The premise of an alternate medieval world with magic and magical creatures as well as real historic characters in it was enough to sell me onto this game, and I really enjoyed the first half of it. Admittedly, the story is very linear, and even though you do get some choices, which at the time might look important (such as which faction you join), in the end the decisions you make amount to absolutely nothing. You do get a lot of conversation options, plenty of side-quests to do and areas to explore though, the soundtrack is great, and the graphics, while slightly dated, is quite pretty.
You start off by choosing whether you play as a human or one of the "magic-touched" races, which will affect how some people react to your presence and will also impact somewhat on the choice of what you can teach your character. The choice of how you build it is entirely up to you though, and you can come up with a lot of "career paths" that are perfectly viable.
Sadly, all I’ve said above only applies to the first half of the game. The moment you leave the city, you are stuck with a poorly balanced hack-and-slash aRPG, where non-melee characters find themselves significantly disadvantaged.
Oh yes, and you can't forget the companions. While in theory designed to help you, they soon become a source of intense frustration. You can’t control them beyond switching between “follow me” and “stay here” modes, they are so dumb as to be suicidal, and for most part they are weaker than many of the enemies you meet. Effectively, what this means is that you end up inching slowly forward and rapidly running away at the first sight of an enemy, hoping to separate an individual from the group, so that you can easily kill him. And then you repeat. And again, and again, and again.
Still, for £4, the game is worth trying even if only just for the first half, and perhaps, despite all the problems mentioned above, you will find yourself liking it enough to actually finish it. I know I did.
