Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Underappreciated"

The basic storyline of this isometric RPG is quite simple: a weapon once used to kill a god (hence called the Godslayer) has been stolen and it is up to you, the female heroine, to retrieve and destroy it. However the game consists of many mini quests that provide enough of an interesting background to the hacking & slashing.
You could see this as a Diablo 2 but with better storyline and a few really innovative elements that raise this game above much of the competition.

First the meat of the game:
Quite typically, you can choose a path as melee combat specialist, archer or mage, distributing experience points you gain throughout the game into the 4 categories melee, range, magic and speed. Contrary to many RPG's of that time, you don't control a party, it's just you on your own.
The mini quests lead you to a diversity of environments and put you against many different enemies, enough to keep things interesting. Most of them involve a good deal of combat using very simple controls which in this case is a plus, it's all easy to get it to work. In addition to that you can instantly heal your character using various items, though each time you heal yourself it lowers your maximum number of hitpoints.
Just like in so many other RPG's you also need to sleep every now and then to revitalize your character.

More importantly, the innovation:
1) A parallel world: you can switch back and forth between this world and a parallel one (the shadow world), inhabited by its own creatures and characterized by ethereal visuals. This adds an interesting dimension to the game, as in some quests you will be forced to explore this alternate world, while in other quests you can use it to avoid some tough enemies. But beware, most of the creatures in this shadow world are quite impressive, yet on the other hand this gives you a lot of opportunity to level up.
2) Second enhancement is the use of attunements: while using some magical weapons (there are plenty of those for each character type, so each character will be able to use these attunements) your character grows accustomed to one of the 4 elements. At a certain point this will unlock special characteristics of magical weapons, such as additional fire damage, the ability to cast fireballs, freeze enemies, ... This adds a strategic element to the game, will you keep using a slightly weaker weapon in order to attune quicker to an element, will you try to acquire a different attunement altogether?

While it's a typical RPG in the sense that there's a lot of combat, some running around and backtracking, in spite of the easy backpack system some extra backtracking to haul more spoils of war, overall it makes for a different approach to this game type, keeping it interesting.
Also, the various characters and attunements add to the replay value though they could have branched the storyline a little more, given you more options leading to different endings to make it even more replayable.

All in all it's a pity this game didn't sell too well, not in the least because of a 6 month delay in finding a North American distributor after the game was released on the European market.
A good solid and sufficiently original gaming experience.