Sameness abounds. Six different characters, dozens of skills and spells, and the ability to fashion your own weapons sure sounds like plenty to do. Unfortunately, that stuff rarely changes what you see on the screen. There are only a handful of unique attack animations and the carbon copied enemies die the same way every time.

Inane fetch quests deliver a hackneyed "good against evil" plot and spoken dialogue that's forgotten the moment a cinema scene ends. Your journey to the overlord in each area is drudgery at its worst, because the same grassy paths and rocky caves are recycled constantly, along with roughly a dozen or so enemies. At least the bosses are lively, and some of them have appendages that you can chop off - so there is that to look forward to.

Hazy visuals convey the sense that you're in a dream world. That's fine when you go to sleep and talk to the harmless spirits in limbo. However, out in the wild, the Vaseline-smeared camera only makes it hard to distinguish the enemies from the scenery. The graphics are already muddy anyway, and the action tends to slow to a crawl whenever more than a handful of enemies are visible.

Standing out, like a solitary rose among a field of weeds, is an excellent musical score that combines medieval, rock ‘n’ roll, and Asiatic influences. You'll loathe what you see, and yet you'll catch yourself humming the game's rhythms over and over again.