Time consuming as it is, it does soon become something you will eventually be in control of, but that’s not until of course you’ve finally got over the frustrations that intertwine with your bid to discover everything with the most notable backdraw being the battle system. The idea is great, it’s completely live-action and isn’t turn-based, you move around the battle scene with your shield for defence, the swing of your sword or a cross hair for those weapons that require some accuracy such as throwing objects and a crossbow. You will often find you’re battling on horseback, a concept which is overlooked far too often within the RPG world and they manage to pull it off quite well, moving around is fairly simple and attacking is no more tasking than clicking your mouse button, the only downfall with horseback combat is that moving forward continues until you prompt the motion to stop by pressing the “S” key as if to move backwards…an annoyance that becomes common and tolerable with practice.
The main problem is that the odds are firmly stacked against you in the early stages, you need to get used to the system and you just don’t have time to do so while you’re trying to get used to moving your cross-hair and horse at the same time you will find yourself busy trying to defend against several enemies that are far superior in skill and strength to you, this can often result in you losing the fight once too often and progress through the game is slowed down considerably. Once again this does improve as you play the game more, naturally you level up and become stronger and as for the loneliness…well that’s cured too when you begin recruiting soldiers and volunteers as you look to build up an army that will steer you to glory.
The amount of people you can have join your clan is limitless, they won’t appear within the main game but as you commence battle they will be there fighting alongside you and I can tell you this does become very interesting indeed. You will eventually be at a point where you are in full scale wars with opposing forces, your NPC buddies will charge at the enemy allowing you to slash and shoot your opponents to their graves, your opponents being humans only of course.
