Our hero can equip different items such as swords, armor, jewelry and other artifacts that will aide him in his quest. Each item of destruction actually changes the appearance of Alaron, which is good, since he starts off almost buck naked. What's great about Record of Lodoss War is that unlike Diablo, you won't just find extremely rare and powerful weapons lying around on the corpse of a defeated demon; you actually get to create them with the help of a friendly blacksmith that you free early on in the game. Once you have freed the blacksmith, you will be able to use Mithril (the blue crystals you attain in the game) to engrave Ancients onto your weapons and armor. Ancients are special inscriptions that provide the item with certain attributes, such as increasing damage, defense or increasing other attributes such as your hit points. There are two types of Ancients in the game, White and Yellow. White Ancients are basically permanent inscriptions that need to be paid for, while Yellow Ancients are free, temporary and unlimited, and need to be equipped like items.

As you traverse through the early tutorial and through the first mission that Wort gives you, you'll immediately notice that the feel of the game is much like Diablo, and that can't be more evident than in the heat of battle. The game tackes place through an isometric view, which is fully rotateable using the L and R buttons, while your attack button is assigned to B, an Y allows you to use items. You can also launch special attacks with your weapon by holding down the B button. Similiar to Diablo, you also have an onscreen belt where you hold potions as well as devices to unlock chests and doors, as well as magical barriers, which you can select using the D-pad. However, one neat thing about Record of Lodoss War (and something that's totally different from Diablo and it's imitators) is that instead of being able to hotkey spells and fire them off at will, you actually need to queue up the spells you want in order to use them. You accomplish this by holding X to bring up the spell list, selecting your spell, and then tapping a sequence of buttons to queue it. The spell appears on your onscreen belt, and from there on, you can select this spell by selecting it on your belt. I found that this was a great addition to the game, and made it a lot harder in order to challenge us seasoned veterans. No longer can we fire off a few lightning spells, and teleport away quickly as if nothing happened; we now have to work for our kills.

Graphically, Record of Lodoss War is solid, but it definitely doesn't contain the over the top special effects of Final Fantasy titles or the stunning character designs of Skies of Arcadia. The price of having more than two dozen enemies on screen at once were low poly/detailed character models that hardly serve as a reminder of how far we've come with our beloved eye candy. Along the way you'll have numerous people joining you in the fight against Cardice, and these people will actually battle alongside you to complete your mission, making combat extremely fun when you have as many enemies on the screen at once as you do in this title. Unfortunately this type of fun can really bring the game to a grinding halt; with all the enemies on screen, slow down occurs frequently. In fact, you can experience this in the very first mission, when a number of projectiles are fired in your direction, not to mention the dozen of other enemies waiting in line to clobber you. While it may not be as bad as I'm making it out, it definitely affects timing for heal potions as well as attempting to fend off all those demons. The voice acting is relatively decent in the game, although it is a little sparse. It would've been nice had Kadokawa spent a little more attention to the voice acting, as well as the background music, as both are lacking and aren't too impressive.

In the end, Record of Lodoss War stands out not only because it's one of the few animes that could put me to sleep within 30 minutes, it's also not a bad game either. While the gameplay does feel like it was borrowed from many other titles, Kadowaka Shoten did an exceptional job of making sure that the entire package was solid. Fans of the series will enjoy the return of many of the Lodoss War cast such as Deedlit and Parn, and hack n slash enthusiasts will enjoy the sometimes mindless action that's always fun. With great customizability, solid (if not average) graphics and a good storyline, this is one game that any fan of the RPG genre should play.

Screens courtesy of Gamespot

· · · Reno