Let me start with this little qoute from Manowar's song "Metal Warriors" The rating of this this game should be as follows: - (true) heavy metal fans 10+/10 - non-fans of metal 8/10 This game - a mixture of action H&S/RTS - is a well developed, quite balanced title - not too difficult to become frustrating, not too easy to become boring. Story is reasonably long. Definitely - there are some things I would like to see improved in the sequel (if it comes to life eventually). Combat might be more challenging (currenlty it is somewhat simplified to hit as fast you can and hope your adversary dies faster than you). Some other minor tweaks. RTS part, by nature of this game, is quite simple as well - In fact this is a bit developed concept of "capture the flag" method of tactical fight, which is fine. All of this is wrapped in heavy-metal culture. Term "culture" is used on purpose, since it is not only music that makes it heavy-metal. The whole world is heavy-metal. As "heavy" and as "metal" as it gets. Really - I haven't come across a game, which will be more appealing to heavy metal fans as this one. The music is a top class selection of songs by Judas Priest, Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Motorhead, Accept, Savatage...you already see the pattern - good ole metal from '70/'80/'90. Surprisingly there is not a single one Metallica song (at least I haven't found it yet) but yet there are 2 songs, which by error sometimes are taken as theirs: "Breadfan" (Budgie) and "Am I Evil" (Diamond Head). The tracks fit the story miraculously - especially "Through fire and flame" and "Mr Crowley". Just right tracks in right place. The whole landscape looks like a mixture of heavy-metal emblems in various forms - majestic sculptures, landmarks which resemble known album covers art etc. Next thing - humor. Just hilarious. Not simple and stupid - but just good. For every metal fan - this game is a total must. I haven't enjoyed playing any game as much as this one in ages. Rock on! |m|
This one is GOOD. Best stuff: - The setting, atmosphere. The “world” is a fantasy land, which in our real world would fit somewhere in Transylvania. Simply – perfect setting. - Visual impression – The setting is perfect for the style of game - and ideally depicted on all locations you will be visiting. High level of detail, good play with dimmed light, fog over the boglands, animation of characters and monsters. - Mixture of steam-punk aesthetics and Slavic-Romanian myths. I didn’t come across a single goblin so far, but met Lesoviks (Slavic “leszy”), wodyanyi (probably “topielec” – undead who died of drowning), vila, vrikolak or vilkolak (eng “werewolf”) and all other sorts of “bad buggers” who are all more or less connected to eastern Slavic mythology and traditional culture. - Music, no more words, just listen. - Game mechanics, skill tree, perks, talents, whatever you name it. This stuff is meaningful, balanced, doesn’t make half of the screen explode during fight. Just make you stronger and still requires you to think, plan, set combos etc. Otherwise you’ll be dead in an instant. - Adjustable difficulty. Started playing on Hard. I die often. But it was a good choice. - Katarina – your ghost companion - humorous dialogue and lovely eastern-slavic accent. As every woman – loves shopping. - Story. Develops in a pretty interesting way. Not too complicated. Just enough to make you interested in what’s going on, and not sit bored reading pages of meaningless dialogue. - Item drop. Simply - sensible. This part of game mechanics is well balanced. Diablo III in this aspect was complete nonsense. Item drop of stuff that “could be handy” was extremely rare (the rest was not really worthy picking up at all), shops didn’t offer anything interesting. I bet in Diablo IV there should be no shops and no item drop at all. Why bother? - Switching between melee/ranged weapon and different skills set up. Makes fight so much more interesting.
