If mythical heros, evil monsters and quests are your kind of thing, this game is for you!
Before I start I would like to point out that I have not played an awful lot of RPG’s or Hack ‘n’ Slash games, which means that I am purely reviewing this game on its performance, and not in comparison to anything else.
I have to admit I got a rather bad first impression of this game, when I loaded it up and the menu completely froze. However, a quick Alt + tab sorted this out, and I was soon confronted by a choice of 4 characters to play through the game with. The player has the choice of a norse warrior, an Aztec shaman/ priestess, an Egyptian wizard and a greek warrior, each with different starting characteristics/ levels and different environments/ quests.
I picked up this game quite quickly, and after a couple of teething problems, I found the fighting system to be relatively simple. Battling foes is done simply by clicking on them. Your character’s stats will determine how quickly they will be dispatched. Strangely, almost every creature you kill will drop an array of weapons and items, which you can pick up and use (I question where a wolf can possibly carry a sword, an axe, a small shield and 100 gold coins).
These features all add up to make a highly playable and addictive game, possibly too addictive!
As I have already mentioned, there are four characters, each of which have different worlds to explore, different weapons and armour that they can or can’t use, different quests to complete and different deities to worship. This brings me to another feature of the game, the special abilities. Whilst worshiping a deity, one quarter of your character’s XP is used towards worshiping a deity and thus upgrading your special abilities, which vary from character to character and deity to deity.
These features all add up to make a highly playable and addictive game, possibly too addictive! The game does unfortunately seem slightly limited as to what you can do besides the quests, and as all monsters you kill stay dead, it may leave some players wanting more.
The graphics are pretty good for a game of this type, and the real time environments are created majestically. Unfortunately, this means that the loading times for each area are quite long, which becomes tedious if you have to cross multiple areas for a quest. The soundtrack is suitable for the game, and gives it a slight epic feel. The voice acting feels slightly unenthusiastic, but this will not detract from the game.
The game’s AI is somewhat lacking, with enemies frequently walking into the scenery, and if your character is killed, he/she will simply be returned to the beginning of the area, with all damage you caused to the enemy staying on their health bar. This removes pretty much any element of challenge, and makes for A LOT of walking in some of the larger areas. This can also become annoying, as you can end up crossing the same ground several times over before you finally manage to defeat your adversary.
Overall, Loki is a fairly good game, and will offer a few good hours of fun. It includes a multiplayer mode (which I unfortunately did not have a chance to test) and various difficulty levels will open up different quests, allowing the complete story to be unlocked, and adding replay value. Some elements of the game feel like they could be expanded on and improved, and the game does feel slightly buggy in places, but overall, this is still a good purchase for any fan of the action RPG/ hack n slash genre.
The Bad: buggy in places, long loading times, unvaried nature of quests.
Bronze Y Award