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Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

List Price: $9.99
Your Price: $9.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Doesn't live up to its early promise
Review: 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.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: FANTASTIC
Review: Lionheart: Legacy Of The Crusader is a wonderful game, which includes RPG, Action and Adventure. Even people, that are not big fans of RPG's will probably love this game, since there is a lot of action happening. Or if you don't like shooting game this'll probably suit you too, because it's 16th. century and you walk through medieval world full of adventures,...and of course magic.

In 12th. century magic and evil spirits were released, it changed medieval Earth forever. So now it's you're destiny to bring life to it's proper look.

On a beginning you choose one of the four races:Feralkin, Demokin, Sylvant or Human Pureblood. And then you may enter the magical world of Lionheart, where you can become a Wielder, a Knight, or Inquisitioner. All have different quests and they grant you with different upgrades, but main quests do not change.

As you walk through ancient lands, you will meet different obstacles and in order to get past them you have to do quests. Now quests can be really simple, like deliver something to somebody, or really tough like you have to kill somebody or something. Every time you do something right, you will get experience points. You need experience points in order to get to another character level. And if you were successful in getting a new character level, that means you get to spend points in one or more of the skill branches.

Skill branches are divided into different sections and in these sections are the skills. Skills are of many types: Fighting Skills, Thievery, Lockpicking, Negotiation, Sneaking, Divine Magic, Thought Magic, and Tribal Magic.

The reason why I like this game is, because there is always a lot of action; you can do almost everything, as a person in real life; and it's fantastic.

(...)

The only reson, why I gave the rating of 4 stars sbecause they rushed this game and it's really buggy.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Odiferous
Review: This game is just foul. It seems like Interplay and Reflexive were trying to create a game like Diablo but with more RPG elements, and failed disastrously. The "alternate history" theme is very interesting, but poorly executed. An on top of it all, the game is extremely short. I really wish I hadn't wasted $50 on this garbage.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Odiferous
Review: This game is just foul. It seems like Interplay and Reflexive were trying to create a game like Diablo but with more RPG elements, and failed disastrously. The "alternate history" theme is very interesting, but poorly executed. An on top of it all, the game is extremely short. I really wish I hadn't wasted $50 on this garbage.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A bad arcade style game. Nothing like fallout. Not an RPG
Review: This game is pretty annoying in many ways.

The combat is simply clicking on people and watching them unil they die.

The magic system is poorly thought out and playing as a mage is very tedious because the simplest spell costs too much mana, yet spending massive spellpoints barely increases their power. Heal heals 4-5 points of damage at level one, and 12-13 at level 81!!!

NPC tagalongs are useless in combat because they are destroyed with amazing ease by enemies and there is no way to bring them back, and worse than useless since they like to run around and lure lots of monsters to you.

Once you get out of barcelona, there is really no questing just more hacking and slashing. Even this might be ok if it was more involving; you just watch you guy hack them to pieces and occasionally run away. The spells are pretty useless in combat and hard to select anyhow so you do not end up using them much.

There is no marking of exits/entrances etc. even after you have been through them, so that walking around is VERY tedious and annoying at higher levels, especially since in the first half of the game you will be going to the same places in the sewers OVER and OVER. Finding all the entraces to the various levels takes careful attention to detail, too.

Anyhow, I think this is the last black isle game I will buy; maybe I will get Baldur's gate III if such a thing is ever made, or fallout 3, but only from the ten dollar clearance rack....

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good game, but could have been MUCH better
Review: This game is pretty strange so far. It takes a game like Diablo II and infuses Fallout's SPECIAL system. I love the Fallout series, and especially Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, so the SPECIAL system is something I'm used to and enjoy. Character creation isn't as indepth as I had hoped it to be, but it wasn't barebones either. There's a few gameplay elements that I like in the game, such as the spirits and quasi-historical references/characters/locations. Other elements are annoying, like how you can only click your character to walk a few paces outside of your line of sight...that gets annoying on the larger maps. The lack of gold and difficulty finding it and items in the beginning adds some good gameplay, but is overdone to near annoyance. I'm only five hours into the game, and it has done a sufficient job holding my time and interest, but I can tell it won't have replay value like Diablo II or the other like games.

Recommended since it's so cheap now.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Mediocre RPG Game
Review: This game should be a wake up call for Black Isle and Interplay.

Graphically the game is fine, with decent background, characters, and special effect (i.e. spells). The first third of the game is defining your character (good or evil, mage or warrior, etc.) through "errand" style quests. It offers some decent role playing, but since there isn't any long term interaction with NPC's the player never develops an affinity for anyone. With very few exceptions, most of the NPC's that join the party, are too weak and die off quickly. Once your character proceeds to the main quest of knocking off the bad guy, it's purely hack and slash, i.e. Diablo style. Puzzles, while they do exist, are trivial.

Some other complaints:
The skill point system is very frustrating. A chart should have been released to display the advantages/disadvantages of points per skill (e.g. at 100-200 points you will do 36 pts of damage with a fireball, with a 67% chance of knockdown). As it is, you don't know where the point system tops out, and if you're wasting your time pumping up a given skill. I had to recreate a character 3 times before I found something worth sticking with.

You can't give items in your inventory to an NPC so you can buff them up.

A major annoyance is the lack of autonavigation. On a completely explored map, you have to lead your character by the nose to get it to walk across it.

Automaps don't show major points of interest, e.g. Leonardo's workshop, Eduardo's smith, entrances and exits, etc.

Melee combat is pretty flat, just click on an opponent and watch your character hack away. Some feats (like BG II's whirlwind) would have been nice.

Finally, the treasures are purely random. I built a character loaded with one-handed melee skills, but most of the treasure was two-handed items or ranged weapons. I'd understand this approach if it was feasible to create a character with broad skills but if you don't max your skills, you die a lot.

Overall, I really can't say the game is worth the price.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great quarter-game
Review: This game was really fun at first. Barcelona is fun like the city of Amn in Baulder's gate...but that's all that there is to this game.

The people that join you just follow you around. You can't interact with them or control and develope them like Ice Wind Dale or baulder's gate. If you want a hack and slash, get Dungeon Seige...if you want a real rpg with a plot, get BGII.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: disappointment
Review: When I first read about this game I thought it would be one that I could enjoy. I am an RPG addict. This game, however, was not the RPG it promises to be. Very boring, mini map has no waypoints to help you along, and some of the quests appear to be broken. This game no longer spins in my disc tray.


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