I truly cannot understand why this games has such a high rating, or why most of the people commenting here seem to love it. The game has some great positives, which I'll get out of the way so I don't have to worry about them while I vent out all the negatives:
-Truly unique and expansive cultures for each of the peoples introduced during the game.
-I very much like the idea of magic that gets stronger with use.
-Animebona/Animenka story bit was well thought out and quite interesting.
-Dungeons were very interactive, puzzles were difficult enough to keep it interesting
and now some MAJOR flaws:
-Because every monster gives you exp more or less on the same scale, it's easy to become super powerful by just fighting weaklings forever. It also means that characters you never use will be impossible to level up quickly.
-Sira has a 'win every battle' spell, frost avalanche. It paralyzes ALL enemies for 3 rounds and makes it impossible to lose any normal battle.
-The quests are often ambiguous... I spent much of my game time wandering about the cities trying to figure out who I was supposed to talk to/kill/find/ect. to make the story progress.
-Being able to cast healing spells using life points is just wrong. Towards the end of the game, I mowed down a whole army of Service Bots without using one single potion just because I was able to heal to full for free using Melthas' heal spell.
and minor complaints:
-The music for certain cites, like Umajo, is bad enough to make me turn it off.
-Giving weight to the money is more realistic, but it can be irritating. Especially after you get back from the Kenget Kamulo and have many items worth MORE than their weight in gold. I tried selling them only to realize that I had to dump half my money in order to move (of course I reloaded). The addition of some type of bank would ease this problem.
-The made a whole bunch of nothing to explore down in the southern desert... it isn't a game stopping flaw, but it does seem quite pointless.
Because I was enthralled by the depth given to the different cultures of Albion, I gave the game a 3/5 despite all the severe problems with the game. Without it, it certainly would get a 2 (or 1 if I was in a bad mood).
|