Aarklash Legacy is probably the most challenging game ive played in a while, even on normal difficulty it takes a while to figure out the attack patterns of enemys, plan a strategy and a good portion of calmness, because otherwise you'd die pretty quickly. I dont have the time for a full review so ill just do a quickie. Summary: Aarklash: Legacy is a tactical role playing game centered around the principles of planification and strategy. Master tactical combat through the use of active pause to coordinate the various heroes and their skills. Play cleverly to defeat all the merciless creatures living in Aarklash.

It's quite fun, but not great on the RPG side of things. I've put about 6 hours in thus far (plan to finish it this weekend).

Some random thoughts:. The combat is well done. You can imagine it as a vastly simplified Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale style combat. Each of your characters have 4 abilities (and the skill trees can vastly change those skills).

You have to actually work to win in a lot of fights, even if you've played these style games before. Combat is challenging in a good way, but there's not enough variety in enemies or encounters thus far. The randomized loot is tedious and uninteresting. This is sort of the 'diablo 3 style' random loot, where there hasn't been really any choice.

Things are just better or they aren't, and you have to spend a bunch of time playing 'fit the puzzle piece'. The story is meh, the voice acting is bad. The areas you walk through look great, but they are pretty empty places. There's no NPCs with random quests or cool stuff to find. Everything is mostly: Go a little off the main path, solve a minor puzzle or find a chest, fight some extra enemies, then move on to the objective of the area. There's no depth to the world.TL;DR: Only buy it if real time tactical combat interests you. The story is bad, the loot is tedious, the world is soulless but looks great.and yet I really enjoy the combat in the game and it's kept my interest thus far.

Simply put, it's not a great RPG but it is a fun game. I've put about 4-5 hours into it and I'm not overly thrilled with it. Yes it's similar to the BG style of combat, but there just isn't enough variety in skill sets and magic to keep me interested.One annoying thing is the aimed healing. Click the heal magic and an arrow pops up on the ground allowing you to aim and 'throw' a heal spell at your dying characters.

While its an interesting tactic, it can soon become an annoyance if an enemy suddenly runs by right in front of the spell. Now you've healed the bad guys and not your own party.

Yes there is another way to heal but it's not nearly as much than the aiming healer character, at least for me at this stage.I really like to manage my party in an rpg but there's almost too much pausing in the game. Combat just doesn't flow and it feels almost like this game should have been a true turn based game and not pause and play.There's no 'assist' the party leader type of command. So if you don't immediately make sure all characters are aiming at the same enemy you'll have four characters fighting four different things. Once that target dies they seem to randomly choose another target. You can get an upgrade that prevents the thrown heal spell from healing enemies.

Of course you only have a limited number of points to level up your skills, so if you get that you can't afford to upgrade others.But yeah the game requires constant pausing and constant repositioning of your troops. You have to dodge thrown spells, move out of AOE damage, get away from auras, get in position to throw your own spells without hitting allies, etc. If you fuck up your party gets wiped out. I am enjoying it but it's not for everyone.

Reviewed on PC A single chance to make a first impression“Huh? What?” Two words that rarely spell anything good when uttered mere seconds after getting into a game, but the most apt ones for Aarklash: Legacy’s beginning nonetheless. Being dumped rather unceremoniously into a fight without any kind of explanation tends to be confusing, I’ve found. To my fortune, this somewhat odd start of the game proved not to be indicative of the rest of it, even if it did set the tone somewhat for Aarklash’s story telling.Players take control of a group of Wheel Swords; legit enforcers to a money lending organization called the Goldmongers. After years of war, the Goldmongers are finding it increasingly difficult to get the debts owed to them paid.

The Barons have borrowed heavily to finance their wars and are no longer able to fulfil their end of the bargain. Sent out to retrieve an expensive object in order to pay for a debt, your party is uncharacteristically attacked by the debtor. Cold fear gamefaqs. This nearly unheard of act is soon explained as the group learns that the Goldmongers and their Wheel Sword warriors have been branded traitors by the local ruler. With a bloodthirsty army hot on their heels, your party sets out to find out what could possibly cause an entire nation to turn on them and their patrons.It’s a partyInitially, your party consists of four Wheel Swords, their classes running the gamut from tank to healer. Others will join you but you will never have more than four Wheel Swords on the battleground at any given time so you must swap out someone to bring a new character in. It is tough choosing.

Each and every character that I have encountered is truly unique when it comes to skills and fighting style. At heart, each character falls into the basic ‘ranged’ and ‘melee’ type, but character skills have a profound impact on how they are used.

Wendaroo, for instance, uses magic to heal others but her skills aren’t entirely benevolent. To keep going, she needs to absorb the health of friendly characters in order to help others. Upgrading her Bloody Feast skill will allow you to absorb health from enemies instead but that skill will heal the enemy rather than actually taking health away. It’s a strange twist on your average Druid class, but it makes you think about what you are doing just that little bit more. Knokka’s skills are extremely powerful but similarly cannibalistic as she uses her own health to activate her skills. The individual skills trees are simplistic with only four branches for each character, but like with the example above, many upgrades alter the nature of skills to some extent.Aarklash’s combat sessions require you to strategize and really pay attention to what is happening in battle. Fortunately, battles can be paused so that you can get a good overview and take time to make your decisions.

Even at ‘easy’, some battles will have you work hard for a victory and if all your characters are down, you will have to reload an earlier save.The objective is, of course, to stay alive. Many actions, though not all, can be chained and your characters will automatically find a new target when they are done bashing in the head of the one you last assigned them.

New enemies will occasionally pop up during combat, often bringing in a different enemy type that forces you to rethink your current strategy.