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The first thing to point out is that, unlike many other old-school dungeon crawlers (most notably the Wizardry series), this game is very easy — mindlessly so, even on the highest difficulty settings. Other than a select few enemies, who are capable of nearly wiping out the party with hitscan AoE spells, every combat encounter is a trivial matter of using some basic spells and attacks (mainly buffing your fighting classes and using AoE spells of your own) and bringing the enemies' healthbars down. You always have the option of simply turning tail and easily outrunning the enemies, as well as the option to run past everything in the first place.
With that out of the way, the main flaw of the game can be directly addressed — it is repetitive and boring. The gameplay pretty much provides no challenge, so you are left with large and elaborate dungeons to crawl through, picking up lots of identical and uninteresting loot to sell off at a shop, looking for whatever key item you need to finish the dungeon. Frankly, this got old after 20 hours, and the game took 40 to beat.
The towns are also simply tedious and slow — characters talk slowly, and there is no way to skip through their dialogue. You have to accept and hand in guild quests with each character, which means that you have to sit through the same dialogue multiple times. Selling off junk at a store is also simply not a fun gameplay loop.
The game certainly has its strong points — the skill progression can be rewarding, with there being a big money crunch to upgrade your skills at guilds, justifying the time you spend picking up and selling loot. The game has that Wizardry-esque class progression, and classes and races feel distinct and unique (one need only look at the elephant people, the Oomphaz). The game never fails to make you feel powerful, to a fault... maybe I was just too good at building my party or something.
Overall, this game can be fun, but I would not advise spending the time to play to the end if/when crawling through the dungeons gets boring — the game does not really offer anything except the party building and dungeon-crawling loop.
With that out of the way, the main flaw of the game can be directly addressed — it is repetitive and boring. The gameplay pretty much provides no challenge, so you are left with large and elaborate dungeons to crawl through, picking up lots of identical and uninteresting loot to sell off at a shop, looking for whatever key item you need to finish the dungeon. Frankly, this got old after 20 hours, and the game took 40 to beat.
The towns are also simply tedious and slow — characters talk slowly, and there is no way to skip through their dialogue. You have to accept and hand in guild quests with each character, which means that you have to sit through the same dialogue multiple times. Selling off junk at a store is also simply not a fun gameplay loop.
The game certainly has its strong points — the skill progression can be rewarding, with there being a big money crunch to upgrade your skills at guilds, justifying the time you spend picking up and selling loot. The game has that Wizardry-esque class progression, and classes and races feel distinct and unique (one need only look at the elephant people, the Oomphaz). The game never fails to make you feel powerful, to a fault... maybe I was just too good at building my party or something.
Overall, this game can be fun, but I would not advise spending the time to play to the end if/when crawling through the dungeons gets boring — the game does not really offer anything except the party building and dungeon-crawling loop.