izigame.me

Very basic and low budget game in any department, built around turn-base combat.
1. Graphic, model quality, movement animation.
Inside the combat - perfectly acceptable.
Outside the combat (roaming, cutscenes) - looks like PS3 console game that is upscaled to your monitor resolution. It feels adequate for 2010, but not for 2021. Will it be riding the horse or traversing rugged terrain (actually you cannot even jump off the small cliff) - you feel locked inside CCC title compared even to early Assasin's Creed or RDR2.
2. Gameplay.
- Unbalanced at best. I've chosen wizard, medium difficulty and 30% of the encounters my enemy was 'slightly weaker'. Other 70% were 'equal strength', 'very strong' and 'deadly'.
- To manage your gold balance any of your stacks should't die in the battle. Cause even when 1 unit from the stack survived, you can heal the stack - this is much cheaper than hiring the same stack from scratch.
- That is the main gameplay problem cause your goal will be not only winning but surviving all your stacks. At least for majority of fights. But before the very endgame (when you get access to powerful resurrect spell or skill, teleport spell etc) all stacks survival is the matter of random and not your skills. Will the enemy NPCs prefer to target your single stack? Then you lose it. Reload, change initial positions. Vow, every stack survived.
- Game designer had no idea what certain canonical elements are for. It was like:
Boss: The game should have obelisks that give you experience
Designer: Done. I've inserted several on the map, each give you whooping 5% of experience necessary to reach the next level. How generous I am!
- There is a problem with unit tiers 2-5: higher tier unit stack will often have *less total health* and *less total damage*. Originally (in that kind of games) that was ruled by attack/defence parameter: higher tier units has higher attack/defence, so their damage against low tier units was multiplied, and damage of low tier units against them was reduced.
In the game there is no 'attack' parameter. There is physical/magical damage reduction, however I don't see consistent growth connected to tiers. Anyway 25-30% for tier 5(maximum tier) units doesn't seem strong enough. Devs had to introduce 'fear' spell that have to prevent lower tier units attack higher tier units. That spell is definitely anti-player cause NPC have no problem populating his stacks with same unit type (the player cannot).
- 80% of the fights are barred by quests. You end questing, running back and forward etc. instead of fighting. Really annoying.
- There are no random enemies. All fights are scripted. The enemy will never respawn once defeated. So you cannot farm exp, mana or gold even when you need to. Not an open world but a railroad.
- There is absolutely hilarious feature that wizard not only cannot hire maximum army, he cannot learn some spells as well due to unjustified 'arcane knowledge' requirement and poor mana management. Devs were so greedy for providing mana that even after doing each and every side quest I did't have enough mana to learn every spell and upgrade it to maximum.
- NPC heroes sometimes have an impossible stat progression (like enormous arcane knowledge, spell power and warfare). Some use spells you don't have access to (mind control). This spells cannot be dispelled by Dispel spell, and cannot be protected from by using Statis spell. Contrary the corresponding spell descriptions (dispel should remove ALL negative effects from friendly unit).
3. Open world. Very primitive and repetitive. Not much to explore. No random encounters. There is a single map of medium size where you will spend 90% of the time. NPC are reproducing the single dialogue all the time you approach them. When you teleport to the same place 10th time you hear the same dialogue 10th time, it is like a broken record.
4. Scenario. Very straightforward. It tries to fake player with some choices, but there is no more variety then in railroad van that you board with ticket in hand.