Packed with color and content. Almost to much for it's own good.
It's not a bad game. In fact I loved the combat, the leveling customization and the idea of the main story. The trouble was nothing ever seemed conclusive or reactionary not matter what you do or choices you make. Kill all the enemies you want, they respawn after a day and they never change their tactics. Bosses can all be defeated in the same way (at least with the build I ended up making), beat on them till your special power meter was full then use a finishing move. Every persuasion you succeed in during an NPC conversation gives little to no lasting result.
In other words, everything you do seems instantly pointless after you are done doing it. Even combat, it's strongest draw in my opinion, becomes a chore after a good 10 hours when your character has pretty much molded itself to your fighting style. Sure, you level and can unlock new stuff, but by then you've probably already got your winning hand that you play over and over. The game almost seems to outlive itself because of this. There is a ton of places to explore and things to challenge, but the sense of exploration and challenge fades before the main quest is halfway over because the player will suddenly just find a routine.
STORYLINE
The setting is pretty much overused and unimpressive no matter how colorful it is. It's a fantasy game with the usual elves, dwarves and human swing swords against the typical medieval monsters. Yes, is the Irish mythology leanings is a tad refreshing, but the wonder of it fades after a few hours and it becomes very obvious that it's the same d&d / token feel as every other western fantasy rpg with an Irish storybook coat of paint.
Basically, the story takes place in a war among the fae, a race of immortals who never really die. Caught up in the middle of the war are the various races of mortals who are targeted for genocide by an evil immortal king on one sided of the war and basically viewed as ants by the other side. To make matters worse, no matter how good mortals are at fighting, each evil fae soldier doesn't actually die permanently when they are killed while each mortal soldier has only one shot. To combat this a dwarven scientist has been working on a way to bring mortal dead back to life. That's where your character comes in actually. You start off as, well, a corpse, thought to be another failed resurrection. The disposal guys even toss you into a garbage shoot into a mass grave. When your character becomes self aware he/she is buried in a pile of rotting dead people and you begin guiding the character up and out through the lab, which, as it happens, is in the middle of being invaded by the enemy. Needless to say, this is the tutorial, where you get a rough grasp on how to survive and win fights after a taking basic equipment of other dead people.
A few explosions and sword swings later you get to the top level where you bump into the dwarf/gnome that brought you back to life. He is as surprised and confused as you are, but because the lab is falling apart around you both, you learn very little before your character is rushed out of the collapsing tower and the scientist disappears. You don't know who you are, what you are or where you are, but hey, at least you are not dead anymore right?
Honestly, I liked the beginning, Great first impression. Later, when your character learns that they mysteriously have the ability to manipulate the tapestry of fate, you can literally change everyone's predetermined destiny by choice…or accident. A tarot card reader tells you that this might make you the most power creature ever…besides the gods perhaps.
It all sounded really good to me, until I realized that all doesn't really matter.
The thing is that the story really seemed to backfire on was two things:
One, it doesn't feel like manipulating fate means anything because you don't really get told what the fate of everyone around was before you changed it. Meaning, you don't really know if you altered anything, the way they story is told, all you feel, is your character being guided through typical medieval RPG scenarios. If you don't know what your fate was to begin with, how do you know that you are changing it?
Two, boring characters with no memorable personalities and even less memorable names. At some point it looks like you are given a couple characters that I'm guessing were supposed grow on you and were suppose to present you with the dark and light sides to changing fate, but after a while you just stop listening to them, because all they are going to do is give you a directive. They are quest givers, that's it. They don't make you laugh, cry, or shiver in fear. There is no emotion out of or for any of them. You might as well had a sign that fell out of the sky that pointed you to where to go next. And the names of everything made it worse. Everything seems to have three or four reverences to the same thing in ridiculous fairy languages so half the time I kept forgetting who was who anyway. It all became a blur after ten hours or so.
GAMEPLAY:
Combat was the biggest draw of game play here by far. Your character gets ridiculously powerful as they level. You get to choose between any and all of the classes, molding your character to your fighting tendencies. The action itself is almost an action adventure style where every button you press is a single thing your character does to lash out at or dodge his or her enemies. The whole thing is very immersive and the way you play is molded into this unique experience.
For instance, my character, a rugged looking but still pointy-eared fellow, popped out of the corpse pile he was blank. No armor, no weapons, no magic. But as I had him run through the corridors he grabbed up all of these things and all of them did different very different things. I was allowed to use any two weapons during and four spells during combat at once. Each piece of armor had different plus and minuses. I played around with them and used whatever I though made me the most dangerous. Soon my character was whacking trolls with a bizarre fighting style that used a giant war hammer, two flaming bladed discs, a force field that shot out blasts of energy at hostile targets near me, an ice needle machine gun spell that slowed people down, a grappling hook spell, a healing spell, and an ability that would temporarily turn me into an immovable juggernaught while transferring the life of my opponent to me with every hit. Oh, and I had this crazy teleport dodge that zipped me around the screen like I was the character Nightcrawler from the Xmen comic books. In short, my character was the most badass dude in armor I've ever played.
The trouble was, believe it or not,I became badass to fast for all the content that the game had. Strange thing to say, I know, but it was true. After I had my character's fighting style perfected I still had near eighty hours of game play I could have done in side quests. It was like my character peeked to early. Suddenly I didn't feel like going through all the side quests because every fight became a routine you played out the same way every time you met certain enemies.
GRAPHICS:
The graphic style was a tad on the cartoony side, a bit of that world of warcraft (fairy tale meats comic book) style. Perhaps because it was because the setting had that Irish fairies mythology influence that the graphics were ridiculously colorful and bright. Almost to the point that it bothered me. Everything was practically glowing and because of the game play length animation become noticeably repetitive. I was also bothered a bit by the execution animations, not because of any gore or anything like that, but because they didn't really use the things I fought with, the character would bust out some random energy weapon that I never used and do it. Somehow it felt out of sync and tore me out of the fun to combat.
SOUND:
It was okay, but since none of the characters were written to be engaging…I started to tune everything out. Music too, became repetitive as well.