The game is horrible outdated through it fundamantal mechanics, such as locking the best outcomes behind arbitrary rather then those states determining how well you can get to the best outcome. A walkthrough on hand in manditory for anything as you will get locked out of completing quests for, not even making mistakes but stuff like asking the wrong question, just doing anything not in the walkthough stops all progress and all your left with is a horrable grind. A fan patch is also manditory to stop the game from running as horrably as New Vegas, but it won't stop all your save files being randomly corrupted. Fuck this game.
You'll need the Players patch which does not work outside of the steam workshop because the instructions to install the patch are completely incomprehensible, including the forums on gog, to the point that the majority of comments say they got it to work by accident and have no clue why. Games expensive so I'm fucked cus I'm not paying for it again.
You just can't win, you can't have fun, you can't just play the game without having to suffer through the terrable combat. I just never have enough troops to actually beat another civ. Doesn't matter if I have double the cities producing nothing but troops, you just lose. It's not worth learning.
A beutiful asthetic hidding a shallow, unrefind arcady strategy game. It wants you to micromanage your squads with precition timing but all you can do is position them and let rng decide if your squads will attack or run away when you want them too. This leaves the easy portions feeling VERY easy, with no way to speed up combat and the hard parts to be feel especially unfair given the units rng fighting. It's a good idea though with a cool theme, but the core loop needs work.
Why are they calling it an action/rpg? There's no action, the world is static only excluding the guards on short patrol paths (not a single one crosses paths). So it's a stealth game? it IS till you get the manditory-plot-armor, then you just slowly waddle around getting items one at a time (the boat mice had me go upstairs to the same room three times for three things... this game has bad pacing). So take off the armor? nope. You circle around the keep more then the fucking rats, and stealth stops being a test when you have to repeat it every 5min (also being a guard is the only thing you role play). But it's cute? yes... beautiful, charming... So it's well written? nope. Apart from the dialogue, everything else doesn't work. Some quests will straight up NOT inform you what to do, one of them was just "get evidence", that's it. You will need a walkthrough at several points, which should be fine because at every point you could get lost, someone else has. And the plot is awful, especially with the smugglers side quest, which is the dumbest plot-line in the game. Even so, the main problem is that this is Silas's story, not yours. He's the one you learn about, he's the one with character development, he's the one on a hero's journey. He just uses you! because you're the player. My character is so un-needed in this world that it comes off as a convenience for others rather then a necessary quid pro quo to find your wife. They even pull a threat, out of their ass, to be the final boss, because nothing relevant to you would climatically resolve the your story. And it end the way it lives, as a fucking fetch quest.
The game has a lot of content, in fact the campaign is too long and is something I'm struggling to finish. I've made it to the castle in the title screen on hard. When I can soak in the atmosphere and explore the levels I'm enjoying myself, but when I'm fighting mobs of the same enemies, for over 15 hours, it becomes tiring. There's parts like shooting a guy on the cross way in the background to receive a secret or riding the boat up to the intro castle with the music building up the reveal or seeing the various fauna wander the various outdoors for the first time that push me to wanting to continue... But man the amount of encounters that are just repetitive throughout the later maps really show the games age for the worst. Most encounter are just groups of the same enemy slightly increased. I can't remember any particularly enjoyable encounter besides the skaarj's introduction, which speaks more to the environmental build up that isn't repeated outisde of boss fights, which are not good, just strafe. It's worth a check on sale, but you're not missing much if you dan't want to finish it.
The machanics work sometimes and even when they do the bosses aren't special.
It was a fun and worth trying out.
Just read everyone else and keep in mind the complaints apply to Samurai Showdown 2, 5, King of the Monsters, Fatal fury special and King of Fighters 2000.
