Black Isle's Lionheart Gets Spanish Inquisition

Thanks to RPGDot for their Lionheart information page, which points to GamersWithJobs' first impressions of the PC RPG, which is developed by Reflexive, published by Interplay's well-known Black Isle RPG division, and has just shipped to stores. GamersWithJobs have positive impressions of this alternate-history title, which is set in 1588, when "...Europe is still reeling from the disjunction, a cataclysm that unleashed magic and demons on the world five centuries earlier during the Third Crusade, whereupon vengeful foes Richard the Lionheart and Saladin were forced to join forces to turn back the deluge of evil." The piece also points out that "...while the demo proved to be substantially more difficult than the final product, the mechanics of the game are faithfully represented in that demo and serve as fair warning for those attached to turn-based game styles."

Comments

Re:I told you!

[captainktainer]

Put it before those others. Fallout and Fallout 2 don't take *that* much time to play, although there's a great deal of replay value if you choose to dedicate more time to them. It's hard to believe that they're as old as they are sometimes... well, no, Fallout you can believe is that old. Fallout 2 was way ahead of its time.

Personally, I'm a fan of Spiderweb Software's Exile and Avernum series. They aren't alternate histories, but they're incredibly entertaining. Only shareware worth registering.

Quick review: 20% IE, 80% homebrew.

[eddy]

I've described this game as 20% good copying off the Infinity Engine games, and 80% homebrew design -- most of it bad.

• You can't give attack orders or change target while paused. Please note that you can go into the inventory and go through a complete makeover though.
• The maps aren't annotated.
• You can't annotate the maps.
• The game's 800x600. You can up the resolution by editing a file, but the game craps out so it's useless. (I usually don't comment on resolution, but given the timespan since BG2 I would have thought they'd at least make the game _capable_ of higher resolutions, if officially unsupported.
• Low resolution results in "zoomed in" effect, making ranged combat mostly useless.
• Good news: Zombies move slowly, ranged combat works! Bad news: Pretty much everything else zips along, giving you one ranged shot until melee-time -- if you're lucky.
• Multiplayer only through Gamespy. Must use undocumented command line params to connect directly (the game have no way for you to enter a IP or hostname to connect to) (ps: -connect, -host)
• In multiplayer, all players must keep together for the simplest things, say like entering a house (this is worse than the IE games. And oh, you thought the "You must gather your party"-line of BG was bad? Check this game out...)
• Completely over the top intrusive interface. Press F2 to remove it completely.
• Can't navigate by clicking minimap
• Can't navigate by clicking game field map, if too far away from char(!)
• Choice after choice removed from the hands of the players by the designers. Example: Exported chars are stripped of their items. Wouldn't it be better to leave that up to the gamemaster to decide?
• If you're typing the chat window, you can't move your char. Pray you're not attacked while typing...
• Very few spell and items slots. 7 in total. Choose well. Shouldn't have been a problem to supply 3x7 rows using the alt and ctrl modifiers, but did they? Nope.
• Can't chose in dialogue using keyboard. Instead of assigning chars/nums to responses, waste space on over-obvious symbols.
• Said to use 3D-models for chars/monsters, but the anims are very sparse. Watch your char spread his/hers legs each time you stop.
• No way to rest in game. You might find that you need to leave the game 10-20min _real time_ to let your mana regenerate.
• During skillpoint distribution, there's no minus-key to remove a just assigned skillpoint, so you can't "try" you're way around the tree.
• Overall, very unpolished gameplay. I could list many more items, all of which became apparent after a couple of hours with the demo. Let me give you another example: I used the racial trait "Skin of Thorns". Now, if I check the attributes tab in the game and hover "trait", the description will appear in a designated information box in the interface. However, the text for this trait is too large, so it overwrites part of the interface!

It's a decent game -- there are good stuff too -- but you gotta wonder what Reflexive was smoking with some of these design decisions, really.

Try the demo before you buy. The demo is unfortunately very very combat heavy and was developed against the wishes of the devs (the publisher requested it), but it's at least representative of the combat and interface of the final game. The questing and dialogue is very good for CRPG standards, but so far -- I've only played for a day -- ... no PS:T