The professional reviewers got it a bit wrong on this one, I think, as the gap between the user scores (6.9) and official scores (5.1) here probably suggest. The user score is closer to the mark.
I picked this game up in a sale for £5, not expecting much, and have been very pleasantly surprised with it so far. It's actually a surprisingly decent Baldur's Gate wannabe - by which I meanThe professional reviewers got it a bit wrong on this one, I think, as the gap between the user scores (6.9) and official scores (5.1) here probably suggest. The user score is closer to the mark.
I picked this game up in a sale for £5, not expecting much, and have been very pleasantly surprised with it so far. It's actually a surprisingly decent Baldur's Gate wannabe - by which I mean the PC version of Baldur's Gate (i.e. a "proper" RPG with pausable real-time party-based combat) not the action-RPG Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games that appeared on consoles.
One thing to be absolutely clear about is that the more natural home for this kind of game is on PC, with mouse control. If playing this game on PC is an option for you then you're best advised to do so, but if playing it on PS4 is your best option then rest assured this console port is not a disaster.
When not in combat, you move your party around Diablo-style with direct joystick control of whichever party-member you select as "leader", and when combat kicks off you can pause at any moment to order your various characters to move to specific spots, target specifc enemies, carry out specific actions. Of course it's more fiddly to do that with a gamepad, cycling through allies and enemies rather than clicking on them directly, but it's a serviceable system that you soon get used to - and the pausable combat means you're never under any unfair pressure to issue commands at mouse-speed.
You can also set the game to automatically pause (or not) based on a lengthy list of criteria (i.e. enemy spotted, combat begins, character takes damage, character near death, etc) so - with a bit of time - you can fine-tune things to your preference.
It all works quite well, and the writing is unexpectedly good - some genuinely amusing dialog - plus the the built-in familiarity (for me, at least) that comes with the licensed AD&D rules, monsters, Sword Coast setting, etc., meant I already had a grounding in what the various monsters are capable of, what the spells do, etc., which helps. Yeah, I know a Gelatinous Cube when I see one :)
Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised with this game and was motivated to write a review here because the "official" score doesn't really paint an accurate picture of it. I almost didn't buy it, even for a mere £5, due to its mediocre Metascore. That would've been my loss; don't let it be yours. I'm a jaded old gamer and this game actually managed to do the trick, enagage my interest, and keep me coming back for more - which is more than can be said for many allegedly "better" games I've bought.
Just so it's not all praise, let's balance things out with some moans. There are some technical hiccups - just moments where it doesn't feel as polished as you'd like - but nothing major, and there's no horrendous screen-tearing, thankfully. Some aspects of the gameplay could've been better explained, i.e. cycling through your party-members is straightforward but I had no idea how to then cycle through targets for that character. Maybe it said how to do it, and I missed it? Never mind; I worked it out eventually with a bit of button-pressing experimentation! And be aware that the game's text-size could be uncomfortably small for some people, and maybe not ideal for gaming set-ups where you're sat further back from the screen.… Expand
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