The 11.5 years of development really shows in the well crafted story, and detail rich text throughout the game; The writing is top notch quality. AoD has all the great aspects of a proper traditional RPG. It's not your typical modern RPG. You aren't a powerful jack of all trades. You must min max to focus on a play style, kind of like fallout 2; highbreeds only work if you are a novice with a strong familiarity towards the game. This is still rewarding due to the games underlying theme. The world is in chaos and there's a mystery behind it. The only way to piece together the rich story is by multiple play throughs. It's like ground hog day the RPG, relive the same event multiple times, trying to uncover the mystery and ultimately achieve a satisfying conclusion... eventually.
Decisions and planning before going in are important. There are lethal and non lethal options for primary or secondary weapon; and quick but loud, or lengthy but quiet gadget choices for things like lock picking/mini-shotgunning locks. The game rewards preservation of life but there are situations where most if not all enemies will not give up without serious injury or death. Game-play is slow, suspenseful and rewarding. Some levels like the kidnapper level are so suspenseful and tense it felt like I was playing a horror game.
This game is the Black Sheep of the medal of honor pack In a good way if you ask me. It has a Holly-Wood style focus on big set piece scripted spectacles and a plot focused on the journey and feelings of the solders caught up in the pacific. However it varies by tying everything into a stronger narrative and having events narrated by a fairly good English voice actor. This one also relies on squad members, the game-play is more along the lines of a brothers in arms game. In that you usual have to use commands like suppress or assault to pin or distract enemies. So you can pick enemies off or flank them without dying. Guns can do allot of damage so you need to be more tactical. No run-&-gun here. I was pulled in by a solid narrative and kept playing because the engaging game-play.
This is a game from 1999 on a modified quake 2 engine aiming for more of a stealth action approach. You need to try and get the drop on enemies using stealth; then gun them down in a bloody swearing blaze of glory. You can recruit goons to help you out but eventually you'll become powerful enough goons aren't required. Powerful to the point where run-&-gun is a valid option. Early on however you need the damage bonus of shooting unaware enemies and head-shots + maybe goon support, to get through combat. Kingpin's not hard or unfair, just poorly explained.
There seems to be a lot of love for this game, but I struggle to understand why. It's a pretty generic tale of revenge, in a generic open world, with generic nazies, and endless things to blow up. Blowing things up is satisfying but quickly becomes tedious; it's always the same. Place explosives, watch explosion, repeat. Blowing everything up doesn't have much impact, so the missions become the driving force of the game. It's a game that will take a long time to complete, repeating the same few tasks over and over. Began to feel more like a chore then a game.
I enjoyed it. I love the Vietnam setting and the characters/plot feel believable and help to draw me in. Its focused on a tense "realistic for 2004" feel. To accomplish this the game is very unforgiving. There's pretty much only one way to play, and that's as a cover based FPS. You need to assess the environment and then jump from cover to cover, using the zoom focus/lean to peak enemies and clear a path to the next bit of cover. It felt suspenseful for me as you can easily die if the area is not clear when moving to more cover. It uses well distant checkpoints to increase the difficulty but also frustration. A limited saves per level system would have been much more appreciated. It is quite scripted and your squad is not very bright. For a 2004 Unreal 2.0 game however, it does quite well for graphics and AI. In the end, I felt like a rookie who had made it through hell. The game achieved it's goal well, considering the release date and engine.
