Well, now that I'm actually awake, it seems it might be time for the usual minny review I tend to give games once I've finished them. Pluss, now that I've played world of Legends through from start to finish I can make a proper judgement of the game.
the first thing I'd like to say about world of legends, is that I loved the size of the game. "Massive?" I thought, "How massive can that be" and the answer is pretty dammed massive! Some of the areas in this game were extremely large indeed, and initially going through them took quite a bit of exploring. Perhaps, if the game is ever updated, there might be the chance to have hidden items and locations in places like the rain forest and grasslands that you need items from later quests (or more hidden items), to open, such as perhaps having a tree top village area in the rain forest which you require a flying cloud from the gates of heaven to reach.
Speaking of the locations, I did think the places in this game were very nicely varied, lots of different locations and atmospheres. I was particularly impressed with the flow of the game, the way you went from standard monster hacking in the great plains, through exploring, through being general of an army, then it's off to heaven to fight mystic warriors. this really gave a sense of progression through an epic quest, and becoming a stronger and stronger warrior.
I also very much liked the gameplay. the different tasks were very varied, the termite survival battle, the war minigame (I really! enjoyed that one), a litle item hunting and the path quests. It was very nice that even when i was a long way through the game different challenges would appear to surprise me.
I thought the rule's system was nicely complex sinse it took me a while to work out what energy was for and so on. I also liked the way that it was extremely easy (maybe too easy), to level up, gain more mana energy and gold. I was actually level 311 when I fought the rune King, and my defence was so high he kept on doing 0 damage to me, but this is probably more due to my fairly obsessive grinding of stats than the game's difficulty, and I suspect if I'd been a good 50 levels lower he'd have wiped the floor with me.
i bought all the top armour and weapons (smithing the Legend's longsword), comparatively early on, just before I got to the ocean city quest in fact, and after that I did feel that gold was slightly unneccessary. Perhaps, if the game's ever updated with hidden locations, there might also be hidden shops as well that cell even better items.
One aspect of the rules I really liked was the crafting system, though (particularly in weapon crafting), a litle more of this might have been good. Perhaps in the future the game could involve needing specific elements to make specific things ----- such as perhaps a frog for the Frog Mana potion.
I thought the poisoning was great, it was quite satisfying to poison one creature and watch as it slowly died while I dealt with another buhahahahaha, unfortunately I had to forgo this pleasure at higher levels. For this reason a few extra status effects, or spells or special attacks that have a longer effect than just one round might have been fun.
I think perhaps my only real problem with the game, was that in many places, the writing could have been improved, iether with more discription, or a litle checking of the grammar. I felt at various places sentences like "HEre's a town, here you can heal yourself and stuff" didn't really add to the epic atmosphere of the game.
there were many occasions where a litle extra description or atmospheric touches would have made a huge difference, in boss fights, at unpleasant locations such as the Graveyard that type of thing. I'd have liked to know for example, how the various monster's attacked me? teeth? swords? rubber chickens? what!
I wouldn't normally make an issue of this, but I did feel it did rather let down an otherwise exceptional game. in a text game, the text obviously has to paint the picture of where you are and what's going on, and though I'm certain that Rsl had a picture in mind, I don't think it came across to the player as well as it might have.
comparing the writing here to the writing in online gamebooks or interactive fiction for example, there is a clear difference in quality. Obviously, if RSl's doing all this highly complex and cunning coding to get that great rules system and all those features and locations loaded, it'd be unfare to expect him to spend a looooong time writing item and monster descriptions. Stil, a litle work in this area would have I think, changed a pretty good game into an absolutely fantastically legendary great game of shiny and unbelievable brillience.
One aspect of the writing I did enjoy was the litle touches of humor in the game, the mathamatical problem in the Graveyard, the electro magnetic pulse in the war game, and the various suggested methods of killing Rsl himself!
all in all, I'd totally agree with game man. World of legends is a fantastic game, i just wish there could be more of it and I hope RSl will considder doing a similar game in the future or expanding upon World of Legends, it'd deffinately be worth it.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)
