I'm well into this game now after way too many nights playing it, and I agree with the reviewer. Except don't be too put off by the comment about the Russian translation, it's much more amusing than annoying (one of the pirates rejoices in the name Ron Wet Nose, as I recall).
I really only have two issues with the game and that may be simply because I'm not a great player: as the game progresses, I've consistently found myself short of the gold I need to raise an army, so I'd like to have seen a much bigger margin for error. As it is, if I spend just a bit too much gold, it's very easy to find myself unable to fight any of the opposing armies on the board because I simply can't afford to raise a sufficiently large army myself. And speaking of opposing armies, the second point is that I think there are way too many of them! There are hardly any neutral units in the game, and so far I've only found one place where NPCs have offered to fight on my side. Instead of alliances being recognized and reflected in the alliegances of army units, virtually every army in the game is your enemy and stays that way even if you are allied to their cause. So don't think that helping out the dwarves will stop their units from attacking you, it won't.

Small issues really in what is a fun and generally relaxing game. The storytale graphics are just right and the characters rarely stray into total seriousness, this is an RPG for people who swear they don't like the genre. And most importantly it has that "I'll just play for another half hour" factor and that's getting rare to come by.

By the way I chose to play as a Mage and have subsequently read elsewhere that it's the way to go. And you get to wield a magical axe the size of a bus, so what more can you ask?

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree that 3D itself is a step backwards, but I think that the very considerable moves forward in graphics and game engines don't solve many, if any, inconsistencies and implausibilities in the game world. My personal hates:


Leveling up. The whole deal, bigger guns, end-of-level bosses, tougher NPCs, is *old*, a hangover from when games weren't attempting to be realistic anyway. Actually, a hangover from 2D which requires you to get from one end of the game to the other, literally, moving in just the one direction. Time we moved on. Give me the Damn Big Gun NOW, when I can do serious damage with it, not way down the line when it will be about as useful as a pistol is now. Let's go do serious damage from the start. And PLEASE give me challenges that don't involve dumb-but-dangerous end-of-level bosses, I'm fed up with the obvious contrivances needed to create them and all the running madly around (often backwards) needed to kill them.

Plausible, consistent Interaction with objects, or not. There's never an explanation for why the ammo/medkit/cash should be laying there anyway, nor why the NPCs haven't noticed and taken it for themselves. And WHY, since my character is able to pick up ammo, medkits, tools and whatever else happens to be laying around,why oh why can't I pick up the Bigger Gun Than I've Got from the dead arms of the nearest alien NPC? I mean, the guy had me pinned down with the darn thing for ages till I finally got him, it's a dead useful weapon and apparently has unlimited ammo, too. So now I'm standing here looking at the corpse and wanting its weapon, but suddenly my arms are paralysed. Oh hang on, if I walk on this soldier here, I get to pick up 20 rounds from his machine gun. I don't want the miserable 20 rounds, I want the Big Alien Gun, please.

And speaking of which, I'm already carrying a chainsaw, pistol, machine gun and sniper rifle, but hey that's no big deal, pile 'em on, there's always room. Oh and while I'm at it, what the heck is an Armor Shard? I'm wearing armor made up of these things all glued together somehow? And how come it's hidden in the air conditioning system? We have armored repairmen? Is anyone else wearing this stuff? And if armor shards are bits of armor all broken up, then it must have been crappy armor to start with, right? And if this Damn Big Gun which I got on level 25 is a one-of-a-kind experimental weapon, how come the dangerous, experimental ammo is scattered all over level 26? Some guy went around chucking the ammo for this thing around the rooms at random? Oh please. Still, never mind because I've got heaps of room in my invisible backpack for a bunch of this ammo, I just need to rearrange the machine gun, sniper rifle, energy rifle, pistol and chainsaw to make a bit more space.

There's way less realism in the 3D game world than there seems to be when you're beguiled by graphical glory. Don't get me wrong though, I love beautiful 3D worlds to bits. But it would be fun to know exactly what a MedKit is supposed to do, and why someone left three of them in the restrooms.