Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone

Demon Stone is great at what it does, but it's not what folks often expect. So knowing what to expect is crucial. You won't have the greatest character customization. You won't have great interactive dialog or massive plot shifts that arise from your actions. You won't even play a character of your choice. No, this is a straight-forward, linear, hack-n-slash game with a moving story, engaging battles and a spectacular cinematic feel. You sometimes get to pick a character to play, sometimes you are forced to play a specific character -- sometimes not even a character that you are following. But the variety is great. The story is really quite good fantasy. And the game presents a beautiful flow of challenging fights and completely owning a mass of enemies. I originally bought this game for ten bucks and didn't feel cheated. You can get a whole lot more bang for your buck with other fantasy games. But if you want to spend a few cinematic hours knocking down ogres and goblins and worse, then you can't go wrong here.

Demon Stone is okay, not great, but worth playing. The rather unoriginal and clichéd story is well told and the acting is very professional, it features Patrick Stewart who is excellent as always (I would have only given it 2 stars without him). The fighting is fairly fun - it can get difficult as you have a lot of enemies thrown at you but it never gets that hard. However you need a gamepad to play this game - it's a console port I believe but the keyboard and mouse controls are horrible. It’s a very short game; it took me less than 10 hours to complete it the first time I played, which was disappointing but I guess it’s better than having a lot of dull levels added to stretch out the game. Overall there is nothing wrong with Demon Stone, if fact the story and gameplay are enjoyable but there is nothing very memorable either. If you are looking for a hack ‘n slash RPG to pass a few hours with then you could do worse especially if you are a fan of Patrick Stewart.

PRO: - So many combo and the possibility to use 3 fighters with different features - Fucking GOOD music and voice acting - Very well drawn locations, animations and cinematic views - Great characterization of everyone in the game (allies and enemies) - Good replay value, cause you can retry every level you want with your upgraded char, even to find some unlockable bonus content or to beat your previous score CONS: - BAD CONSOLE PORT !! You HAVE TO change keys to play with keyboard + mouse... and it will suck anyway... it's made for a gamepad... - There are no subtitles in bonus contents but you can find here the text: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/920088-forgotten-realms-demon-stone/faqs/41934 - The last cinematic has a very low res graphic... wonder why - You can save ONLY between levels... there are only auto-saved check points, but if you quit before finishing the level you lose them - You can't skip cinematics... this is bad when you die repeatly with a boss and you have to watch the entire introduction everytime... - no multiplayer... even if it can be the best game to play in cooperative... LONG EXPLANATION: I enjoyed this game, it's short and easy, I finished it in hard mode in 3 days, but I'm replaying it sometimes with my "Hero" (after you finish the game) charaters. I like to watch this game cause it's like an epic movie in some way, and characters are well developed, so you will remember them, even if the story it's nothing new, it's well told. Anyway this is an Hack And Slash game, you have to burn/cut/slash enemies in the worst way possible, and you can !! The team can help a single char in combat but it is not a so developed functionality of the game... anyway, it's great to fight with 2 companions, and it's good to watch them fight with you !! very spectacular !! Some boss fights are epic, you have to find a way to kill them, you can't simply go and smash, and part of the fun is find HOW !! I didn't found any bug in the game, even if I read there are. CONCLUSION: This is a little gem, an underrated one, but it's not polished as it should be for the PC. You want to take this if you need a game that tou can play sometimes for 15/30 mins just to enjoy a level, or for a saturday evening just to finish it in one shot.

This is a bad console port and I found it about impossible to play with a keyboard and mouse. I press the up button and my character runs east or down and it runs up. The camera is very clunky and seems designed to make it almost impossible to know which enemies are shooting/attacking you. All in all I made it to the third level before uninstalling. Too bad about the impossible controls as the story seemed interesting and I am a big fan of Salvatore's work.