STORY/BACKGROUND
The game takes places in an arthurian alternate reality, when the Roman empire (in-game called the Holy empire) started to crumble.Multiple locations are visited but they're all on the islands of Erin and Albion (hard not to make the parallel right?) You play as Demon king Arawn, having been recently ressurected by a power-hungry high priest, unfortunately for him you're in no mood to listen to anyone (and you're certainly not the destructive demon king the priest expects) so instead of killing the sacrifice and granting him power, you slaughter the priest and save Riannon, which is the Oracle of the Gael tribe.Later joined by Riannon's brother, Arthur the first soldier of Gael and multiple people from the Gael tribe, the shattering empire and counciled by Ogam, the last dragon sage you make your way to your city-castle, Avalon which had remained sealed since your "death".I'm not going to spoil the story further but you're facing both the empire, and some "old friends" of Arawn much later in the game who are definitely not happy about how things are going in Albion.
The game makes heavy use of old folklore, barely changed but it actually makes for a compelling story, full of twist and turns, when you find out why and how Arawn came like this for example.There's also a ressurection/endless life reborn theme since Arawn believes he knows Riannon and Arthur after hearing their true names (and he does indeed).
Morgan and Octavia fighting
GAMEPLAY
Half of the game plays out kind of like a visual novel, except one thing, there is no choice whatsoever, the game is extremely linear as far as the story goes.You go trough castle strolls/war councils to advance the story but it's more akin to a movie than a game, since you get no say in how the game progresses.Good thing about it is the story is very long, count at least 6 hours of story mode.The combat part however is really nice, all characters have their special abilities (some offensive, some are healers, some are offensive casters,etc...) and you can automate some/all of your soldiers, which is a big help when you're up to 7 or 8 soldiers in a fight.The AI does a nice job at automating, even the healers knows when/who to heal, and when to cancel healing not to waste MP (mana).Little thing that irks me though, sometimes the enemy casters will shoot an area of effect spell, chaining them with other casters, leaving no time for your healers to pick up (spells are not instant) killing 3 or 4 of your soldiers before you can let out a "wtf?".You can also revisit zones you've already cleared, populated by random monsters to earn more money/experience, and since the equipment is very expensive you'll probably find yourself doing that a lot if you want the best for everyone, a few more levels also never hurts for the hard fights.
AMBIANCE/ART/MUSIC
The ambiance is very well done, mostly thanks to the extensive story full of details,twists and turns making you know more of your characters personality/motives as the main story unfolds.Some scenes seems superfluous but they're meant to endear you to your group.The art is decent, if nothing out of the ordinary.Heavy use of humor in-game actually makes it more compelling, i found myself laughing a few times through the game.The music is top-notch, having multiple tracks both in and out of combat, how can you not like combat music like that ?
The "song of creation" the ultimate weapon for angels
ERO
This is a hard category to make my mind up on.On one hand the scenes are somewhat nice, but they're thrown very haphazardly, with no emotional build-up whatsoever except for a very few select scenes.Since there's no choices in the game, Arawn pretty much goes happy humping everything that moves.This is kind of sad since they put so much effort in the story to neglect that part, it would have made a fine game without, or a fine game with it, but with some backstory or something...
TECHNICAL
Nothing stands out here, the game gives you the option of saving before every fight (even random fights) which is nice.I only had 1 crash playing it for more than 12 hours, the game also auto-corrects some problems with Radeon cards.
VERDICT
An excellent game all things considered, the story itself is very interesting and worth the play-through (especially when you discover who Arawn really is, and why his old "friends" wants him 6 feets under).The combat is fun to play, if somewhat unbalanced (Arawn and Arthur are the real killers), the music is great and the art is decent enough.Only thing i didn't find up to par in this game were the Ero scenes, they seem out of place and thrown in just for kicks.I still wholeheartedly recommend this game ^^
