Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Worth playing"

Ok, so I am a little late to the party with this review, but I just managed to finally give this game a try - and there's much to say about. Let me make it short and sweet, though I think I might trail off on a point or two. Firstly, few games have given me (give me) such mixed emotions - given that I am still nowhere close to finishing the game, but I think I reached a point where I know what the game is all about, so it's fine to give my thoughts on it. So - mixed emotions - yes, there are aspects to this game which are simply magical, and on the flip side, things which simply frustrate me to the teeth! The good: the graphics still hold up today. Granted, it's clear that it's not "modern" but I've played current games with worse graphics. The technical issues, that is, performance wise, are not bad, though at times I wonder how the heck does a 4 year old game still choke a system which has double the tech which even the best PCs had when the game first came out. The initial loading is rather painful, but I've seen worse, but what really cranks my gears are the "seemless" loads when moving into a new region, and the game gets into this freeze-up mode which lasts a few seconds - or when you change a weapon (flaming arrows), and the game has to "load" that up - basic loading issues are apparently major problems in this game - but - it doesn't kill the experience.

The battle system is basic, and yet it's flawed. You die very, very easily and sometimes from silly little animals. I find that to tbe strange.

Make sure you install the community patch if you want to play/replay this game! The community patch installs all the offical patches, but it also adds fixes which were not officially released, but greatly improve the game both in content and performance.

For all the marks missed in this game, a lot were hit dead-on and I'm very happy to have picked this game up. Thanks.