Cool and fun little hack and slash RPG wth a techno-fantasy vibe.

User Rating: 8 | Silverfall PSP
Been playing it for a while now, so thought I'd give some comments so far...

In summary, it's a hack and slash RPG in broadly the same sort of style as Untold Legends. You take a character of one of four races (Human, Elf, Troll or Goblin) and bash, cast and quest your way through a range of weird and wonderful fantasy-steam-punk enemies and environments.

The first couple of levels, after the tutorial, are a pretty standard button-mashing zombie fest. It's not a particularly inspiring start, but it's fun enough. There's perhaps a little too much wandering too-and-fro along the same paths in order to complete all the quests, and a little too much dialogue. Once you get away from the zombies though, things improve a lot. The city and interior environments are way better than the wilderness - both visually and in gameplay terms.

Combat involves targeting enemies using the right shoulder button, and then hitting them with one of your combat techniques using the gamepad buttons. To start with there's little more involved here than some basic button-mashing. But as soon as you start to unlock more advanced skills, the interest grows considerably. There's quite a daunting range of different abilities available, with somewhat cryptic sounding technical descriptions, but they work in fun ways once you get the hang of them.

Levelling up comes often, it feels like every few minutes at some points. This gives you the chance to gain new skills and grow your attributes. There's a lot of flexibility in what you do with your character, a little too much perhaps - it's sometimes hard to know what to do with your skill points.

As well as customising your character's skills, you can customise their equipment through looted or bought items. This for me is where the game really excels. There's a huge range of arms and armour to choose from, and although there are a few duds in the bunch, most of them are fantastic. I particularly love the steam-punk type elements, that carry this cool techno-fantasy kind of vibe.

The soundtrack makes for comfortable listening - the other sound effects though are somewhat, hmmm, 'squelchy' (for a lack of a better word!).

A few hints and tips if you plan on playing:

1) Master the target lock! Combat is much easier once you get to grips with it.

2) Techno and Nature points are mutually exclusive! If you start collecting Nature, then you lose Techno at the same time. So decide which one you want, and don't pick up any of the other.

3) There's a quest map in the character screens. It's very useful for working out where you need to go.

4) The onscreen map rotation can be changed in the options screen - personally I find navigation a lot easier with the map rotation turned on.

5) If you're going to use magic attacks, keep a staff in your hand. They do much much more damage with a staff equipped.

6) Many of the skills require specific item types to be equipped in order to use them - if a skill doesn't appear to be working, check if the description has a two letter 'item code' on it that specifies what you need to equip.


Overall, the fun combat system, flexible character customisation, and original setting and environment ideas make for a very nice little game!