Record of Lodoss War

It has that "one more half hour" feeling to it, it's develops your characters abilities a lot and the locations and monsters are very varied. You'll keep playing into the early hours for days on end, occupying this fantasy world.

I know that makes me sound sad, I'm 31, married and with a kid. So I'm no gaming nerdo, however with nice Diablo style graphics and good weather and sound, you'll be buying well if you choose this.

Chronicling the epic, and enduring, battle between the forces of light and dark the action takes place on the island of Lodoss where, certainly in the bits that I played, it rains a lot, thunders a lot and has a lot of graveyards packed with battling skeletons, fierce zombies, aggravated bat-things and several huge scorpion-like creatures. It's also got a good assortment of trolls, elves and other mythical creatures that seem bent on stopping the strange red-haired warrior that players control. This warrior has recently been reincarnated especially for the task at hand, which is mainly to bring peace and order back to the land of Lodoss by wiping out all the bad guys. Unlike some title it doesn't even begin easy, as I found out to my cost. You see the wizard guy that gets the ball rolling acts as a kind of mentor to the red-haired warrior. (You can name him whatever you like) Initially, the first couple of stages eases players into how to pick up items, equip the warrior and handle basic combat but you very quickly get to the stage where he says... "It is time to begin your quest, but first you must defeat the enemies beyond that door...!" he does add something about 'leaving the big ones to him' but you think... 'I've only just started, how hard can it be...?' Needless to say I went in with sword swinging and got trashed in about 3 seconds flat...! Starting again from the beginning has the effect of making you take note of where the save game points are and, next time, I saved first and entered cautiously, hanging back so that the big guy could do his stuff. After that I managed pretty well, wandering around spooky graveyards, trashing the skeletons that suddenly reformed and animated in front of me, navigating the maze-like paths to enter their little compounds while, all the time, they were peppering me with arrows... Sneaky devils...! One good thing about it is the little health vials that you collect. It's wise to keep a good few about you as they can be refilled from wells, and in some of the battles with the bigger foes you might find your hero going through a couple of them just to keep him on his feet. Fortunately, the more bad guys you kill the greater your experience becomes and the better you get at avoiding injury etc. There are also aspects of magic that need to be explored and employed throughout the game and some of those are quite nifty too. Early on you rescue a blacksmith from a dungeon and he will prove invaluable as the game progresses. Collect enough Mithrill, (usually dropped by vanquished foes) and he'll forge you a new blade or suit of armour. You can even engrave them with strong runes that you come across on your travels and make them even more powerful. I really liked this game. I put it on for a quick look and ended up playing for 5 hours, so that tells a tale. The levels are huge and need a bit of navigating sometimes but this is helped by a small on-screen map that can be converted into full screen for a better view. Control, particularly in combat, is very simple to master and the gameplay is such that even novices stand a good chance of survival.