Superb artwork and mixed gameplay means MoB will enthrall some and frustrate others, but worth a look nonetheless.
As stated, Masters of Belial is an arena game, which means that in any given campaign map the object is to defeat the enemy leader who's to be found at the base opposite the map from your own home base. From the beginning, you'll have the option of spiritually embodying one of a number of heroes to lead your forces into battle. Therefore, Belial presents nice customizeability right off the bat, allowing you to choose between the likes of magic-focused Death (complete with a sickle), an axe-wielding melee focused Barbarian of sorts, as well as a couple other heros who represent a variety of magic and combat combinations. Each hero will earn experience from kills for use in leveling your hero to further customize your protagonist, from increasing base statistics to implementing 3 of 5 available special moves/spells and then increasing their strength. Along side the leveling, you'll gain gold from combat as well as from chests scattered around the map (protected by guardians of course) which you can also use to buy items from merchants at your home base. Since any given campaign can take up a significant portion of time, with the limited end being at least 1 hour in my experience, you'll have amble opportunity to seek to max out your hero for optimum potency.
But of course this fight is not yours alone. Sure you can add another player (if you have an additional controller) but more to the point, your minions will spawn at your home base and begin embarking out into the world. When they inevitably die in combat, they'll respawn at your home base at the count of 5 seconds. Since you have no control over their actions, its wise in the early stages to tag along and follow their lead, giving you backup in heated battles. And battle you will, since the enemy hoards will be coming at you likewise, fast and furious. So you'll wade into mini-skirmishes very frequently as you make your way around the map. But you're not the only one leveling here: all of your minions and the enemies too, will be leveling according to their accomplishments, meaning that you'll not likely find yourself vastly superior in combat especially when taking on an entire troop yourself. Along with taking out enemy combatants, you'll want to take over the many towers that populate the map as well. Each one has a healthy amount of hit points, and will bombard you with potent blasts when you approach, but when you do take them out, they'll respawn under your own control, giving you more control over the overall map.
But to sum up the experience of the arena-geared approach, the best term might be repetitive. You'll find yourself grinding alot, and sine your hero doesn't significantly overmatch enemy parties, you'll often be in the position of needing to run away, often all the way back to your base to heal yourself with blue orbs, especially since when you die you'll lose valuable gold. Sure, you do respawn when killed on the battle field like any other character, but the penalty is severe enough to warrant keeping such death to a minimum. And since everyone on the battlefield is leveling too, you'll not feel like you're becoming significantly more powerful as you progress. Of course, this is what keeps the game strategic in a way, and prevents you from abusing the endlessly respawning fights, but it will also make it so that after an hour of play on a map, you may not feel like you're significantly closer to your goal. So aside from the leveling you'll do, it will take a healthy amount of strategy to actually reach the enemy boss and defeat him/her to win the map. It's a drawback, but not without easy alternatives in design.
Further complicating the strategy, however, is the total lack of significant combat control outside of spell/skill use. Because you attack simply by holding down the A button, there's virtually no skill in these affairs, leading you to conclude that the game-designers simply set all of this up, for you to NOT be able to display a sense of skill in combat interactions, a poor decision that significantly detracts from the game.
Visually, the artwork is, however, fantastic. Oozing with dark ambiance and detailed representations, you won't likely be able to tell you're playing a low-budget game. Likely, in fact, its the presentation of it all that will keep you playing even when some part of you feels like the game mechanics don't work quite right: a solid plus that does elevate Masters of Belial further than it would reach otherwise. And while the soundtrack gets repetitive with its overly dramatic score, the ambient sounds of the forest like hooting owls and birds, further accentuate the display and the overall feel that you're playing a game worthy of play.
So to sum it up, Masters of Belial is a very mixed bag. The arena-game requires strategy when strategic tools are far to few to implement well, but the overall presentation is quite solid and the degree of of character optimization is inviting. For 400 MS points, $5 (US) you'll certainly know where the money is going (the artwork and presentation) but the general faults found in the combat system, a key to the success of the game, may be enough of a drawback that you'll end up frustrated. Still, Masters of Belial is worth a look if you can see past all of that to a game that will suck up hours of your time, and require you to overcome such obstacles on your way to victory.
Gameplay - 6
Art/Sound - 9
Replay - 7.5
Overall - 8