Customer Reviews

Depths Of Peril

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

THE USUAL:
It comes with the standard in hack and slash. There are 4 different classes to play, 2 male and 2 female. They are a male warrior, a female thief, a male mage and a female priest. Each come with different skills to raise, while the stats remain familiar(strength, agility, etc.).

There's areas to explore with monsters to fight, new loot to find, dungeons to explore, quests to solve, and so on.

There is a lot of stuff in this game you have seen before if you played other action RPG's. What makes this game good in this department, is that it feels very polished.


THE GOOD:
It brings something new to the table, not just the old.

What makes this game extra cool, is that you are in charge of your own guild, and not only that, you get your own guild hall as well. As leader of your guild, you get to recruit more members into your guild by doing quests. You can even choose one to fight with you as you adventure the world. There's also several containers in your guildhall to use(like bookshelf, chest, and some others).

But that is not all! There are also other guilds in your town. These guilds are computer controlled, and they want the same thing you do, and that's power. You can enter diplomatic relations with them to ally or declare war, trade items and resources, or even raid their guilds if you want to try and wipe them out. While raiding another guild, your guild members will attack their guild hall, so it becomes a battle between guilds and it's members. To destroy a guild, one must destroy their life crystal. If you are at war with another guild, your members can also attack each other out in the game world.

You will also see the other guild members in the game world, fighting monsters and gaining experience. It's like a living breathing world with other people, all trying to do what you're doing. I think it's really cool.

Other guilds will try to recruit new members before you can, they will try to solve the quests before you can solve them, and it makes it for a very interesting game. The guild idea is VERY cool, and very fun.


THE BAD:
The only downside to this game are the graphics. It looks like it's from 2001. I don't mind the old style graphics, I just feel they could have worked on improving the character models. A lot of the monsters I think look really good. Spell effects in general look good.


CONCLUSION:
This is a game every hack and slash fan should try. If you can get past the dated graphics, the gameplay is superior to a lot of hack and slash games on the market. The new ideas it brings to the table are so much fun to try.

Also worth mentioning is the interface, it works really well. Skills are easy to set up in the quick slot and it lets you know when you can use them again. Picking up items and attacking monsters is easy to do(no misclicking here). Over the years, I've learned to appreciate an interface that works after playing so many games with a bad interface.


5 stars for fun - The fun is all in the gameplay
4 stars overall - It's very polished, doesn't crash, plays well, tries new stuff

Let me start out by stating that I am 37 years old. That means I have played a lot of games and spent more time on the pc than I normally care to share. I just picked up Depths of Peril using a Christmas gift card. I saw that it was somebody's 2007 RPG of the year and with my $25 gift card and tax it turned out that I didn't have to pay anything out of pocket. Which as it turns out is a good thing.

So to skip forward I will now get to the meat of the review, another Diablo Clone. Yes, I have played them all, and still have both the original Diablo and Diablo II with expansion on my PC.

The good: Now there is a limited Diplomacy part. Allied victory option is a plus, it actually makes sense to form an alliance with the AI. A first in gaming history I think.
The shared stash is a nice feature. You can put items in there and any of your
characters can use them.

The bad: Pretty much everything else.
1: Maps are tiny, using magic is almost impossible because by the time you see and then click on a monster they are too close and you end up fighting melee anyway.
2: One time only quests. That means once a character beats a quest you can never get it again. I can not tell you how many games I played and beat without solving a single quest.
3:Buggy!!, I got patches up through 1.09 and it still crashed to desktop about once every half an hour. I would solve a quest and get a crash, go back to town, get a crash, pick up an item, get a crash, walk around on the tiny maps, get a crash.
4: Boring, it gets really boring in a few hours. After you play the game, and beat it first as a warrior, then a rogue, then a priest, then a mage all at or around level 5 there really isn't much left to do. I guess you could go all the way up to level 100 but really, what is the point!!!

I wasn't really too concerned about graphics. I remember playing games where the flashing cursor was your character. I don't know why the game industry insists on having top notch graphics. I would rather they spent more time developing the rest of the game. I guess it is comparable to the Diablo series, except for the tiny maps mentioned earlier.

So after 1 week on the hard drive I decided to take this Diablo Clone off my PC and went back to the originals. Save your money, I hear Diablo III is coming this year.

This is a great new twist on the action-RPG genre. I love the diplomatic element to the game...really adds some nice depth. Strategy becomes very important, making this game a notch above all the other run-of-the-mill hack n' slash Diablo clones. Definitely worth it!