Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone

Michael Clarke Duncan, Patrick Stewart, and RAS combined couldn't save this clunker. I gave up on level 8, which had the most baffling design choice ever. Let's review: you have to take out four warlocks, who will respawn, while also fighting up-close enemies who also respawn, in order to take down an ice gate. Oh, and while the warlocks are alive, they're continuously repairing the gate. Oh, and you can only take out the warlocks with ranged weaponry, and only ONE of the three characters is ANY good at ranged damage. Does that sound like fun to you? Well good, because you get to repeat this exact same gameplay mechanic on the end boss! That was the point at which I quit. The game was just "meh" up until that point. Chapter eight graduated it to "actively damaging the brain of anyone who makes the mistake of trying to play it." The PC port is abysmal, besides. Extremely limited options (literally the only in-game option is "subtitles"!). Bad graphics and screen-tearing. Controller is practically required to play, and even then, expect some seriously clunky moments. Especially since all the gameplay tips still give things in the default keyboard config! Everywhere! Even in menus! And you can't control the camera at all, leading to some awkward moments. The game is also HORRIBLE at communicating anything to the player. The characters may suggest you have to take down an obstacle, but don't communicate how. What are those little scrolls I keep picking up? I think it's XP, but I HAVE NO IDEA. Avoid. AVOID. It's an incredibly poorly designed console port that plays like baby's first hack 'n' slash and is nowhere near worth its starring cast.

This game is really a good old game! It's a fun hack and slash with a good story and cinematic experience! Works on Win10, with XBOX ONE controller! I got serious FPS drops, but I found a solution: Turn off the shadows, OR in the game's folder, set Demonstone.exe to Win7 compatibility! (In that case you can use shadows!)

The game sort of looks cool, there's lots of stuff to hack and slash your way through but the characters are annoying to listen to, the camera is terrible, and for the love of god don't play this with a mouse and keyboard. A waste of my money.

I liked the visuals and voice acting. I also found the story interesting. I did not like leveling up. I normally like this part of games but I found it tedious here. Glad they had the autobuy feature but wish I didn't need to use it. My major gripe was the I could not reassign keys. I had trouble with the controls and found it frustrating.

Pros: - Fun. At the end of the day, I played through it whole and was entertained throughout. It gets fairly difficult at times, but not in a frustrating manner. - Inventiveness. Some of the boss fights were quite clever, and I liked the golem sequence at Khelben's tower - Story. It's nothing to write home about, and effectively linear, but Salvatore does an OK job in keeping it engaging and the whole thing plays out like watching a slashy DnD campaign (I'd say one-shot, but the game compresses it a lot more). -Characters. They aren't the best written lot out there, but Rennek, Illius and Zhai did grow on me through the play. Cons: - CAMERA. It's horrible. Two thirds of the problems I ever had with the game were caused by not really seeing where I'd really want to look. This is an annoyance everywhere, from combat to exploration. For instance, it's great fun trying to backstab someone you can't really see the back of even though you're facing them. - Controls. They're OK but the fact it's a console port shouts out at you and at times , it gets awkward. For instance, with some monsters, it felt like trying combo attacks didn't register - this kinda hurt since Zhai was my favourite character to play. Trolls, I'm looking at you. A lot of this has to do with the camera Did I mention you can't really choose targets when you cast spells or throw? - Not exactly the longest. A game for like, one Saturday afternoon+evening. All in all, it was a decent experience.