Replayed this after dropping it close to the end of the game several years ago. I'm rly surprised with how quickly I got really damn addicted to and marathoned it to completion in 2ish days.
This game is really not very mechanically sound and is kind of shallow through and through. Despite that, I seriously enjoyed just grinding and leveling my abilites and watching how they absolutely bust apart the game... Its very junkfood in that sense.
Something I did appreciate immensely is that while this is kind of a diablo clone, theres way more stuff happening beyond killing hordes of enemies all the time. Theres lots of silly quests where you talk to people, do miscellaneous shit and theres tons of areas to just explore and appreciate. The various towns and villages I found so so magical to explore and poke around, especially verdistis. Its realllyyyy nice to have the monotony of killing hordes of enemies broken up by these things so frequently.
The writing isn't particularly deep or anything like that either even though writing depth is what people really love out of old crpgs like baldur's gate, fallout, arcanum, etc, but its so so so full of personality and soul. The game gets (intentionally) really fucking silly a lot of the time and never takes itself terribly seriously. The title itself is a dumb gag in the game. Theres a surprising amount of NPCs that are just normal ass people who'll tell you a little about their lives. Lots of life breathed into the world.
Did I mention life? Something I don't see people talk about is how BREATHTAKINGLY lively the world is in a literal sense. The amount of fauna and flora around the place on top of the birds chirping, the ambience of the music, etc is SO BEAUTIFUL. There are so many fucking plant and tree props or just other props in general. So many different textured looks for the grass, dirt, water, puddles and all that shit. Butterflies and birds flying around, rabbits cats and mice running around, all that. It probably doesnt sound impressive describing it but I'm absolutely FLOORED by how lively the world and nature feel in this way especially for the time. So much fucking love and care put into that, I truly applaud it.
Kind of an aside but I feel like fantasy games are so obsessed with drawing inspiration from tolkien (fucking everything has elves, dwarves, orcs, etc) but they always forget how important the beauty and majesty of nature and the earth were to tolkien type fantasy. Idk how intentional that was with this game but its there. Love to death.
Also the final dungeon is fucking terrible.
Man I don't think this game is all that well made in a lot of ways but its just so magical feeling. Kind of special experience to me.
This game is really not very mechanically sound and is kind of shallow through and through. Despite that, I seriously enjoyed just grinding and leveling my abilites and watching how they absolutely bust apart the game... Its very junkfood in that sense.
Something I did appreciate immensely is that while this is kind of a diablo clone, theres way more stuff happening beyond killing hordes of enemies all the time. Theres lots of silly quests where you talk to people, do miscellaneous shit and theres tons of areas to just explore and appreciate. The various towns and villages I found so so magical to explore and poke around, especially verdistis. Its realllyyyy nice to have the monotony of killing hordes of enemies broken up by these things so frequently.
The writing isn't particularly deep or anything like that either even though writing depth is what people really love out of old crpgs like baldur's gate, fallout, arcanum, etc, but its so so so full of personality and soul. The game gets (intentionally) really fucking silly a lot of the time and never takes itself terribly seriously. The title itself is a dumb gag in the game. Theres a surprising amount of NPCs that are just normal ass people who'll tell you a little about their lives. Lots of life breathed into the world.
Did I mention life? Something I don't see people talk about is how BREATHTAKINGLY lively the world is in a literal sense. The amount of fauna and flora around the place on top of the birds chirping, the ambience of the music, etc is SO BEAUTIFUL. There are so many fucking plant and tree props or just other props in general. So many different textured looks for the grass, dirt, water, puddles and all that shit. Butterflies and birds flying around, rabbits cats and mice running around, all that. It probably doesnt sound impressive describing it but I'm absolutely FLOORED by how lively the world and nature feel in this way especially for the time. So much fucking love and care put into that, I truly applaud it.
Kind of an aside but I feel like fantasy games are so obsessed with drawing inspiration from tolkien (fucking everything has elves, dwarves, orcs, etc) but they always forget how important the beauty and majesty of nature and the earth were to tolkien type fantasy. Idk how intentional that was with this game but its there. Love to death.
Also the final dungeon is fucking terrible.
Man I don't think this game is all that well made in a lot of ways but its just so magical feeling. Kind of special experience to me.