Gamespot was right, this game will remind you of previous Black Isle RPGs, then make you wonder what the hell happened?
When you start up the game, you can either use a precreated character or you can make your own. If you choose to make your own, the game uses the SPECIAL system that is found in the Fallout games. Unfortunately, if you choose to specialize your character in speech and thieving skills, you will be severely gimped going into the later part of the game.
Once you make your character, you start off in a jail cell, and you're captured because you seem to contain magic within you. Well, they were right. You have the spirit of Lionheart from one of your ancestors, you guessed it, King Lionheart. You can choose the spirit for your character which does change some of the dialogue and skills that you can get. Eventually you escape and go to the city of Barcelona. The game still holds up some what decently in Barcelona. It isn't great by any means, but it's still playable, with gameplay that you can expect from any RPG from that period of time.
But once you leave Barcelona, it turns into a different game entirely. It turns into a pure Hack & Slash without anything else. Unfortunately the combat is pathetic in this game. It's a chore to kill monsters in this game and instead of trying to emphasize other parts of the game that might be stronger, they focus purely on the horrible combat. It's like they tried to turn into a full fledged Diablo clone, but they were missing the fun part of it. It almost feels like two different games that were made by different companies and by chance they used the same engine.
The graphics are very dated for when the game was released. Even as far as 2d graphics go, the animations are very awkward looking. Some of the sprites actually looked ok, but once the characters started to move, I was taken out of it. The sound and music were average at the best of times.
I hardly remember the story because of the weak execution of the game. I could barely bring myself to finish as much of the game as I did, partly from the fact that there was no real plot motivation for me.
Overall, don't waste your time or money into this game. There are many MUCH, MUCH better RPGs out there. Leave this one alone.