As stated by other reviewers, the controls render this unenjoyable. Shame, since the game would've been awesome otherwise.
I made a character and progressed a little bit, before encountering a problem with bandits blocking a bridge. A walkthrough confirmed that the only way to progress in good alignment was to fight these bandits. My character build stood no chance at defeating the incredibly overpowered NPCs. One frustrated quit and some time later, I made a new, completely combat centric character. Played all the way back to the encounter. The outcome remained the same. Who knows, the game might be awesome! I'll just never find out, since I can't be arsed to reload the game 60 times until I get a lucky RNG roll. I could also restart a THIRD TIME, and build a thief character. In my mind, a great RPG should favor several builds, instead of forcing you to take specific ones right at the very beginning of the game. Fun fact: The first build I used was prebuilt into the game. Other than that, the game plays extremely sluggishly and the mouse is weirdly accelerated. The GUI was probably the biggest turn off.
The game offers a very realistic simulation of survival in a distopian future. If you manage to survive through the early game, it's great fun and a real challenge. IF. However, 19 out of 20 times you'll die to bullshit within the first dozen turns of the game. Out of approx. 40 runs, I've managed to get into the middle of the game ONCE, because I got extremely lucky in the beginning. This pretty much killed my interest in retrying the game by the second day. I'd go into more detail, but since I don't think I'll be playing the game any more, I can only recommend that people wait for a discount. I got it for 5 bucks and would have regretted paying any more. Like the title says: There's great, even huge potential there. But since you only get to experience that every once in a blue moon...
LOOM is one of those games that I remembered from trying out when I was too small to understand anything. It's images and music, as well as it's weird approach to interaction with the environment stuck with me, and I was glad to find it on GOG. I booted it up and started playing today. The graphics are as you would expect for the time, with the animation quality being quite lacking in comparison. However the scenery and colours range from haunting to magical and enchanting, and serve to give each area a very unique, unmistakeable vibe. No pixel hunting in this game. It only allows for meaningful interaction, and doesn't aknowledge any attempts to do otherwise. It clearly tells you what things you are supposed to look at, by highlighting them at the bottom of the screen. The puzzles range from very simple to mildly-pleasing-to-figure-out. You need to look at the guide for spells in order to fully understand what EXACTLY you are casting, and how it interacts with the environment. My biggest plus for this game has to be the voice-acting. It is wonderful and full of soul, the timing is tight and draws you in. The only lightly negative performance is that of fleece, who for some reason is incredibly breathy with everything she says and smacks her lips way too often. The biggest minus is the length. I finished this game in about one and a half hours without a walkthrough. From start to finish. The story starts gearing up, you are getting to know all these factions and people, and then it all does a nosedive and leaves you sitting there going: "What? It's done? Did I do something wrong? Is there an alternate ending?" Nope, no alternate endings. Also, for a music based game, most of it is spent in agonising silence. Why? In the end, LOOM started off wonderfully and sadly left me very, very dissapointed in the end. It excells in it's concept and visual-design, but lacks the length and complexity to be a truly great game. Only recommended for nostalgia-reasons.
