A real missed opportunity...

User Rating: 5.7 | Azurik: Rise of Perathia XBOX
It's hard for me to be too brutal with this game because it was the game my dad bought me with my Xbox, my most cherished Christmas present from him (as he had never really known well what to get me in the past and he finally seemed to have figured me out, and shelled out the money he probably did not have to get it for me). Still, this game was only tolerable to a point.

Everything about this game seems half-cocked. From the moment it starts, the plot seems to be pretty solid, but a mixture of atrocious audio engineering and poor voice-overs let you know right away that this game is going to be a production nightmare. From the first cutscene, you are just thrown into the game and the whole time it seems to just barely work properly. Controls just work well enough... graphics just work well enough... everything just comes so close to good, and misses so poorly.

The magic combo system also seemed like it had lots of potential, but in execution it just isn't fun. Parts of the game are unnecessarily hard and poor colission detection doesn't help the situation any. After about two hours, you will find yourself staring at the game, feeling like you should keep playing because it isn't bad... but you'll also be telling yourself t hat it's not good, either, and you might be better off cutting your losses and selling it to get $5, and that's enough to pick up a copy of Crimson Skies.

If you have Gamefly, this might not be a bad one to put on your queue if you absolutely run out of good games to get, but I would never advise paying for this game—rental or purchase—on its own. Likewise, it would be an acceptable hand-off from a friend, but nothing meriting your money. Ever.

Azurik could have been a wonderful title, but somewhere along the way Adrenium just got ADD and wandered away from the computers. What shipped feels like a half-finished game.