SOULBRINGER

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

I didn't recall seeing any reviews of this game before I was
tempted to buy it at bargain price. Invariably when a game is not
reviewed by any journal it usually means that the company knows
it's rubbish and hope to sell some copies by the box advertising
alone. The reason here is more complicated - the company more or
less disowned the game because some genius illegally published it
as a free download on the net thus compromising sales.
Consequently there's no technical support or a patch. The latter
would be welcome to cover certain clear bugs but the game played
through without ever crashing.

Well - what's it like? I'd probably best describe it as a good RPG
that doesn't break any new ground but that is enjoyable and
engrossing on its own terms. You only control one character
although later in the game other characters fight on your side.
The plot is the usual RPG mixture of subquests and a main quest.
Effectively here the evil revenants of 1000 years ago have arisen
and wish to spread evil and misery throughout the land. To defeat
them you need to find certain objects of extreme magical power as
well as honing your magic and fighting skills.

Effectively you can probably develop either and still triumph -
when it came to the end of game nasty however I was surprised how
quickly he succumbed to a couple of spells. The ending is very
downbeat as now seems to be the norm for RPGs but you can't
criticise it for that.

A few complaints - the control system is very fiddly; to attack an
opponent you have to target them first which is never easy and a
pain if you're fighting 3 or 4 baddies at once. Although there is
a healing school of spells I never found the volume that allowed
me to use them with the result that you end up quaffing healing
potions in great numbers. Finally the land you have to save is a
really miserable place - always foggy and raining - that you
wonder why you're doing it at all.

Not a groundbreaker then but I certainly enjoyed it more than
anything since the last RPG I played.

















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