Picked this one up after casting around for something to whet my 2d isometric RPG appetite after the Baldur's Gate, Fallout series and Planescape Torment. The setting looked promising; magic struggling to coexist alongside technology in a Victorian-styled world. I remember perusing the wide range of backgrounds, wondering whether my Ogre should be Beat Up With A Ugly Stick (thus adding strength at the expense of Beauty) was worth it. The storyline follows the good old 'find this ever so important person to find out more about your place in this world Mr Chosen One' - which basically sets up the plot for all manner of fetch/kill/investigate and report back quests. What's interesting here is the setting - besides investigating mines for ghostly spectres and ridding a town of its resident bandits, you get to do things like sabotage steam engines to earn favour with the local hedge wizard, trap a mythical monster and solve all manner of domestic crimes! Levelling up confers points which can be spent on your core attributes - which then opens up more skills (barter, charm, lockpick etc) and recipes (spells, weapon schematics, potion recipes, techie schematics etc) to be learnt. Skills can also be taught by various people you meet throughout the game, for a price. Likewise recipes can also be found/bought - and the rarer ones which make some of the most powerful guns in the game are well worth looking for! Combat is one of the downsides, as those used to the Bioware games can attest. A mixture of turn-based/realtime, neither of which works particularly well - the action can be paused but since you have no direct control over your teammates actions there's little strategy to be had. Sure you can tweak their behavious but they still often rush in to close combat where they should be plugging away with their spell/bow and worse, if you lose favour with your teammates (ostensibly if you make decisions that they do not approve but also seemingly determined at random), they may attack you/run away and refuse to fight! Teammates - you can have a party tag along with you and they will add to the storyline satisfyingly enough, but not to the depth of Torment's Morte. So there you have it - a fairly engaging RPG which is good for a whirl if you're still hankering after the isometric viewpoint and a fairly interesting setting to boot. Just don't go in expecting the next Fallout 2/Torment and you'll be pleasantly surprised!
