Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

Not much new to add: the first ten hours of the game feature a good balance of quests, combat, and conversation. The SPECIAL system is compelling, and (while magic is a bit underpowered) it's neat to see it applied to a fantasy setting and corresponding set of skills. The characters you meet are amusing, though generally shallow. The setting and backstory is promising, but lacks depth once you get into it. The combat is uninteresting but inoffensive. This is all damning with faint praise, of course, but I've overstated the badness of mediocrity. The first part of the game reminded me of Divine Divinity level for me in terms of its balance of storytelling and spontaneously difficult fights. The Diablo-cloneness of it means the interface is easy to come to terms with. The 2-D graphics are nice looking, the score is lovely and well-paced. And while the writing isn't fantastic, since when is "fantastic" a reasonable standard for video games? (Sadly.) The dialogue is never cringe-inducing and is often fun. Don't go in expecting Planescape: Torment and you'll enjoy the fact that there IS dialogue and setting in what's essentially a streamlined ARPG. In short, for the first part of the game it's somehow more interesting than the sum of its parts and kept drawing me back. After around 17 hours I feel I've gotten my money's worth (not too difficult at this price) and am not horribly disappointed that the game has gone downhill so rapidly.

This is the most important thing to keep in mind. As I didn't work on the project, it's impossible for me to say without a doubt how much Black Isle contributed to the development of the game, but the primary work was done by Reflexive Entertainment, probably best known today for their independent game distribution site. At first glance one could be fooled into thinking that it is in fact a genuine Black Isle game. It has a promising alternate historical setting with a fantasy twist, and adapts the wonderful SPECIAL character development system from Fallout to its milieu (and unfortunately real-time combat). Furthermore, the opening city has lots of interesting quests to do, historical figures to meet, and so on. Sadly, after the plot takes you outside that city's walls, the game falls apart and becomes little more than a rather limp Diablo clone. Shame, really.

From a RPG, you wait a good story and a good gameplay... ok, the same for any game, but here the scenario is really great and imaginative. An alternate-reality in Renaissance time, where Da Vinci is a Mage and machiavel is sneaking while a "William S." is writing poems for a nymph. Really, it rocks, and the many sub-quests give a feeling of freedom. The universe is rich, with many details and dialogues, many situations can be solved by diverse ways, choices are possible and it's not lethal not to follow THE line. but, actually, the gameplay is rather poor : the fights are ok but repetitives, but the optimisation of the character is too easy, somes characteristics are really too importat while others are just useless. The magic system is both hard to get and too simple to make the difference. Play it for the story, dialogues, and exploration. Don't expect too much invention from the character system (or main character design... )

Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader is a game that most people aren't aware Black Isle made. It is often overlooked in favor of other products, like the Icewind Dale series or Baldur's Gate. And rightly so; it's really not that impressive as a game. It's not bad, but it isn't exactly stellar. STORY: 3/5 - The backstory is interesting enough; this game takes place in an alternate earth wherein a great catastrophe that happened during the 3rd Crusade brought magic into the world, and significantly altered the history of much of Europe. The game is full of historical references and in-jokes; you can get Shakespeare to read poems to you, help Leonardo da Vinci build outlandish devices, or take on Torquemada's quest to rid the lands west of Barcelona of a goblin menace that's been sitting around since the Mongols were beaten off (the goblins themselves dressed and act like mongol midgets). However, most of the interesting stuff only happens in the first half of the game, when you're messing about in Barcelona and not actually following the plot. The core plot of the game is actually really simple, and has almost no depth to it at all; even though you've inherited a magical spirit from Richard the Lionhearted himself (hence the title, and no, I don't think this is a spoiler since you learn it about five minutes into the game), there's apparently nothing special about you, and you basically just run through the game killing things until there's no one left to beat. After which there is a cliffhanger. VISUALS: 3/5 - The graphics are not ugly, but they aren't pretty either. Actually, special-effects wise, Lionheart doesn't compare too well to other Black Isle games. There aren't even any rendered cutscenes... Overall, it's underwhelming. SOUNDS: 3/5 - Voice acting is generally pretty good in this game. Shakespeare's voice is sooo soothing.... hmmm... That said, the persistent grunts of pain you and your enemies make all the time will get annoying fast, and the music suffers from odd glitches from time to time; for instance, you might enter a new area to hear both dramatic introductory music and the normal ambient music at the same time. GAMEPLAY: 2/5 - This is where the game fails. SPECIAL system problems are nothing new to Black Isle games, but Lionheart has more than its share of them, for two reasons. Firstly, you MUST specialize in at least one combat-oriented skill (preferably 2, one of them ranged) to make it through this game alive. Nonviolent options don't come up often, at least not after you leave Barcelona. Secondly, quite a few of the skills you can learn are useless, or worthless beyond a certain level. On top of that, Lionheart makes a very abrupt genre shift once you leave Barcelona for the first time. Once you're out of the city and on your quest for whatever faction you joined in the first plot-quest, you may begin to feel like you're playing Diablo, because constant fighting and looting is all you do. It's not even INTERESTING fighting and looting, for the most part; combat in this game basically boils down to selecting a sword or a weapon and then clicking on whatever you want to die until it dies. The only strategic thinking you'll ever need to use is to know when to just charge in and kill everyone and when to purposefully lure a few enemies at a time away so you don't get overwhelmed. Also, you never get enough potions. Ever. Even if you buy out every shop you find whenever you find one, you'll never have enough health potions. OVERALL 3/5: This is a REALLY GOOD GAME... while you're still a low-level rookie, wandering about the starting town with eyes full of wonder and looking for all the rich hidden goodies. It goes downhill from there, though, all the way to its arbitrarily hard final dungeon and anticlimactic ending.