Exile for the TurboGrafx-CD is bursting with fast action, gorgeous visuals, and a superb score. Occasional visual hitches and easily exploitable bosses aside, this game offers a fair challenge that's minimal on grinding and aimless exploration and all about exposition, featuring fast, fluid gameplay that typically demands tight reflexes.
The plot of Exile is riddling, pulling together actual religious figures, themes, and objects from Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, among others. All in all, the plot is difficult to follow in real time, and all progression is in the form of dialog. However, once the story is understood and digested, the player will notice that it's something grand and epic. I highly recommend reviewing GameFAQ's only walkthrough on this title. The author provides a stellar dissection of every story element in the game.
The bad? Although the voice acting is expectedly subpar, the dialog is atrocious; character exposition is poorly written and wrought with grammatical and spelling errors. And, being an early title of Working Designs' translations, there is plenty of gaudy humor here. To complement the depth and disturbing nature of Exile's plot, Working Designs would have served the game better if it had forgone the out-of-place, needless humor.
Exile is an exceedingly short title, taking around five hours to complete. Playing out like a story, the player explores the world in four or five short hubs, where different towns and locations can be accessed via a world map. Exploration is possible with an overhead view, in contrast to the 2D side-scrolling dungeons. Unlike in dungeons, the player's character, Sadler, can only interact with townsfolk for discussion as well as objects. Prior hubs cannot be accessed, and there are no opportunities or reasons to replay the game, save for re-experiencing the fun action or reliving the story.
There are few collectibles, aside from armor, weapons, and restorative items hidden in the game's labyrinthine dungeons, which are explored like a side-scrolling hack-n-slash with RPG elements. White and black magic are also gained automatically as the player levels up, with black magic leveling up three levels, increasing the damage inflicted.
If the glitchy nature, abhorrent dialog, and short game length can be overlooked, there is a fun, deep game here. The depth comes from the story, which requires more effort from the player to piece together, rather than the gameplay. Make sure to pick up the TGCD version of the game as opposed to the Genesis. The former offers better music, sound effects, and visuals as well as serviceable in-game cinematics.