Okay, so the game is not perfect, but it's an enjoyable ride through a normal town. So let me go through what I like and don't like about this game: Music: It's horrible. Seriously, it's vexing. However, you can just turn it off, which is highly recommended. After 30 minutes, it felt like someone was playing a single 15 second midi sample again and again and again and again and... Sorry. Where was I? The music. It's bad. Avoid it. The graphics aren't that bad though. They look a bit like Duke Nukem 3D. The first 5 seconds will tell whether you can stand it or not. Odds are, you can. The animations have not aged well though, and the walls everywhere are really noticeable. On the other hand, they do capture the feeling of a walled in surveillance state. The gameplay is you classical point and click affair with a major difference. You view the world through the character's eyes. This works rather well. However, be adviced that the keyboard controls are clunky, and that you can move around with the mouse as well. (You use the arrow keys, to be specific.) The voodoo doll menu is pretty neat though, and predate The Curse of Monkey Island, and is a welcome sight. What sucks though are the dialogues. Don't get me wrong, they're well written, but you cannot skip it! Who's idea was that anyway? If you like adventure games, and have played the other more classic ones here such as Syberia, The Longest Journey, etc. by all means grab it. Otherwise grab those instead.
Yes, I'm biased towards old school RPGs, and this is essentially the best one, along with Baldur's Gate II. It has character creation without classes, many playable races, reactions to your actions (although not too much, mind you), more stat modifier than you can shake a spreadsheet at, and just enough skills to cover everything, but not too many. It has some bad spots though. The combat is a bit clunky, but if you play turn-based, as God intended, it's fantastic. Realtime is for when you're overpowering your enemies anyway. It was fairly CPU intensive for it's time, but this is not an issue now. And some stats are slightly overpowered. Magic users that go magic only are better than those who spread out their points, and technical skills are only worth their investment in XP when you combine them with other skills, meaning that the technologist and the mage-warrior type of builds aren't very useful. If you can survive that, and don't mind isometric graphics (why would you?), you'll find plenty to fascinate you here. The story is wonderful, with just enough twists and turns to make you enjoy it. The setting is fantastic and actually does capture quite a few unique items of interest, and shows societies changing, old powers crumbling, new ones emerging and so on. The characters are well written too, and anyone not liking Virgil after his quest has been through has no heart. The dungeons are always interesting, and the fact that the random trash you pick up can be used to make ammunition is a neat touch. (Want to make cheap explosives? Buy some kerosene and rummage around in the rubbish bins to get molotovs. Can't complain about that.) Oh yeah, this game also respects different playing styles. If you like hack and slash, you'll be able to do that. Magic? Come right on in. Guns? Thieving? Social conniving? Everyone's welcome. And that makes this game fun. If you want to make a Halfling necromancer, why not? An ogre technologist? Sure. The sky's the limit, and this makes it actually worthwile to replay the game as a different type of character. Try playing through the game as an idiot once, for instance. (For those of you who wonder about the title, it's a common critisism of Fallout 3. If you know what I'm talking about and agree, you'll love this game. If not, you'll still likely love it, but at least you know where I'm coming from.)
