Neverend (WARNING: SPOILER)

Being very intrigued by the game and it's news at sites like IGN, I *ahem*
'procured' a copy of the game and tried it out for about 2hrs. Here is what
I thought:

The game is very "old style" turn based RPG, it's play style is pretty close
to Return to Krandor(sp?), ie, pre-rendered background that allowed the
character to move around in fixed camera view. However, the "pre-rendered"
scene are actually rendered on the fly from 3D models (i.e. rander the scene
in real time using the 3D models and saved as a still picture and used ad
the background/environment), so it's lacking the details and "realism" of
real pre-rendered background. The good thing is, it's pretty smooth even on
lower sped PC. However, I really appreciate the designers' hard work in
making the background/environment so detailed, but still, true pre-rendered
background would work better, I'd say.

The story... I don't have much to say, since I've only played for about 2
hours. The opening story is kinda silly - the bandit captain just jump out
and put some blame on the main character and put the player in a fight, all
in a suddent. It's so funny that I was cracked up in tears. It feels like
they just rush out some reason to throw you in the game.

Battle... Turn based, just like Return to Krandor. There is some sort of a
gauge that times your action, the speed it decreases depends on the type of
weapon you equipped, and your stats. When the gauge reaches 0, you/your
opponents attack. It's kinda like a failed version of Active Turn Battle
used in Final Fantasy series (which the publisher tried to put this game on
the same rank of if, the FF, I mean) - the battle just paused untill you
chose an action, instead of continue the action, so it's like the easy
version of ATB. It seems like you could have some party member (that
Georgiieeeeeee guy that helped you out in the first battle), but since it's
a PITA to convince him to join, I set off to my adventure alone. In Normal
difficulty, I don't have much problem fighting the battles alone.

UI... If you could survive Gothic's UI, this is nothing. Though I still
haven't figure out how to cast healing spell outside of battle, maybe it's
not allowed (which is stupid). This game looks like it's a cancelled console
title that is revived on the PC (or shall we say: scavanged and recycled),
but it didn't support gamepads at all! The control scheme seems perfectly
fit for a PS2 style gamepad. Hopefully that would get fixed in the version
released on 23 Aug.

Graphics... As I said in the beginning, the graphics is really out dated. It
would be worthy if it was released maybe 5 years ago. You could not zoom,
could not pan, and could not change the camera angle at all, plus, you are
forced to a top-down view when you are moving in the field. I suppect this
is a 2.9D game (a proxy to 3D world, using 3D models, but arranged in 2D
tile-base/pre-rendered world). However the game does look crisp and the
texture looks good, too. The artists did a good job at creating lushing
green evironment.

Sound... I don't know, it seems like either they have poor professional
voice actors or good non-professional voice actors (read: the dev team and
their freinds/family). Some of the voice actings are acceptable while some
are bizzaire (the wood cutting brothers - one of them). Good thing is so
far, all dialogs have voice acting. Muzic is not outstanding, or not
memorable at all.

Gameplay... I'd say this game have not been through a well thought process
in this department. First, there is not map. No auto map, no world map, no
way to find out where you are at all. This usually is not a big problem,
I've been playing through Dung Lords, or Dungeon Lords, as it's officially
know, without a map. However the problem in this game is, the environment is
pretty generic and there are little landmark for you to recognize the
places, so you have no idea if you already have an area covered when you are
searching for something for quest. The quest givers add to the difficulty by
never giving you any indication of directions for thier quests. "My brothers
are cutting wood in the forest" "The circus is outside town" are examples of
indications given by quest givers, they don't tell you North, South, East or
West to narrow down the search area. This coupled with the fact that you are
forced to a top-down view, which gives you very limited viewing range for
the surrounding, makes a map a real necessity. For your information, I have
been circling around the town more than 5 times and covered pretty much the
whole fofest (unless i missed a very obscured patch, which I could not
confirm, since I have no map) and still haven't found the circus. Control is
default to the arrow keys for movement - another evident of this is a very
outdated game - luckily it's pretty easi to map the keys to the more
accepted modern WASD keymaps.

Over all I'll give it 6/10.

Dispite the negative views above, I'd say it's still worth a try if you are
desperately looking for a turn based/party based RPG on the PC, and love the
old-school look/style. For me, I will not be pre-ordering it, since I can
have much more modern titles on my PS2 in the turn based RPG department. May
be I'll wait to see it in the bargain bin.

--
I Feel Good!

"Master Baiter" <master.TakeThisOut@baiter.org> wrote in message
>This game looks like it's a
> cancelled console title that is revived on the PC (or shall we say:
> scavanged and recycled), but it didn't support gamepads at all! The
> control scheme seems perfectly fit for a PS2 style gamepad.

This game was released on xbox too, so it is a console rpg.

Daniel