One of the single coolest RPG's I have ever played. Expansive, very expansive, so expansive that it would likely take you near 2 real-time hours just to get from one side of the main continent to the
other, and that's a rough estimate, not an exageration. The game looks beautiful as well, with a great deal of awesome looking floura (plants). The entire game area acctually looks like it could be real, except for some slight engine limitations like how you cant build caves
unless you make a door and then an interior area, but that's more of the development end and not really that big of a deal. The game also has a very fun character system. A single character can not only progress through the battle portion of the skills, or in the likely case a single battle attribute (such as "longsword" for example), but
can also go eventually go through several others as well, such as magic, which makes for a more well-rounded and "bad ass" character. The game does have its downsides however, such as that fact that since the storyline and gameplay is so free and non-linear you're never really challenged in the traditional sense. It is safe to say that if you value your character and dont wish to get it killed you wont go to said place of destruction. The problem with this is that you wont go there until you know your character is strong enough, but at that point your character is so strong that it's boring. This wouldnt be a problem if the missions that you can get werent so....unscaled. They made the missions with the intent that you would go through several lines of missions (such as go through a
guild's set of missions and a house's as well - faction, guild, and guild missions sets) all at the same time, so you wouldnt take a really hard guild mission before you took a lesser house mission. I could go into explaination of guilds and houses but I do believe that it'd get boring and far to technical, think of them as faction or groups you do missions for in return for rewards, such as money and eventually a house (the home kind ) in the house missions (faction). Regardless, you're aiming for some ultimate reward in a single faction and to do multiple factions slows you down, which means you get your house (home) later than you want to. This then leads to trying to take hard missions and getting through them regardless of your level, which you can do for basically all but a few missions, leading to a lack of challenge. Overall i'd
have to say that this is still one of the single greatest RPG's ever. It's huge
and very open-ended. The only thing that restricts it is the scripted events, which at this point are all that games are capable of. If you said "hey, i wanna go kill that guy" you can, and in turn suffer the concequences, such as guards attacking you. If you were to say "I want a house" you can either kill someone and take their house over or do a series of missions and build a house (through scripted events so you dont acctually BUILD the house, you just do stuff and the events slowly trigger time for it to be built, etc.). I'd
have to say that it is a game for those who wish to play an open-ended RPG and not a mission, story based, RPG because it is a bit lacking in the story department. Let me not forget the amazing sounds and music score. The Music for the game was quite well done, and helped a great deal to immerse you
into the game. The sounds were decent and realistic, to a point, but emphasis should be on the music as it not only went along with the game but it added an amazing touch to it that was second to none.Regardless, I'm the type of person who enjoys a good open-ended RPG and as such I must give the game a 92% score. Solid game, good graphics and bonus points for being seriously open-ended.