves going through a bunch of metro stations, but other quests are more original. For example, at one point you meet a lady who has a huge Nuka-Cola collection, and she asks you to help her complete it. At another point you meet a shopkeeper who is putting together a wasteland survival guide, and she asks you to experience things (such as getting severe radiation poisoning) so she can write about them. Finally, a historian asks you to scavenge the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives, and in the process you also find the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta. Bethesda made good use of the D.C. area, and I'm guessing the city is even more fun to explore if (unlike me) you actually know something about it.

Another nice thing about the quests is that you're always given multiple ways to solve them. Usually, there are (good) ways versus (evil) ways to wrap things up, such as when you visit the town of Megaton and discover that it was built around a live nuclear warhead. The people of the town obviously want you to disarm the bomb, but some outside interests would rather see it detonated. So which option do you choose? There are also sometimes stealthy or diplomatic ways to deal with issues, and every so often you have to make a karma-neutral choice, such as with the lady with the Nuka-Cola collection. For that quest you can turn in the items directly to the lady for one reward, or you can give them to her boyfriend (so he looks better in her eyes) and get a different reward.

If Fallout 3's gameplay has a problem, it's with repetition. There are only about 50 types of weapons available in the game, and a whole slew of them are lame melee weapons like tire irons and lead pipes. There also aren't many types of enemies. There are four types of supermutants, three types of ghouls, one type of raider, six types of robots, and so forth, which might sound like a lot if you add them all up, but you encounter most of them well before the halfway point in the game, and after that it's just a matter of killing the same things over and over again with the same weapons. Plus, since Fallout 3 features very little level scaling, these repetitive battles get easier as the game goes on, making them even more boring than they would be otherwise (though, for what it's worth, no level scaling also means that there aren't several different variations of each major item like in Oblivion). For Fallout 3 to stay entertaining for a full 100 hours (which is how much time I estimate you could spend exploring all of the locations), Bethesda really needed to double or triple the number of unique enemies, especially the higher level opponents.


Sound

I'm not much of a judge of music, so I won't comment on Fallout 3's soundtrack here. What I'll talk about instead is the voice acting. Bethesda had a lot of problems with the voice acting in Oblivion, starting with having about three guys do all of the random peasant voices, and ending with advertising that they had Patrick Stewart in the cast, and then killing off his character in the first five minutes. Fallout 3 doesn't have these problems. Bethesda must have doubled or tripled the number of actors in the cast, so you hardly ever notice different people with the same voice, and the big name actors they recruited, Liam Neeson and Malcolm McDowell, actually play a role for the majority of the campaign. Plus, Ron Perlman is back as the voice of the narrator (he gets to say (war never changes) about five times), and the other actors do a competent job, making Fallout 3 much more pleasant to listen to than Oblivion.
Interface

Sadly, Fallout 3 does not have a good PC interface, and it's not even close. Some of the problems are no doubt because Bethesda designed the game for consoles and then didn't bother to port it very well to the PC. That would explain why you're not allowed to name your saved games (which, coupled with not including profiles, makes running multiple games really exciting), and why the hotkeys are so limited. For example, to see your weapons you have to press the tab key, then click on the inventory tab, and then click on the weapons tab. When was the last time you played a role-playing game, and you had to click three times to see your inventory rather than just press the (I) key? I know when it was for me -- when I played Oblivion, which used the exact same crummy system.

But PC-versus-console issues aside, there are some other problems with the interface. If you play using the third-person perspective, the targeting cursor is off, and so you have to keep switching to the first-person perspective to see what you're really aiming at. Also, there is no mini-map -- probably to help with the game's (immersion) -- but I like mini-maps because they show me where I am and where I need to go. To me, the best interface is the one that gives you the most options, and so I'd like to at least be given the choice of whether or not I want a mini-map enabled. Finally, the overhead maps are often worthless. Many of the locations in Fallout 3 have multiple floors that overlap each other, and having one map for all the floors combined doesn't really help to show you where you are -- especially when the map has an incredibly low resolution and barely works even when there's only one floor. In some ways it's kind of fun that Bethesda mixed old technology with the future, but that doesn't mean that I want to view my maps on the Pip-Boy's small green screen. Please give me real maps.

Fortunately, not everything about the interface is bad. Fallout 3, like Oblivion before it, includes a fast travel feature, so once you've visited a location you can instantly return to it at any time. That's a great time-saver, especially in downtown D.C. where the debris is so thick that getting anywhere involves popping into and out of a bunch of metro stations. Also, the load, save, and transition times are all very fast, so you wont have to spend much time staring at a loading screen while you're playing the game.


Conclusion

The more I play Fallout 3, the more I consider it to be a (functional) game. It includes a big world with lots of places to explore and lots of enemies to kill, but there isn't a lot to draw you in. The main questline isn't especially involving, there aren't a lot of enemies or types of equipment, and you might hit the level cap well before the end of the game, giving you a long stretch of time where you can't improve your character at all. That is, everything about the game works, and you can spend a lot of time with it, but it isn't always exciting.

When I play a role-playing game, I always hope for interesting characters, quotable dialogue, and memorable story elements. Fallout 3 just doesn't offer these things, and, in fact, many of its story elements feel like they're warmed over retreads from the original Fallout games (like when you learn how the supermutants came into being, or when you discover who your real enemy is). However, I'd describe Oblivion in about the same way, and a whole bunch of people liked that game, so I suspect a whole bunch of people will like this game as well. Fallout 3 isn't a bad game, but it isn't a great game, either, and my guess is that it will only really appeal to the Oblivion crowd.
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King’s Bounty: The Legend Review

Calling fans of all RPG, turn-based or tactical strategy, and of hybrid games in between! King's Bounty - The Legend -- released without the trumpeted fanfare which accompanies some high budget titles (e.g., Fallout 3) -- includes fantastic single-player tactical / strategy / RPG mechanics, rarely-seen attention to graphic detail, a huge multi-continent world to explore, and a balanced 3-class character progression system you can't stop thinking about once you begin. I have not been this hooked since Heroes of Might & Magic III.

In case you haven't read or heard, this newer King's Bounty is based on the old late 80's computer game which pre-dated and spawned the amazing Heroes of Might & Magic series. But unlike the HOMM series which featured strategically building up several heroes and castles, King's Bounty is more of a traditional RPG using just a single hero and tactical turn-based combat. The strategy comes in when you factor in how to develop your rather deeply customizable hero and unique play style over many levels in order to complete the game. That said, there are several similarities between the two games (HOMM and KB) such that fans of the former will feel right at home. There are also several innovations that borrow from the current RPGs of today.

Gameplay

To put it simply, in King's Bounty you move your chosen hero and army comprised of up to 5 different troop types around several continents worth of fantastic 3D landscapes of every type of terrain imaginable, both on horse and ship. Sprinkled throughout every map are many types of hidden or guarded treasures, NPCs, unique buildings, and wandering armies of various difficulty. If you get close enough they'll give chase and if touched will trigger a battle - but you can usually run away (hint: or around them) easily enough.

There's a basic story woven into the game's main quest, and you'll run into innumerable NPCs dishing out all sorts of side quests at any one time. The dialogue is often infused with humorous -- albeit cheesy -- dialogue, though I get the feeling the writers were actually after this effect. You'll find quests for both the current map in addition to those that take you into other areas entirely. Quests are all kept track of in your quest journal, and though the current step is easily laid out in plain English, sometimes you might forget where the originator of the quest was and will have to remember before you turn it in. Fortunately the NPCs and buildings will have a unique icon on top of them if there is something for you to turn in, which makes it a little easier, but logged location information would have been nice to have as you accumulate quite the list.

You'll want to focus on the main quest at the earliest opportunity, as it revolves around your chosen hero gaining ranks as the official (Treasure Searcher) for the King. This is essentially an excuse to propel you to the different continents of the game as you unravel the overall mystery. As you complete the main quest, other areas open up and you'll gain access to what are known as summoned spirits - elemental-like creatures that you can summon as you gain what's known as "rage" automatically when your troops engage in combat. Each of the elementals (not accessible all at once) gain levels and experience just as you do, which open up new abilities for them... allowing you to eventually make choices in how to spend your rage to aid you in combat. Though these elementals are optional as you still have spells and individual unit abilities, they can certainly make battles a little less costly and therefore should be used as frequently as possible to continue to maximize their strength. It would have been nice for them to automatically gain experience without being used, as I found just bringing them out even if I knew I was going to win a bit tedious. This could have been done by selecting to "focus" on one or more of them (simply toggle a highlight on the hero screen). Then as you battled the one (or more) you focused on would automatically get a percentage of the rage you generated converted to experience for that spirit only. If you focused on more than one, the experience would be split multiple ways.

But let's briefly step back to the beginning. The first choice you make when you select "New Game" is actually the most important: that of which class you want to play throughout your 60-100 hour adventure. The Knight, Paladin, and Mage have been balanced to play remarkably differently thanks to a few unique skills and inherent differences in the way each class earns level-up rewards. At opposite ends, the Knight's combat prowess makes his army and summoned spirits more lethal, while the Mage focuses more on magically destroying opponents outright, and is the best at either artificially enhancing his (less powerful) army, or weakening his opponents'. The paladin strikes a nice mix of the two with unique abilities of his own.

Most of the game's enjoyment and focus is on three things: thoroughly exploring to collect treasures and creatures and new quests, building up your hero to be the most powerful treasure hunter this side of Cap'n Jack Sparrow, and of course the combat (the way to prove your ever increasing power). If combat on the battlefield wasn't so entertaining to watch and full of virtually unlimited options to defeat your opponent, the game would get stale quickly. Thankfully, that isn't a problem as it is done in such an addictive yet thoughtful manner that you'll find yourself always wandering a map looking for just one more army that you deem easy enough (or challenging enough) for you to defeat. This in turn inches you that much closer to another level or unexplored area with new unknowns. Also, I must note here, once defeated, enemy armies thankfully do not respawn!

Speaking of levels, as in most combat-centered RPGs, one of the central hooks to keep playing is to see just how powerful your character can get while customizing them to your play-style. Each class in King's Bounty has access to three different skill trees, similar to what you might find in Diablo II, World of Warcraft, or several other games that now use one. As your character explores the terrain or gains a level (to a maximum of level 30), he'll receive a mixture of 3 types of runes: might, mind, and magic. Runes are the currency with which to purchase all of your unique skills from a tree -- for example, more experience, immunity to ill-effects by two creatures that don't like each other, or the ability to move troops around the grid before combat. Each of the three skill trees requires the same-named rune type more often than any other, though skills from all trees will typically use some mixture of all three types of runes. In addition most every skill can be upgraded up to 3 levels (again, paid for with runes) to provide additional effectiveness.
The Might skill tree has options to pre-place troops, make some of them stronger, and is focused mostly on melee skills. The Mind tree is focused on general combat, army, and experience enhancements. Finally, the Magic tree provides access to the different spell categories (order / distortion / chaos), and anything related to learning or enhancing spells and effects. As each class gets a sprinkling of runes on level up, but significantly more of one type than any other, the Warrior will generally find it easiest to focus on the Might tree, the Paladin on the Mind tree, and the Mage on the Magic tree. It's a great system that allows any class to pick a few skills from each of the trees or specialize in unique ways. Posts in the official forums have also confirmed that several different paths through the trees are equally viable to the end of the game.

Part of the main strategy and enjoyment of the game is in gathering the right troops to complement your play style. Sometimes you take what's given, but as the game progresses you'll have virtually unlimited choices to make. There are so many spells and unique creature abilities that during one game you can and will likely change up the definition of your army to suit the situation and what was actually available in your game. You see, all (well, most) army stacks you encounter or which are available in buildings, as well as spells and treasure -- are randomly generated. In one game you might find the Resurrection spell sooner and your new strategy could then be to improve your healing skill, while a new tactic could be to save your spell points in combat to replenish fallen troops near the end. Likewise, in one game you might have access to Evil Beholders but in another you may only find normal Beholders, which can change your strategy. In an unexpectedly pleasant twist, you can also find a wife to marry and then have up to 4 children, which take up some of your wife's new item slots but offer unique bonuses. Yes, divorce is also possible, but your wife gets some of the money and takes the kids.

To get new troops into your army you must usually purchase them from buildings. Recruiting troops costs both "leadership" points and gold. Each single creature (which range from level 1 to level 5 in power) costs a particular amount of leadership and gold to recruit -- the more powerful the creature, the more leadership points and gold it costs. Your leadership naturally increases by picking up leadership banners strewn throughout the land, completing some quests and gaining ranks as the treasure searcher, or simply by going up levels and choosing to upgrade leadership as opposed to say, one of your other three main stats (attack, defense, and intellect). As far as gold goes, you'll be accumulating it through completing quests, after every battle, selling items you find or accrue, or simply by finding piles or chests of it while exploring.

Naturally after battles, some or many of your troops will get depleted, and so you'll have to revisit some of the buildings to restock your army with fresh troops. This becomes a critical component of gameplay, and sometimes the trusty troop that just got wiped out came from a land far away, and so you'll have to either trek all the way back to its purchase location, or simply choose to use a troop type that's more readily available. If your army is ever defeated, though demoralizing it's not much of a problem as the King reimburses you with some extra gold to purchase a new stack of troops, and then you're back on your way.

Other than a few minor issues with gameplay which I'll touch on, it must be said that they really hit a bullseye with not one but three quick save slots (by pressing F5) and very fast load times. As for gameplay, the addictiveness that comes from slowly building up your character and the options available with spells and skills, exploring each new beautiful area, and seeing what types of creatures you'll fight against or are available at the various shops and buildings, provides an immensely satisfying experience I am rarely drawn into this heavily... perhaps once every few years at maximum. I expect to be keeping this on my computer for a long while and I've even heard word of an expansion on the way.

Now for the mildly negative, which should not in any way dissuade you. The most major (and fixable) of the minor issues is that players are virtually forced to explore every niche of the beginning four areas for battles and quests in order to progress to the next continent. Even when you complete nearly every quest offered and defeat every enemy in these areas, you're still just at the point where you are powerful enough to enter and defeat creatures in the next area (Freedom Isles) without heavy losses. There needs to be more balance here with experience and leadership more generously given, at least at the beginning. I for one happily explored every nook and cranny, but foresee more casual players possibly being deterred. For such a huge game, the early portion should be the easiest (with sufficient challenges and rewards for willing individuals) and should not require quite as much exploration or questing to move on.

One other issue I've touched on was the quest journal and desiring a slightly more descriptive or ordered quest list. Finally, it would have been nice to have seen female alternatives for each class. Though in this game gender is aesthetic only and has no real influence on gameplay, in a role-playing game, getting into character is important and more choices here would have perhaps led to a more personalized and stronger feeling toward the character rather than one well done portrait. The game could have easily modified its story (and even added husbands) to accompany this.

Gameplay suggestions for improvement (via patch / expansion / sequel):

1. For each class, two male and also female choices to broaden the appeal, for each of the five major races in the game: Humans/Elves/Dwarves/Undead/Demon. (Right now there is only human.)

2. Each of these races might receive a special "racial ability" that gives them one or more small unique advantages.

3. Quest Journal update to include locations (not necessarily a marker on map, but at least a continent/area description of where the quest giver was or where you need to go), and possibly categorized by quest location

4. Reduce the requirement to explore nearly every inch of a prior area to move onto the next. Some necessary exploration is great, but characters should feel powerful enough to defeat initial battles in a new area when doing approximately 2/3 to 3/4 of the prior area as opposed to 9/10ths. I am not talking about hardcore tactical specialists here either who know every in and out of the game and how to exploit Impossible armies with a stack of peasants, but your average to above average player.
Graphics

As you can see from the graphics, they're stunning and even better when you see them moving.  Absolutely breathtaking attention to detail in the 2D menus and interface, and the attention in 3D is just as painstaking.  Walls which come alive when you pass by, flotsam sinking as your ship passes over them, vibrant use of color and minor effects everywhere and in character design.   This goes for animations as well.  The summoned elementals have sufficiently flashy graphics without getting out of hand or too long like in the Final Fantasy series, little 3D effects everywhere you can think of and changing terrain and landscapes make every new location feel fresh.  The water is beautiful, everything that can move actually does move, and there is little I can actually fault or nitpick.  But being a review, I will only say that swaying trees and more weather effects (apart from the awesome night and day) would have been a 9th inning grand slam.  As it stands, I'll leave graphics at an early game slaughter.  They just nailed it. 

Everything in the huge multi-continent world (with several areas each) is hand placed.  No area is random.  Travel by dirigible, locomotive, zeppelin, horse, boat.   This is what I want when I go exploring through a new world.  Sandy beaches that have no roaming monster but form part of the landscape and perhaps have a secret treasure to dig for if you only but take the time to disembark.  Islands with bridges and scenery you have no access to for no other reason than to be part of your view in this expansive world.   Steam appropriately coming up from the vents and oscillations of the gigantic gears within an underground realm.  Mini snow avalanches cascading down laden trees with squirrels dodging in and out.  Owls peeking occasionally through high hollow holes in tall trees.  Shimmer effects, ambient hover animations for every "clickable" item such as banners, gold chalises, chests, and urns.  They did not need to do that.  Waving flags (of course), smooth creature walking / roaming animations.  I could go on.  Rarely do developers put this much effort into the art and graphics.  Not even Blizzard has done more in this area for any of their games.  Perhaps equal to, but not beyond.  They deserve to be praised.  Sure, some may complain slightly that they're not using the highest resolution textures, but if that's the case, it's not noticeable or important (to me) and I'd rather have fully rotatable 3D terrain looking this good and running so well at high settings with my now-becoming obsolete GeForce 7900gt and middle aged Athlon system, than any alternative.

Every battle is in a different highly detailed hex-grid venue (like the HOMM series) and character design owes a little to Games Workshop minis as well as past HOMM titles, but extra details show, such as the lanterns atop the Dwarven Miner's heads.  Animations all look fluid and are appropriately speedy.  There's an option for speeding up battle and I surely thought I would use it (as I did in HOMM), but throughout my first play through I never felt tired of the animations or felt they were too slow.

Because of the high score, I've been trying to find a reason why it should not get a 10.  The fact is, it's rare that some part of a game is so polished it actually stands out the entire way through.  No, when zoomed all the way in I will admit the hero model is simply average.  Perhaps the textures aren't as high a resolution when at that level of zoom either.  Neither are World of Warcraft's or plethora of other games with an overall great artistic style.  But that's not the way the game was meant to be played and I'm surprised (actually pleasantly) that it even allows for that.  Most games of this basic type have traditionally had a fairly high up view to begin with because of the nature of getting a tactical overview of the enemies and land.   Zoom just little out in King's Bounty and it's amazing.  You'll see over heavily wooded hills and cliffs to distant lands, creatures you don't yet have access to will be walking their paths, and all the details pop right out.  In summary, prepare to be visually spoiled.

Sound & Music

Music is full of beautiful, haunting, inspiring orchestral melodies, just like the old HOMM games though perhaps not quite as catchy. There are several mp3's downloadable on the official King's Bounty site if you're so inclined, but in each area, the music contributes greatly to the atmosphere. Almost on this basis alone this category should be ranked highly, but it wouldn't if sounds weren't extremely well done too. There are atmospheric sounds as you travel and the horses appropriately make metallic, wooden, or earthy sounds as they trot over the various landscapes. During battle, sound is used perfectly for all the spells, abilities, and attacks, so there are no surprises. I can't quite put sound in the same category as graphics as other than the nice touch of my horse trotting over different terrain and apart from the music, I didn't feel too much above and beyond what would be expected. For example, the NPCs that wander around the land may have grunted or had some sort of short vocal SFX when giving chase. Or during battle some of the units could have had more of a character sound-wise (like the dwarves perhaps saying some short gobbledygook phrase in a Scottish accent, or pirates saying "Aargh" as they charge).

Again because the entire game is extremely polished and though the sounds and music were always spot on, I can only mention what little more there is that could be improved upon. Therefore I felt there could have been more sound emphasis on level-ups and victory summaries. Similar to WoW's "zding!" on level up, some sound and visual emphasis would make the very act of leveling more poignant than it already is. Here you get to choose a new main stat, a bevy of new runes to purchase skills with, and have reached a new milestone. It should be an event delivered with appropriate fanfare rather than just small text in a dialogue window. The dialogue graphics are just fine, but it could have used something more.

Likewise, probably due to budget and though it isn't really missed, it could have added something to have an overall narrator do voiceovers and cut scenes at some of the milestones, especially when first traveling to a new continent for the first time during the journey. With lots of quest dialogue and NPCs not really the focus, I don't really miss VO for them, but a narrator could have been cool. Just ways to improve an already stellar game... but if any of this had to come at the expense of losing anything else, then I'd drop the request in a heartbeat.

Overall thoughts for music & sound? Great orchestral music, and above average sound.
Lasting Value

King's Bounty is huge. One time through the adventure will easily consume 60 - 100 hours of your time, and that's just once. While perhaps not matching some of the all time greats (such as Baldur's Gate II) in time consumption, it is still a major accomplishment in single player games. The diversity with its landscapes and creatures never gets stale.

As for replayability? The game has been out in Europe and Russia for several months already, and the localized North American release has been updated with the thoughtful changes that have so greatly balanced the classes to an individual play experience well worth replaying - at least 1 or 2 additional times. As each class plays fundamentally differently and the game's creature and spell system is nearly completely randomized, it virtually guarantees a different experience replaying at least once as another class. With we'll say at minimum 40+ hours for an experienced gamer to go through it a second time, there's potential for significant amount of replayability for this type of game. Still, it is single-player only and the quests are always the same, making the overall experience a 2nd and 3rd time somewhat less about that aspect and more about combat and building your character and his army, which is the main element anyway. There is also a high score board for personal or bragging rights; though a nice and ultimately desired touch, I can only see those with the much more free time than I have using this to any extent.

Though King's Bounty doesn't necessarily lend itself to typical multiplayer turn-based gameplay like hot-seat and e-mail games -- turn-based only applies to combat here -- there are some possibilities for extending the game in a unique and fun way. Something like a "Hero Arena" could allow two players to choose a class, distribute a set number of attribute points, hand-pick their army from the same limited selection of random monsters using a balanced pre-set number of leadership points to purchase them, then select a limited number of spells and a few extra skills to upgrade in the tree of their choosing, and then go at it. Best two of three rounds wins the match using the same army, and perhaps to the victor goes some sort of prestige points with the possibility of making it a ladder-based system. Just a suggestion!

Documentation

I found the manual to be sufficient to teach me a few things I would normally be oblivious to about leadership and rage, but also minimal with respect to how to actually go through a combat. That part of the game was more of a hands on approach during the useful tutorial but will be old hat anyway to fans of the HOMM series and in any case is not difficult to figure out. I'll actually be waiting for the fan-made Russian manual to be translated into full English to get the most out of future play throughs.

Summary

Very good games (especially without high marketing budgets) deserve to be praised, so please consider my meager (ahem) review an attempt at a trumpeted call through the winding streets of your village about a game that deserves more recognition. Now, if you're still reading and haven't already bought it, go out immediately and show your support to the developers for this great piece of software. Thanks especially to Katauri Interactive, but also to 1C Publishing and Atari. This is one title where sequels and expansions are very welcome.
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World of Warcraft Review

Introduction

Blizzard Entertainment released World of Warcraft in November of 2004, and then it added an expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, two years later. World of Warcraft appeared at just the right time (with Everquest on its last legs), and it has pretty much ruled the massively multiplayer roost ever since. Now Blizzard is getting ready to add a second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, next month, and the game shows no signs of slowing down.

Given that World of Warcraft has already generated over 50 reviews, and given that millions of people (including, apparently, Mr. T and Mini-Me) have already tried it out, let's just say that the cat's already out of the bag regarding whether the game is any good or not. So I'm only sorta-kinda going to review World of Warcraft here. Mostly I'll just comment on my experiences while playing it for three months, and then I'll talk a little about what to expect from Wrath of the Lich King.


What's Old

World of Warcraft has a lot of things going for it. First and foremost, it's big, and it gives you lots of things to do. I started playing World of Warcraft in July, and it took me almost three months to get my character to level 70, which is the current cap. During that time I completed almost 1000 quests and explored numerous lands and dungeons -- but I still had only seen about half of the available content. I played a human priest, and so I saw most of the Alliance lands, but there are also lands designed for Horde players and other races, plus special heroic dungeons that require you to not only be level 70, but also have really good equipment, which I don't have yet. So I'm confident that I could play for another three months (even without Wrath of the Lich King), and still not see everything.

Besides places to explore and associated quests to complete, World of Warcraft also gives players other things to do. Characters get to choose professions (like mining and alchemy), and it takes time and effort to build them up. There are also auction houses for buying and selling items (sometimes I spend more time at auction houses than I do killing things), plus a variety of player-versus-player (PvP) activities, including duels and battlegrounds. World of Warcraft comes with two types of servers -- player-versus-environment (PvE) servers, where you basically have to turn on a PvP flag to attack or be attacked by other players, and PvP servers, which are far less restrictive -- and so you can choose the setting that best fits your playing style. I prefer cooperative gameplay, and so I played on a PvE server and avoided the PvP content as much as possible.

For my character, a typical day starts with me going to the Isle of Quel'Danas to complete some (daily) quests. Daily quests are quests that can be completed once each day, and they're a good source of income, since level 70 characters get money instead of experience when they complete quests. If I complete the ten main quests on the island, then I'll earn about 100 gold for the run. That's a lot of gold -- except that I'll eventually need 5000 gold to buy a flying mount for my character, and so every penny counts.

After completing some daily quests, I next try to find a group so I can hunt for better equipment (generally speaking, you play by yourself to gain experience and gold, and you group with other players to explore dungeons and find equipment). Despite usually being pretty good at interfaces, this is a part of the game that Blizzard didn't handle well. Instead of just being able to indicate that you'd just like to join a group, or perhaps join a group going to a heroic dungeon, you can only pick three specific dungeons or quests that you'd like help with, and that makes it more difficult to find groups you'd like to join or people who are willing to join your group.

World of Warcraft also includes some special world events. There are fishing competitions and other activities on most weekends, and there are also some seasonal festivals. Right now the game is in the middle of the Hallow's End festival, which includes Halloween decorations in the cities, special trick-or-treat quests at the inns, and some daily quests involving the Headless Horseman (including defeating him in the Scarlet Monastery graveyard). The seasonal festivals are fun, and they do a nice job of changing the look of the game and giving players something new to do.

If I have one particular bone to pick with World of Warcraft, it's that it is a little too easy to play. There is almost no penalty for death (other than running from a graveyard to your corpse), and so there's no way to fail. As long as you have time, you'll eventually make it to level 70, even if you're the most incompetent player on the face of the planet. There also aren't any restrictions on who you can group with, so a level 1 can group with a level 70. In most games that would mean that the level 1 wouldn't get any experience, but in World of Warcraft, the experience gain is just reduced (by maybe half). Worse, because the group will kill things 100 times faster, the level 1 will actually gain experience more quickly than otherwise, plus get all of the equipment drops and still complete the quests. So not only does grouping with a level 70 not hurt the level 1, it helps him out. I played World of Warcraft for a while in beta, and I remember some of the lower-level dungeons (like the Deadmines) being very tough, but now somebody can just bring in a level 70 and make them a walk in the park. Blizzard could correct this sort of thing if they wanted to, but they don't.
Another slight problem is the economy. Some people have been playing World of Warcraft for years, and so they've accumulated a ton of gold. That's a problem because it means that items are priced for how much a rich player might pay for them, and so life can be tough when you first start the game. You won't be able to afford anything in the auction houses, and you'll have a terrible time trying to save enough money for your mounts. But eventually you'll find some things that rich people want, and you'll be able to take advantage of the economy, and it will work out. It'll just take some time.


What's New

Last week Blizzard released the 3.0.2 patch, which laid a lot of the groundwork for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack. The interesting thing about the patch is that it included some of the content that I expected to be a part of the expansion pack. For example, the patch unlocked the new inscription profession, which allows players to create glyphs, which can be attached to spellbooks to change how some spells work. One glyph cuts the mana cost for the (power word: fortitude) spell in half, and other glyphs remove the need for spell components, increase the amount of spell damage dealt, or increase the duration of spell effects.

The patch also unlocked the new achievements system. There are now 750 achievements that players can try to complete, and they range from things like exploring zones to completing quests to killing certain enemies. There are even some weird achievements, like using the (love) emote on a variety of forest creatures, including squirrels and prairie dogs. The achievements are nice, because just like professions they give players something extra to think about. Since the patch came out, I've tried knocking out a few achievements every day, but I still have well over 600 to complete.

Finally, the patch made some other changes, like introducing barbershops (where players can change their appearance) and calendars (to show when events and festivals are occurring), and re-balancing the races and classes in preparation for characters being able to advance to level 80. But the big changes, the Death Knight class and the new Northrend continent, will require the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, which is set to hit store shelves on November 13.


Conclusion

I generally enjoy casual games as well as more sophisticated titles, and so World of Warcraft has worked out pretty well for me. Going from level 1 to level 50 is pretty casual, and people are happy just to mess around and get stuff done, but then as you approach level 70 things get more serious, and you're more likely to run into people who will only want to deal with you if you know the dungeons by heart and have the best equipment available. The nice thing about World of Warcraft is that you can stay in either circle. If you want to keep things casual, then you can create new characters and explore all of the regular lands. If you want to be more hardcore, then you can build up a character to level 70 and then plug away until you can go into all of the heroic dungeons.

I spent about three months playing World of Warcraft, and that was enough time to get my priest to level 70 plus play a couple of minor characters to around level 20. Even so, there is still a lot of content I haven't seen yet, especially in the way of dungeons, and I'm looking forward to sneaking into them someday, plus exploring the new lands from Wrath of the Lich King when they become available. Since World of Warcraft caters to everybody, has lots of content to see, looks nice and is well run, it's an easy game to recommend, even four years after its debut.
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Hinterland Review

I have a problem with game companies that try to combine successful elements of multiple titles into one (slam dunk!) game. I image a bunch of corporate fatcats sitting around the table to conclude that (people like world building and people like hack 'n slash games, let's combine the two! Slam dunk!)

Not so for independent game developers. If they tell me they're combining elements from multiple genres, I get excited about the possibilities, as I know they are (or should be) doing this because they love the idea and it's what they want to create. Perhaps that's unfair and it certainly isn't always correct. Sometimes independent games remind me that no amount of love and care put into a product can overcome certain conceptual problems and, for a good chunk of it, Hinterland is one of those games.

The Gameplay

Hinterland combines elements typically found in action RPGs with a town building process. In short gaming sessions, the character of your choice is thrown into the wilderness by order of the king, and must tame the wild lands (read: kill all the monsters). You are given many options to customize your game to start, including difficulty and length, but also including randomization of resources (so you won't be able to recruit every supporting NPC every time) and whether or not to include enemy raids on your town or requests from the king for which you can gain fame (usually he just asks for money or food, but sometimes he's looking for a unique item or resource).

To help you on your quest a large variety of NPCs drop by your town with the option to employ them: farmers, herders, trappers, guards, alchemists, fortune tellers, craftsmen and more. Each character (including yourself) costs 1 food per day and if you run out of food you lose the game, so this is the first thing you'll need to take care of. The food producers are the basis of each town, where the item producers (like craftsmen or alchemists) support you by producing the weaponry and potions you'll need on your adventures, or producing gold by selling their goods to your local merchant. Guards can keep your town safe and are probably best suited in adventuring with you, other than high-power characters like high priests, wizards, necromancers and dragon herders.

You can go out to fight monsters on your own or take some of your town dwellers with you. You clear up the region map on a by-area basis, fighting about half a dozen monsters of increasing toughness. In doing so, you can also free up resources for your town, by clearing out for example a rock quarry or iron mine. Some resources can also be cultivated without freeing them up (by planting a herb field within the town or importing iron), but this is gold-intensive. Still, there's a good chance some resource you really need will be held by high-level monsters, and that is a good way around the problem. On top of that, fighting monsters and clearing out areas gives you XP to level up as well as fame, which allows you to recruit higher-level NPCs.

Your character can not die (unless you're playing in hardcore difficulty), but that doesn't mean dying is as penalty-free as it is in most hack 'n slashes. Deaths bring heavy fame penalties, which can be pretty painful if you're in the process of replacing low-level NPCs with high-level ones. You lose the game if either your fame or your food goes into the negative or if monsters raiding your town destroy it.

Combat is about as basic as it gets; you click on your opponent once and then just sit back watching your character attack him. Opponents use close combat or ranged weapons, as well as magic which comes down to fire/magic bolts and poison/curse spells. The PC can use close combat or ranged weapons as well as magic, though I found the game pretty hard to play using magic myself. Strategy isn't much of a factor, other than making sure your PC is well-equipped, trying to isolate individuals enemies to fight and taking a team of powerful followers with you if necessary.

You will find a lot of equipment on your adventures, though you won't just pick up items for your character. A lot of the items you'll find will go into decking out your followers: oats to help herders, tools or hammers to help craftsman, salves or bandages to help doctors, and so on and so forth.

As you level up, you get to pick one stat to increase (attack, defense or health) and then get an extra perk, that gives a bonus of different sorts to your offensive skills (such as a bonus to offensive value or attack speed), your defensive skills (such as enabling you to heal outside of town) or your town management skills (such as giving extra gold from buildings, allowing you to research quicker or build cheaper).

Individual level-ups might not give noticeable boosts every time but it has a cumulative effect, and you'll find your character shaping up in giving special emphasis on his individual adventuring skills or to town management. I've had a playthrough with a dwarf warrior where most of my gold resources came from adventuring, and equally a playthrough with a goblin scientist where most of the production came from the town.
Technical Issues

I've had a hard time getting Hinterland to run. I would normally write this off as a quirk since my computer is hardly the ideal gamer build, but some quick research leads me to believe that I'm not the only one having trouble (almost every thread I've seen on this game has at least one person noting he or she couldn't get it to run). The problems range from early Steam issues to patch-caused problems of invisible enemies to (my personal issue that seems to be happening to multiple people) having to reboot my computer just to start up the game. At times, the problems appear to be on the user end, with outdated drivers or full hard drives blocking the experience. But even after making sure everything was up to date, my issues remain.

When I finally do get the game to start, it takes a bit too long to load up a new game. This is not something I usually take that much issue with, but Hinterland does not really look like the kind of game that needs the kind of resources to excuse long loading times. What's more, Hinterland's formula is addictive but is addictive in short spurts, which works better if the game is easy to exit and start up again (think PopCap games), and this increases the severity of the technical issues and long loading times as they impact enjoyment of the game even more than such issues normally would.

I would be slightly less irked by these technical issues if I were convinced Tilted Mill were pulling out all stops to help fix these problems. Instead, the game was delayed for a while not for bug-fixing but for added content, and since then Tilted Mill has put out another content pack as well, which seems to have caused some additional problems. Not really putting the priorities in the right order, I would say.

I have little to complain about in the graphics & sound department. The sounds are a bit off (the troll screeches in particular I don't really get), but the music is solid. The graphics are simple but effective, high quality enough for you to enjoy the look of your pimped out town or character.

Gameplay Issues

This may sound familiar, but Hinterland is a game that tries to be two things, and ends up not being all that good at either. This is a judgment you'll often hear on these kind of gender-blenders, but it caught me off guard for this title as the gameplay foundation is solid and low-concept, meaning it should be easy enough to mix town building and hack 'n slash gameplay as long as you keep it fun. And Tilted Mill does not fall for the obvious trap of trying to do too much and ending up with an inconsistent mess, but they just might have gone too far in the other direction and ended up doing too little.

Don't get me wrong, Hinterland does succeed in simply being fun. The foundation of world building and character building complementing one another is solid, Tilted Mill did manage to combine the two so that you are concerned and having fun with both, which means neither one needs to be able to stand on its own.

Which is good, because both fall somewhat short on how fleshed out they are. I'd say the town building gameplay is probably better developed, but it too lacks a certain something: a relevant choice to make, one that would offer unique paths of town development and thus offer more variety. At one point you choose to go for a temple of good or a temple of evil and depending on that choice you can get a necromancer or high priest, but other than that the town development depends on limitations from the outside: whether you get the right resources or items to get the people you want. This means that selecting (randomize resources) for each session will make each experience more unique, but without it (and even with it) town development feels (samey) after a few sessions. I would say there is enough variety in types of NPCs, but the functions of different NPCs are simply too similar: farmers, herders and trappers all produce food with varying circumstances and bonuses, but they all basically do the same thing. A bard raises your town quality and a fortune teller/witch produces gold and potions, which is a very simple approach and just feels like squandering opportunities to do something more unique.

The experience is saved when you get the more unique, high-end NPCs (like necromancers and dragon herders) and decking out your high-level guards in high-quality magic items. This is, to put it simply, (pretty cool), and because it takes a while to get that far it has a neat sense of accomplishment attached to it.
Turning on enemy raids is also something that helps more than you think it might. If you have all the time in the world to build your town, it isn't very challenging: since the only resource that is actively used up is food, there's no need for balance beyond having enough farmers, herders and trappers. With raids, you will have to keep guards in mind as the enemies can be pretty dangerous too tough for you to fight on your own. The need to supply guards properly bumps up the importance of smiths and in so doing a layer is added to town building.

It is the hack 'n slash gameplay where it kind of starts to give away at the seams. The tactic-less, click-once-and-wait combat is dull at best and isn't helped by the sometimes odd interface pressing 1-4 to use a healing potion is fine, but it can be surprisingly awkward to use a boosting potion on yourself or one of your followers. But where the game really falls short is in variety, both for the PC and for the enemies.

All enemies do is attack straight on without much AI apparent, occasionally with poison attacks and occasionally with a chance to stun. A lack of an expansive magic system and the fact that any area is filled with enemies of about the same level makes it all predictable: you'll never suddenly be faced by a single super-high level character, or swarmed by countless small enemies. There are no area effects or circumstance-changing spells (except for curse, which doesn't seem to do much or last long). The end result: every fight pretty much feels the same and whatever tactic works for you will keep on working for you every time you play.

Action RPGs, like it or not, always depend heavily on your ability to uniquely develop your character. It is understandable that there is less of this in Hinterland as characters are dumped after each session, but the lack of variety hurts the game on the long run. Other than the choice between adventurer or town manager characters feel essentially the same. You'll get different items, but with the only normal variables being offensive and defensive stats, the only cool extras you'll get are occasional poison or fire-magic items. And that's just not enough to prevent combat characters from feeling the same every single time. And this goes back to the conceptual problem mentioned at the start of this review: the fact that this game's concept is set in short gaming sessions is the best way to support town building but ultimately hurts the depth and involvement of the hack 'n slash gameplay and character development. This is a conflict of interests that does not have a right answer.

Conclusion

Hinterland is not a bad game by any measure. It never loses sight of the primary goal of simply being fun, and combines the two basic concepts it is based on better than many mainstream attempts to do so might. But the above-named flaws do stop it from becoming as involving as it could be, while the technical hiccups if you're one unfortunate enough to encounter them can be seriously frustrating, pulling down our gameplay score quite significantly.

Assuming you're hiccup-free, Hinterland is probably an ideal game if you're looking for fun low-concept gaming, best served in short sessions and for those of us that enjoy both town management and hack 'n slash gaming. It tries to walk a thin line between fun, simple gameplay and not becoming repetitive, and randomization of maps and resources does help in this, but in my opinion they did tilt it towards the simple a bit too much. It does end up feeling like it could spend a little more time in the oven, and as it is constantly getting patches and content updates it might be wise to defer purchase for a while.
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The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Review

Introduction

CD Projekt Red released The Witcher in October of 2007. The game received many fine reviews, including a 9.0 from GameBanshee. Now a year later, CD Projekt Red has created an Enhanced Edition of the game. This edition sports the original script (as opposed to the pared down version in the North American release), new voice acting for all of the additional lines, improved mechanics and visuals, numerous bug fixes, and more. Better yet, CD Projekt Red has released all of this content as a patch, and so if you purchased The Witcher before, you can download the Enhanced Edition for free.

Now, it's a rare patch that doesn't improve a game (although Obsidian Entertainment is trying their darndest with Neverwinter Nights 2), and so I'm not going to review the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher. It was a good game before, it's a better game now, and you don't need to read a review to understand that. What I'm going to do instead is talk about the patch itself -- what it adds, what it improves, and, most importantly, whether you should care. Since our rating system doesn't really apply to patches, I'm not going to give it a score, but if you read the text of this review you'll get a pretty good idea of what I think about it.

The Dialogue

When The Witcher was released in North America, it rather famously appeared in an edited and censored fashion. Most of the media and fan scrutiny fell upon the removal of all of the nudity from the game, but the script was also hacked up and sanitized, to the point where some of the dialogue didn't make any sense (a conversation with Thaler in Chapter III comes to mind here). Well, the Enhanced Edition doesn't change anything about the nudity, but it fixes the dialogue, to the point where the game now sports the complete original script.

I know there are some players out there who would prefer scripts and scripted events to be as terse as possible so they can concentrate on killing things, but the changes to The Witcher's script are actually more subtle than I expected them to be. Conversations flow better, NPCs are more conscientious about telling you where they'll be and what you'll need to do to complete their quests, and all of the nonsensical comments have been removed. Better yet, CD Projekt Red achieved this without the script seeming much (wordier.) I don't know if anybody released any actual numbers for this, but the script doesn't feel like it's any more than 10-20% larger, and the bonuses far outweigh the minuses (assuming you even think a larger script is a minus). About the only downside to the script is that the profanity quotient way up (Thaler in particular swears with every other word), but then The Witcher wasn't exactly a family-friendly game to start with.

Because of the new script, of course, there is also a bunch of new voice acting. From what I can tell, almost all of the actors from The Witcher reprised their roles in the Enhanced Edition, including Doug Cockle's excellent work as Geralt. Better yet, the mixing of the new lines with the old is pretty seamless. There are a couple of places where the volume changes or the actor sounds like he's in a different room all of a sudden, but I'm guessing most people won't be able to tell that a significant portion of the dialogue was recorded at different times. The only downside to the voice acting is that the actor for Dandelion changed, and the new guy is way more flat and monotone than the original guy, and he seems ill-suited as the roguish musician.

The Visuals

The graphical changes in the Enhanced Edition are probably the only disappointing part of the patch, just because they're so minimal. One of the changes that we were supposed to see was the inclusion of a bunch of new character models, to prevent named NPCs from looking just like random peasants and merchants, but this didn't really come to light. Instead of whole new faces, CD Projekt Red only made minor changes, like adding scars or blemishes to the faces, and so people still look like each other. About the only NPC who really got a facelift is Carmen (leave it to CD Projekt Red to concentrate on the appearance of a prostitute), and that's mostly because her hair turned brown.
The only other thing I noticed is that if you cast the Igni sign on an enemy, and if you ignite it, then it will catch on fire and show a burning animation. I don't remember that happening before, so it's probably new. Otherwise, the Enhanced Edition looks almost identical to the original version, and so the graphical changes give little reason to try out the game again.

Other Improvements

In addition to the more publicized changes, CD Projekt Red has made other improvements. First and foremost, they upgraded the inventory system. When The Witcher first came out, the inventory was divided between quest items and other items, and it was often tough to tell what you had and what you needed (among other things, ingredients tended to look like potions). But now the inventory has been divided into three areas -- quest items, regular items, and ingredients -- and CD Projekt Red added sorting and filtering buttons, making it easier to keep track of your stuff. Better yet, the changes actually added more inventory space, and so now you don't need to constantly run back and forth to shopkeepers to sell items and clear space, and you don't often need to visit inns to shuffle items between your inventory and your storage space.

Another nice change is that CD Projekt Red improved dice poker. When the game was initially released, the dice poker opponents were monumentally dumb, and they'd often roll dice at random, without any regard to whether they were helping their hand or actually hurting it. But now the opponents are both smarter and luckier, and so it's much tougher to get through the dice poker quest in the game. It also means that you can no longer use dice poker as a source for easy money. But on the downside, dice poker also isn't as much fun to play any more. Opponents constantly roll full houses and six-high straights, and you're now much more likely to lose than to win (I lost to Dandelion 10 times in a row before I finally beat him).

Finally, CD Projekt made a couple of claims that don't exactly seem to be true, or perhaps are a matter of semantics. First, they claimed that they reduced the loading times in the Enhanced Edition, but I couldn't tell the difference. When the game first came out the loading times were terrible for me (going in and out of a shop took about five minutes round trip), but these times were knocked way down in the 1.2 patch, and they seem to be about the same now. CD Projekt Red also claimed that they improved (combat responsiveness,) but this also seemed about the same. I noticed that Geralt will actually advance and start fighting plants on his own now, but at other times he just refuses to fight, especially when you try to use the group fighting style.

Conclusion

Just to be clear, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is a patch rather than any sort of expansion pack. It doesn't add any new quests or locations or characters, and the new script just expands upon existing conversations rather than adding new ones. So if you've already played The Witcher, then there isn't really anything new here. It's just that all of the things you saw before are a little bit better. If you haven't played The Witcher yet, then the Enhanced Edition gives you even fewer excuses to avoid it than you might have had before, and you'd be doing yourself a favor by playing it.

As patches go, the Enhanced Edition is about as good as it gets. Only once before have I seen a game get a major overhaul to its script and voice acting, and that game, Gorasul, desperately needed it (let's just say that it was poorly translated). The Witcher didn't really need to improve its script, but CD Projekt Red spruced it up anyway, and they made a lot of other nice changes as well, making the game even better than it was before. Just be warned, though, that if you're downloading the Enhanced Edition as a patch, it's 1.5 GB in size, and since it touches so many files, it takes upwards of 2 hours to update your game. But that's a small enough downside given all of the improvements that you're getting for free.
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Mount & Blade Review

Despite what a lot of people seem to claim, sandbox gameplay is not a recent invention. The concept easily reaches back to some of the early Ultima titles, Darklands, Sid Meier's Pirates!, and The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The sandbox (sub-genre), if you can call it that, has occupied a valued niche in the RPG pantheon, usually with the same pros (addictive, open-world gameplay) and cons (quantity over quality, repetitive gameplay).

TaleWorlds' indie action RPG Mount & Blade is no exception in its widest scope. It too has compelling and addictive gameplay offset by repetitive and uninteresting quests and NPCs. But Mount & Blade is a little different. Kind of like Arena, you can tell that this is not a game that set out to be a perfect sandbox title, but instead strove to be a fighting game first and foremost and this has its positive and negative sides.

Basics

Mount & Blade utilizes a simple character system: your main attributes are strength, agility, intelligence, and charisma, and each attribute has a number of skills tied to it. Broadly speaking, strength governs combat skills (power strike, ironflesh), agility governs physical aptitudes and combat skills (weapon master, riding), intelligence governs leadership skills (leadership, pathfinding, tactics), and charisma governs personal interaction skills (persuade, trade).

Mount & Blade takes the sandbox principle to its extreme: after character creation, you're dropped into the middle of nowhere with no main quests or clear instructions of what to do. Astute players will notice they're shoved into the world right next to an area marked (training grounds) and head there first, but it doesn't really matter - you can go anywhere you like and earn experience any way you wish.

The lack of guidance might be daunting to players more used to hand-holding, but Mount & Blade does not throw up a lot of conceptual challenges: there are towns, castles, and villages dotting the world map divided amongst 5 factions: Vaegirs, Swadians, Khergits, Nords, and Rhodoks. Each location usually has one or more NPCs (of interest) that can provide quests (lords, guild leaders, and village elders) whereas the other NPCs are just there for the flavor or even better for recruiting into your very own party. Each quest is fairly straightforward, and most simply involve moving from point A to B and most likely bashing someone's head in once you're there.

Combat

Combat in Mount & Blade is fantastic, stunning, and easily sports the best real-time swordplay ever conceived in a video game - and that's not even mentioning the mounted combat.

When asked why we're supposed to prefer fast first-person real-time combat to the alternatives, the standard answer is that it's more immersive, immediate, intuitive, and fun. Oddly enough, those four principles usually combine into click-click-click-click combat, like you'd find in something like Gothic 3. To get some direct comparison material for Mount & Blade, I started up Oblivion right after one session, and found myself laughing out loud at the horribly stilted movement and awkward controls.

That's what Mount & Blade does to you. Once you go M&B, you can't go back.

Now that the unabashed drooling is out of the way, let me try to give you a picture of Mount & Blade's combat. The basics of close combat come down to striking and blocking, with you determining the direction of the strike (and of the block if you so desire) while viewing the field from first or third person. Shields block more easily but also wear down during combat until they break and you drop them. You can also block with your weapon if you have no shield, but it is tougher and requires timing. Ranged attacks can be blocked by a shield but not with a weapon, and blocking attacks multiple opponents is nearly impossible without a shield.

Skill, weapons, and armor determine how much damage you do and can take, but player skill factors into it heavily. Not so heavily that you can take down someone in plate mail with a club, but still so significant that all your fancy weapons won't do you any good if you don't know how to use them. What counts in Mount & Blade is timing and momentum. If you fail to block at the right time, you'll be caught off balance and your opponent will likely land multiple blows before you can recover. Likewise, the speed of your weapon relative to your opponent's is a factor, so you have to make sure you hit him head-on, as a backwards swipe while running past him won't do you much good.

Ranged weapons may sound like the odd one out but they're not. They're not recommended weaponry, but whether you prefer bows, crossbows, or thrown weapons, they make a handy backup or alternate attack and can even be utilized on horseback if you're skilled enough. Speed, damage, and accuracy for all weapons are determined by separate combat skills that you can raise each level, though they also rise themselves in a learn-by-doing scheme.

Mounted combat is the core of the title but to be perfectly frank not the part I enjoyed most. True, nothing can beat charging head-on into a group of infantry and slashing someone right in the noggin as the speed-bonus can easily double or triple the damage and kill the opponent instantly. Or the grandeur of two horsemen charging at each other with whoever times his attack right probably knocking the other guy out. But I find that while the initial rush is great, after a while you'll note that open-field battles against infantry involve a lot of circling around the enemy to go in for a new charge, while cavalry versus cavalry is even worse, as the enemy AI mostly avoids you and only cautiously moving in for a strike. This means that fights against light cavalry (the Khergit Khanate) can be an extremely frustrating affair. Still, Mount & Blade easily provides the best mounted combat I've ever had the pleasure of participating in.
Mount & Blade does not stick to only one type of combat. At the start, the open-field batches will be mostly small, pitched battles between your party and assorted forest bandits, mountain bandits, sea raiders, or looters. As you advance in levels and renown, your maximum party capacity grows and it will be needed, for if you join one of the factions you'll find yourself involved in full-scale open-field battles, where armies of hundreds face off. The game does not handle all these NPCs all at once, instead putting two initial teams against each other and sending in waves of replacements as combatants fall.

On top of that, Mount & Blade has non-lethal combat in training (in Mount & Blade, you train people by beating them up true hard knocks philosophy) and in arenas. Arenas are usually a welcome change of pace, as they pit two to four teams of size varying from 1 to 8 combatants against each other in the small confines of the arena, using a variety of weapons and often mixing mounted and non-mounted combat. In the final release of Mount & Blade, arenas have some added flavor in that the equipment is adapted to the tastes of the regions you're in - Khergits sending gladiators in on mounts and with javelins or bows, while the Nords often arm them with axes. Arena fighting offers a good source of revenue (if you're smart and skilled enough to bet on yourself and win), as well as a welcome change of pace.

The combat I personally enjoyed the most was during sieges. Sieges are not what you might expect them to be as forces storm up a ladder or a siege tower to fight the defendants on the battlements. It doesn't feel quite like a real siege, but what it does feel like is a massive and often challenging slaughter, as you swing your sword through ranks of recruits until you emerge victorious and very, very bloody.

Flavor

Now, I'm making it sound like combat is all there is to Mount & Blade and that's not really fair. For one, TaleWorlds went all-out in making the world living and breathing in its own right: the wealth of villages, castles, and towns changes as they prosper in peace-time or suffer under prolonged sieges or lack of caravan trade. All lords move around the map, and if they're at war, they will engage in battles with one another, even besieging towns and castles, all without any need for instigation from the player.

The factions are all basically similar: each owns three or four towns, has a single ruler and a single pretender to the throne (who you can support in a full-scale rebellion), and a number of lords (about 20) with their own estates. But the culture of each faction is different, from the Middle Eastern Khergit Khanate to the wealthy merchants of the Kingdom of Rhodoks to the hardy sea people of the Nords. The makeup of the armies is influenced by these outlooks: the Vaegirs and Swadians depending on heavy cavalry, the Nords on heavy infantry, the Rhodoks on light spearmen, and the Khergits on light cavalry. All factions also have bow or crossbow infantry, except the Khergits who are all mounted.

In open-field battles, this gives a clear edge to the Vaegirs and Swadians. A few of their knights could easily cut down two dozen Nord infantry. In sieges, this advantage is lost, and the heavy infantry of the Nords and sharpshooters of the Rhodoks will do the job just as well. The Khergits are kind of the third wheel in this story, as their light armor means they're nothing but arrow-fodder during sieges, while their inability to seriously damage heavy cavalry means they're just an annoyance in open-field battles.

These 5 factions warring to rule Calradia (Mount & Blade's setting) is the game's backdrop. As stories go, it is not fleshed out very well. While you can get a lot of flavor text and history from various NPCs there never seems to be one consistent line or story to tell. It doesn't help believability that every king (or khan) has one single pretender to the throne, who has a good story for which the king (or khan) has an equally good counterpoint. To put it simply: the setting is fleshed out enough to serve as a somewhat believable backdrop to the swordplay, but nothing more than that.

Dialogue is the usual horrid sandbox affair: standard boxed dialogue choices come with standard boxed replies, the only real variable being when you're trying to persuade someone (an NPC to stay with your party, or a lord to pay back his debt) in which case your rarely-used persuasion skill comes into play. The only dialogue of more interest are the lines where you try to convince a lord to abandon his liege and join the rebellion, a dialogue influenced by the lord's personal liking of you, the strength of the rebellion versus the kingdom, and your choice to either keep a consistent line of argument or try to tell the lord what he wants to hear.

The quests aren't much for adding more substance, either. Guild masters have boring quests like escorting caravans or herding cattle while village elders are even worse, sending you to find and fetch cattle or food. Lords are just as bad at the start, trusting you only to deliver letters or go out to claim debts. A lot of fetch and deliver quests, in other words.

It gets better later on, though not by much. The problem is that interesting ideas never have interesting execution. Sent out to pay the ransom for a kidnapped girl? No intrigue here, just hand over the money and you get her - the only trouble is of the type you can start. Have to track down a killer amongst his kinfolk? Just look for the guy with a sword. Need to follow a spy and capture him and the person he's reporting to? Just follow their tracks, equip blunt weapons, charge in and knock them over the heads to knock them out and take them back. You should be seeing the pattern here: it's almost exclusively fight or fetch, and since there's only about 2 dozen quests you'll start running into the same one over and over soon enough.

Music, Sound Effects, Graphics

The game's music is well suited to the setting, but not really good enough to be called memorable. It is kept well in the background of the noise of war, so the chances of it bothering you are slim. The sounds range from the somewhat weird (some of the attack sound effects are a bit odd) to the immensely satisfying thud of hitting someone on the head with a hammer or your bow twanging as you release an arrow.

Mount & Blade's graphics are detailed enough to make out all the necessary details and then some, as combinations of armor, gloves, boots, helmets and weaponry make for unique NPCs. The face generation system allows you to get creative when making a character and is equally released on the game world, making for a wide array of lively characters to meet. As one might expect, there are a few points where the graphics stand out (the sky often looks great, particularly at sunrise or sunset) and a few points where they obviously fall short (texture detail is wanting, there are a number of odd graphic glitches, and at times the world looks a bit repetitive). A lot of the animations have been spruced up during the game's development, and character movement looks fairly realistic. The ragdoll deaths can still act pretty weird, but at the same time bodies hurling about in random fashion just enlivens the battle.

Ultimately, if you're looking for top-of-the-line graphics and animations, you're on the wrong side of the industry. Independently developed games typically lack the manpower and/or money for graphic fluff. As indies go, though, Mount & Blade looks pretty damn good.
Unfinished Business

Mount & Blade is out of beta and you can tell, as it now has quite bit more polish and shine than it did previously. However, as a finished product, it does not yet feel complete.

To start off with, I still encountered some minor and major technical issues in the game. A few crashes to desktop weren't the worst of it, nor were the remaining clipping and collision detection issues. Where it started to get really frustrating was when I could not take over Dhirim for the simple reason that the siege tower did not appear at ground level but instead appeared floating high up in the sky, leaving my guys to idly run against the town walls. Essentially a (quest-killing) bug since I was working on the Swadian rebellion (there are ways around this, but considering the entire remains of the Swadian army was holed up in there I could not really use automatic battles) and not something I can easily excuse in a finished product. But I have seen worse from AAA companies, so overall this is not that big of a deal.

More importantly, it being out of beta immediately makes me regret that it is no longer the organic product you could return to as it was updated. The game has a great modding community to keep you busy, but that doesn't mean it feels fleshed out enough by itself. If it were still in beta, there'd be many updates I'd be hoping for in the next edition: faction and liege-specific quests so that they don't feel so identical and bland. Expanded siege mechanics and more siege weaponry, such as arbalests or boiling oil for defense, and battering rams or catapults for offense. More advanced options to surrender or retreat for the enemy rather than always fighting to the death. And perhaps most importantly: finally fixing the (order troops to charge without you) calculations so they accurately present what would happen if you pick charge and then just not get involved, rather than the battle option randomly killing off troops more often than not.

Conclusion

Mount & Blade is a hard game to judge. It does what it sets out to do and it does it very well - the swordplay action alone would keep many gamers occupied for hours on end. The sandbox gameplay may not be fleshed out and most likely you'll eventually find the game feels pretty empty, but odds are that before you get to that point you'll have easily sunk 30-40 hours into the game.

But we're an RPG site, so I have to ask one specific question: is it a good RPG? By any measure, the answer is simple: no. However you define RPGs, the game does not measure up. It lacks a storyline, its NPCs are shallow, it utilizes player skill over character skills pretty heavily, it has no choice and consequence, no meaningful dialogue, and only repetitive quest-lines. Essentially, Mount & Blade is a sandbox game with stats. which makes it fairly unique, aside from maybe a far-stretched comparison to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

I'm not saying this just to get technical, but Mount & Blade's lack of RPG-style gameplay does have a simple conclusion tied to it: I can't recommend this blindly to someone simply because said person (likes RPGs). If you like The Witcher, Neverwinter Nights 2, Jade Empire, or Oblivion, that is no guarantee or even an indication that you'll like Mount & Blade (though it shares quite a few elements with Oblivion). Instead, if you're a big fan of Elite or Pirates!, this game warrants a look. Just don't be surprised if you find the variety of quests and environments a little wanting, and, equally, don't be shocked if you find the combat a little addicting. I personally find it an easy game to leave after a week of intense play, and equally easy to return to a few months later.

Don't just take my word for it, give the game a try yourself. And please ignore the cover art, it's not much to look at.

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