A good hack'n'slash on the level of the dungeon seiges, sacred, and titan quest.
Graphics : A-
Sound : B
Controls : B-
Game Mechanics : B
Fun : A-
Comments:
Lately I've noticed a trend when it comes to my relationship with gamespot. When they give a horrible review of any form of rpg game, I usually end up liking it. Why? I suspect it is because the standard has been raised so high by certain large company big name titles that unless a new game is at that exact level, with that exact gameplay formula, then alot of these review sites simply toss a 'bleh' label on the game and move on. I also really dislike the percentage review system. Maybe its just my american education systems A through F and the percentage's involved but I am used to a 59% meaning FAIL, which it really dosent on gamespot's review system but... still. I see it and it sticks in my head as such. But anyways.
Silverfall is your standard hack ' n ' slash that dosent attempt to reinvent any wheels. You accept quests, you run around in the wilderness smashing things with whatever weapon you happen to choose, and then you turn the quests in. You sell loot from your kills, you buy better gear, you level up and spend skill points on your attributes. You also spend points on your actual skills that you use to better yourself out in the wilderness.
What does it do different? Well for starters and the most obvious you have the graphics. No larger than life reality stuff here, cellshading baby! Woo! I remember when cellshading first started showing up here and there in the gaming community, and I remember hating it. OF all the games in existance that changed my mind though, it was Dark Cloud 2. The graphics of silverfall are much the same as DC2, plenty of variety in gear appearance, monsters are vibrantly well designed, the enviroments are nice but I couldnt give it an A+ because zooming in on your character gives you a distance view of your surroundings and the draw distance of trees, rocks, etc is a good bit limited so you often find yourself staring around at blank fields of terrain that you know have trees but cant see them yet because the game hasnt rendered them. OF course the A- remains because you are almost never in this camera angle so you never really notice this little quirk.
Sound is on par, good background music, generic slash slash, ack! aiee! sounds. Voice overs are decent. Nothing to write home about here, but at the same time nothing to turn off your computers sound over either.
The controls work well enough though the rotation around your character is a slight bit twitchy. A quick tap of the left or right arrow kicks the camera 10-15 degrees, so no subtle movements here heh. There's also abit of stupidity with the pathfinding system. Especially in the beginning of the game when the city is being attacked. Certain areas, I simply kept the camera facing the direction I wanted to go so that all my character had to do was walk 'up' otherwise he often bounced all over the place trying to 'find' the way I wanted him to go through the debri. Again, not a show killer, just a quirk. When I play these games I always like to have the camera facing the direction I'm moving in anyways so this one dosent bother me to much.
Other things I've noticed that I would like to point out. No worries about misplacing your skill points on attributes or abilities, there are npc's who will reset your skills for you... for a price. Four races to choose from, human, elf, orc, goblin(woo!). Your ability tree is divided into three major catagories, Melee, Magic, and Racial. Each of these is then divided into 3 or more sub catagories. Melee for example is divided into actual upclose melee, ranged weaponry, and what I would call 'survival/explorer' skills(movement speeds, universal weapon boosts, loot percentage boosters, etc) that apply to all your physical combat arts. Each piece of equipment you buy/loot takes one nice little square, horray! You can have multiple members in your party who are unlocked via quests if you like. Goblins with guns!(w00!). The game is choice based and its course/end is varied based on whether you go technology or nature. Example, there are buffalo hunters killing the local wildlife, the refugee camp's naturalist asks you to make them stop. You go find them and through conversation you have a choice, stop them via conversation or threat... or side with them, end up helping them do some hunting, get a nice rifle... piss off the naturalist... endear yourself to the blacksmith who is a tech nut.... etc. Choices such as this affects the slider on your character screen in the direction of either nature or technology and you do require certain percentages in one direction or the other if you want to use certain equipment in the game. (guns require technology percentage!) Death reminds me of dungeon seige 1, a tombstone appears where you die, you run back to it, click it, then run like hell because the monsters were smart enough to know you'd be back for your gear and decided to squat on your corpse waiting for you. There's a bank box in each town and the goblin who controls it will offer you 'insurance' that lets you keep your gear upon death and/or will offer to get your gear for you... for a price.
The only thing I would of liked 'changed' in this game so far would have to be the compass. It works well enough but instead of my little arrow rotating around to reflect which way I am facing I would of liked the entire compass to rotate instead. Also, better icons to reflect merchants, quest givers, etc rather than the little blip dots would of been nice as well.
But thats about it, there you go, like hack n slash games? You'll probably like this one too. Looking for an oblivion level experience, go somewhere else.