I noticed that a game called Anvil of Dawn is currently on sale, and am wondering if I should get it. I like that it apparently has a system where your skills improve by use, but are there any negative aspects of the game I should be aware of?

(Remember: I play games for gameplay, not story.)

I haven't finished the game but I did make it quite a few hours in.

For me the pluses were the unique environments, puzzles (excellent dungeon crawler style ones with plenty of secrets), well done in game mapping that compliments all the puzzles, fun midi music and the animations of the game in general. There's also some very unique characters you run into that really add to the charm of the game.

You can also customize your character's stats at the beginning so you're really only choosing the appearance and voice of your character. Which is a plus.

There were a few downsides for me:

While healing items are fairly plentiful you do have to wait a fair bit of real time for your magic to recover (As in you have time to get up and grab food/water etc). I would assume this would make a spell caster build a bit more tiring, but to be fair, I haven't tried that build myself. edit: Also the power stat controls magic regneration, so more of that would likely help.

Combat is a bit of a chore, in that the encounters are numerous and take awhile to finish. Again a different build may do better. On the plus side though the enemy animations are great to behold.

Strength controls your maximum carry weight, so that again limits build types.

All in all, it's a fun older first person dungeon crawler that may be a bit niche but is worth looking over.

Short answer, yes.

I ended up getting the game, but I'm not going to try it just yet. I still have a playthrough of Final Fantasy V, with the Project Demi mod, planned.

Anyway, from reading about it and watching videos, I gather that the mechanics don't all fit well together.

On one hand:
* Enemies are finite and never respawn. Once you've killed all the enemies, there are no more to fight.
* Items that restore HP/MP (or whatever the game calls these stats) are in finite supply; balanced due to the finite number of enemies as well.
* There does not appear to be anything that resembles any sort of time limit. In particular, unlike in Dungeon Master, there's no need to eat or drink in this game.

On the other hand:
* HP and MP regenerate, albeit slowly, on their own; this makes those resources theoretically infinite. (Due to enemies not respawning, any area that's cleared of enemies is a place you can just wait.)
* Some healing items require you to find an altar to use; this doesn't make much sense when enemies don't respawn, as you can just go back to the altar without encountering any new enemies, provided you have found one.
* There's the fatigue mechanic, where some stats decrease if you fight while encumbered, but eventually return to normal.

Then, one ugly thing:
* There is no fast rest option to restore your HP/MP faster (in real time); hence, to recover, it's sometimes necessary to just let the game run.