The really amazing thing is that it took Peter Molyneux (however you spell his name) 4 and a half years to make this game. I wonder what he was doing all that time. This short and simple game could not have taken more than a year to make.

I was thinking the same thing....there is no way in hell it should have taken that long to make this game. It should have been something grand like Morrowind or much better. He must be a moron.


wlj

Guess I"m crazy, but I had fun with the game.

Well I have given up on the game...it just is not my cup of tea. I am in trade negotiations as we speak.



wlj

I find it amazing that Game Pro named it the RPG of the year. I had fun with the game, but I am glad I borowed it, as I don't think I will ever replay it.

Gamepro is the worst magazine ever. I stopped reading it 6 or 7 years ago once I realized it was pure crap. Practically every single review is 4/5 or 5/5. You can count the number of bad reviews they have given on one hand. You cannot expect much when the reviewers have stupid names like "Scary Larry" and "Mr. X."

I always figured the reason the game took so long is because so much time got taken up on things that didn't even make the final game. I mean the final product is vastly different from what it was first hailed as.

So about a week ago I got the game and I just beat it last night. I enjoyed it, but it was a mixed bag. Total play time: 16 hours. That was doing nearly every quest I could and spending some time just goofing around as well.

Things I liked:

- I had a lot of fun with the combat. I had maxed out my character's main stats by the end with very, very little non-quest leveling.

- The overall story idea.

- The idea of trophies.

- The feel of the story as something out of a Grimm's fairy tale, with evil everywhere.

Things I didn't like:

- Enemies weren't balanced well. Either they blocked nearly every attack I swung at them, or they couldn't block anything. Enemies were as a rule too easy, though. I had fun because I could slice through undead hordes with little to no effort like some kind of medieval Rambo, but I have no sense of accomplishment from beating the game, either.

- The story takes too long to ramp up, and when it does, the game is over about 30-45 minutes later.

- Character interaction is just bad. You have all these expressions that you can use, but if the characters aren't worth talking to, what's the point? I didn't marry until I got to the Lady Grey sidequest. In the entire game, there are only two marriable women who have any personality whatsoever. Of course, once you marry either of them, they turn into the same simpering women that all the rest start out as.

- Even though I liked the overall story idea, I could see nearly every twist coming from a mile away, except for the revelation that which would be impossible to predict. The guy that saved you was practically telegraphed to the player in the first hour or two.

- Even though I like the idea of trophies, I hate the idea that you have to brag to everyone in order to become famous. As if saving the town from bandits or balverines wasn't enough, I have to run around with a head or seal and shove it in everyone's face?

- I didn't like the idea that the guild condoned evil. So what? The Heroes' Guild is churning out these heroes year after year, and if half of them are looting and pillaging and killing innocent villagers, they're okay with it? I like the fact that they freaked out when bad stuff happened to them as a result of evil, but there was no lesson learned, and I just can't get past the villagers not caring about it.

- Your character ages. It's an interesting idea, but it doesn't make sense in the context of the game -- no one else ages, after all. And I finished after 12 game days or something. How does 12 game days translate to 65 years old after I started being a hero at 20? Especially when you're, say, still referred to as "boy" by one of the bad guys at the end. Also, shouldn't it be linked to the gameplay time, rather than incrementing a year (without warning, I might add) for every experience upgrade I make?

- The game is pretty short, even if you do everything. I don't mind short games if they are otherwise incredible (Beyond Good & Evil, for example), but this game has plenty of other problems, length notwithstanding.

If it were twice as long and its story was more fleshed out, and if marriage was either removed altogether or fleshed out, this would have been a pretty good game. But given all the apparent hype, I think it deserved any "awards" it got.