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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't live up to its early promise, August 27, 2003
Lionheart starts out promising, with its interesting and (at least among computer RPG settings) unique premise. The game is set in an alternate 16th century Europe, roughly four centuries after the Crusaders were tricked into unleashing demons and magic into the world. The first part of the game works well, centered on the city of Barcelona, which is the stronghold of the Inquisition, which tries to put down magic and demons by extreme means. There are many opportunities for real role-playing, in the sense of an opportunity to make decisions (such as whether you want to operate on the side of the strict Inquisition, or work for less legal groups, such as the magic users). The quests of the various groups intertwine, so that you can't please everyone, and will ultimately be forced to make a choice on who you want as your allies. Barcelona also is home to a number of interesting variants of real-life 16th century people, such as DaVinci, Galileo, and Shakespeare, which adds extra interest.Unfortunately, once your quests send you away from Barcelona, the game turns into a slogfest of ceaseless combat. When you've finished some of the later areas, the floors will literally be covered wall-to-wall with corpses. With all the fighting, the opportunity for real decision-making vanishes, and the game becomes truly linear. Your only task is to move from one map to the next. This is highly disappointing, as the game starts out with such a fresh premise. A second problem with the fighting is that it is hampered by a cumbersome interface. The fighting is done in real time, much like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, but the enemies move at much greater speeds. Thus, you have no real chance to use ranged weapons, as the enemies close on you after the first shot. Second, because the enemies move so fast, it is hard to click on them. Frequently, you miss, and your character simply walks over to the spot where the enemy was. Inexplicably, the game will not allow you to target an enemy while it is paused. Lionheart is also terribly buggy. You have a chance to acquire companions during the game, but roughly 10% of the time, having a companion will corrupt your game such that you can't move from one map to another (or, if you can, the next save game may be corrupted). Put together, the collapse of the storyline into meaningless fighting and the bugginess suggest that this game was rushed out the door far too early. It has a lot of promise, but doesn't live up to it.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
This game is a trick, August 28, 2003
Lionheart plays like the demo. If you've tried the demo, you know that the combat is a hectic clickfest, with too-fast moving monsters and a poor targeting system. And the latter half of this game is pretty much exclusively combat. Which makes it incredibly unsatisfying.I call the game a "trick" because of the first half. The first half of the game takes place in Barcelona and another town, and there are interesting characters to talk to, fun quests, and palpable tension among the various factions that control the city (or oppose it). Because the game is set in "real" history (1588) but with a twist (what if magic were real), you find yourself talking to characters such as Shakespeare and Da Vinci, although their personalities and agendas have shifted with the influence of magic. And with the crusades going on, there are some real moral dilemmas: will you support such an oppressive regime, or oppose it and deal with the disadvantages and hostility your character will face? So people who have only played the game a little bit seem to think the game is fine. Then they change their minds after they've played a little more. The game is built upon an improved version of the SPECIAL engine, which was used for Fallout. So the gameplay is similar, although the combat is real-time, not turn-based. But it just ends up lacking. The real-time combat is a chore, and there is no way to get it back to turn-based. Although you can pause the game, you can't target while paused. Later in the game, the story progression is very linear, with few diplomatic/stealth solutions. The character animations are poorly done, and the interface appears rushed (certain parts are poorly designed or lacking obvious features). Oh well. If you're willing to buy a game only to play half of it, you'll have fun. If you feel that a game should actually be compeleted, you're in for drudgery and monotonous combat.
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21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What's that smell?, September 19, 2003
I love history, and I love RPGs, so it goes without saying I was anticipating "Lionheart" for a long time. The game has an interesting premise, and it uses Fallout's "SPECIAL" system. I thought that Reflexive and Black Isle could not possibly screw up this great combination. Boy was I wrong. "Lionheart" is poor in every category. This terrible game simply does not have one redeeming quality about it. To start off with, the 2-year outdated graphics are mediocre, creature and character animations stink, and the artwork is nonexistent. Every screen is covered end-to-end in grey or black and has the visual appeal of an IRS 1040 form or a dirty ash tray. You can let your imagination run wild with how exotic and cool Medieval Europe could have looked after a great big cosmic magical rift. I say "you" could, because the designers for this game obviously didn't. Where are the snow-capped mountains, exotic palaces, beautiful forests, and lakes? They're in "Divine Divinity", that's where. "Lionheart" looks more like Wyoming after a great big forest fire. "Divine Divinity" is but one game puts "Lionheart" to shame in the graphics department (and everything else as well). All of the recent Dungeons and Dragons games look better than this, because of their exceptional artwork and creativity. Even the flop sci-fi "Harbinger" looked better than this. But graphics don't really matter that much do they? I guess not - I could easily ignore them, but the gameplay is terrible too. The way that the turn-based SPECIAL system has been butchered in this game is inexcusable. A real-time game that uses a turn-based system can succeed if you can pause the game to issue orders. That is why real-time Dungeons and Dragons have been so successful. However, this game has the mind-bogglingly stupid feature of NOT letting you do this. You can pause the game, but not to issue attack orders. There is no autopause feature that stops the game for you when someone rushes onto the screen. The tactical genius and elegance that made Fallout's combat great is nonexistent. That leaves you with a real-time, extremely low quality Diablo clone, complete with a red bulb for health, and a blue bulb for mana. You left-click to attack, you use a hotkey to select your active spell, and then right-click to cast the spell. How groundbreaking. "Diablo clone" would be a compliment for "Lionheart" though, because the combat engine is pitiful otherwise. Enemies are unoriginal and poorly animated. You reveal the fog of war by exploring ugly areas and run into ugly, repetitive enemies bit-by-bit. They simply yell out a "raawwrrr!" and rush at you at light speed, before you can cast more than one spell or fire an arrow from your useless bow. If you specialize in ranged combat or magic, you literally will not survive the first area of this game, no matter how many times you reload. This game is more unbalanced towards melee characters than "Arcanum" was. The game's intrusive interface blocks your view of the world by taking up almost a third of the screen, but it somehow still manages to be functionally inadequate. (A dubious accomplishment). You only get 7, that's right, 7 hotkeys for spells, and other actions. Compare that with games like Neverwinter Nights, which made full use of the "F" keys for 36 total hotkeys. Expect to find yourself casting the same few unimpressively-animated spells over and over. Needless to say, I did not finish this game, so I cannot comment about the story from start-to-finish. However, I can say that the portion of the game that I played through offered no indication that it would be special. "I am some sort of mysterious chosen one, and some bad men want to kill me because of it" is the basic premise. A cliche storyline is nothing new, and some games are still great in spite of it, but it's not enough to make you want to toil through a game that is just plain bad. I wanted to love this game, but I can't. I tried to like it, but I failed. Reflexive alienated hardcore RPG fans by screwing up the "SPECIAL" system, and then screwed up the mindless action so that "Diablo" fans could hate it too. I wish that I could say that it's a simple hack-and-slash adventure, but I can"t, because the hack-and-slash aspects of the game stink. "Lionheart" is by far the worst RPG that I have played since before Baldurs Gate, and I am thinking it might be the worst I have ever played. A trashpile like this doesn't even deserve the bargain bin.
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