RATS!!! RATS EVERYWHERE!!!

Ahem...

This is a huge game, and a lot of fun once you plow through the wiki and get the idea of how you should build your character. There are no respecs, but to finish the story, you don't really need to be paying much attention besides common sense and what the game tells you. If you want to finish Niob (hardest difficulty), you'll need a good build. So basically, like every ARPG ever.

This one doesn't use mana however, the skills you have are based on a a cooldown, and managing that cooldown, choosing the skills to lower it and planning when to upgrade your skills is a big part of the game. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty rewarding. Furthermore, skills can be chained in combos and blah, blah, i'm not here to explain the system in detail. It just works in a different fun way than most other ARPGs.

There are TONS of sidequests in the game and the world map is huge. It's not randomised, but it really doesn't need to be for how big it is. Discovering every corner of the map and finishing all the quests will take a very long time. Sidequests are not needed beyond leveling a bit for the next main quest (if it proves to be too difficult), but if you want a lot to do in a game, you'll have it. They're a bit repetitive though, but only if you plan on doing all of them (which is not really the point).

There are a lot of classes, most of which can choose a light or dark campaign (some are locked to either light or dark), and each class has 3 aspects of combat arts to specialise in, not to mention skills and stats. If you like exploring builds you'll find a lot to do here, but it can be a bit overwhelming at first and take a bit of time to see what you like until you get all the combat arts and try them out.

There's metric tons of loot to get here and some builds are designed to maximise the chance of getting good loot. Which you can then share with your other characters or other players in co-op.

Co-op works over LAN only (older game so no more online servers), but you can get past that with some virtual LAN programs like Hamachi or the like.

The graphics are vibrant and still beautiful, dynamic day-night cycles, weather effects and, if you have a Nvidia card, Physix effects. The graphics still hold up today, and while it isn't included in this version, search the internet a bit and there's an official high resolution texture pack. It's a minor difference, but if you want that, it's an option.

The downsides are there too though. It's poorly programmed and while the fan patch rectifies a lot of the game's programs, you still need to fiddle a bit to get it running and it takes a lot of resources (for an older game) to get it to run smoothly. Running it as administrator and setting it to compatibility mode for Windows XP (SP3) is a must, and it has some weird regional settings that cause problems when running the game if everything doesn't match, but you can get around that by adding a registry key to the game's registry entry. The answers are easy to find just by googling, and any problems are pretty easy to fix. Still, the game won't run "out of the box" in most cases, so prepare to do some googling on how to get it to run.

So, despite some issues at the start, when you do get it to run, what's not to like? It's an ARPG that's very self aware and almost a parody of itself and other games of this genre so don't expect the game to be too serious. The characters break the fourth wall with their idle cahtter ("I need increased attack and defense values" says one character when casting a buff), and it's very entertaining. It's not over the top, but the details reveal the lighthearted nature of the game, and while it can get a bit repetitive and sometimes slow to level up, it's always fun to run through the world killing stuff in an ARPG that doesn't take itself too serious.

RATS!!! RATS EVERYWHERE!!! Ahem... This is a huge game, and a lot of fun once you plow through the wiki and get the idea of how you should build your character. There are no respecs, but to finish the story, you don't really need to be paying much attention besides common sense and what the game tells you. If you want to finish Niob (hardest difficulty), you'll need a good build. So basically, like every ARPG ever. This one doesn't use mana however, the skills you have are based on a a cooldown, and managing that cooldown, choosing the skills to lower it and planning when to upgrade your skills is a big part of the game. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty rewarding. Furthermore, skills can be chained in combos and blah, blah, i'm not here to explain the system in detail. It just works in a different fun way than most other ARPGs. There are TONS of sidequests in the game and the world map is huge. It's not randomised, but it really doesn't need to be for how big it is. Discovering every corner of the map and finishing all the quests will take a very long time. Sidequests are not needed beyond leveling a bit for the next main quest (if it proves to be too difficult), but if you want a lot to do in a game, you'll have it. They're a bit repetitive though, but only if you plan on doing all of them (which is not really the point). There are a lot of classes, most of which can choose a light or dark campaign (some are locked to either light or dark), and each class has 3 aspects of combat arts to specialise in, not to mention skills and stats. If you like exploring builds you'll find a lot to do here, but it can be a bit overwhelming at first and take a bit of time to see what you like until you get all the combat arts and try them out. There's metric tons of loot to get here and some builds are designed to maximise the chance of getting good loot. Which you can then share with your other characters or other players in co-op. Co-op works over LAN only (older game so no more online servers), but you can get past that with some virtual LAN programs like Hamachi or the like. The graphics are vibrant and still beautiful, dynamic day-night cycles, weather effects and, if you have a Nvidia card, Physix effects. The graphics still hold up today, and while it isn't included in this version, search the internet a bit and there's an official high resolution texture pack. It's a minor difference, but if you want that, it's an option. The downsides are there too though. It's poorly programmed and while the fan patch rectifies a lot of the game's programs, you still need to fiddle a bit to get it running and it takes a lot of resources (for an older game) to get it to run smoothly. Running it as administrator and setting it to compatibility mode for Windows XP (SP3) is a must, and it has some weird regional settings that cause problems when running the game if everything doesn't match, but you can get around that by adding a registry key to the game's registry entry. The answers are easy to find just by googling, and any problems are pretty easy to fix. Still, the game won't run "out of the box" in most cases, so prepare to do some googling on how to get it to run. So, despite some issues at the start, when you do get it to run, what's not to like? It's an ARPG that's very self aware and almost a parody of itself and other games of this genre so don't expect the game to be too serious. The characters break the fourth wall with their idle cahtter ("I need increased attack and defense values" says one character when casting a buff), and it's very entertaining. It's not over the top, but the details reveal the lighthearted nature of the game, and while it can get a bit repetitive and sometimes slow to level up, it's always fun to run through the world killing stuff in an ARPG that doesn't take itself too serious.