Lionheart had everything in place to become one of the best crpgs of, at least, this year.  Produced in conjunction with Black Isle Studios by Reflexive Entertainment, using Fallout's SPECIAL combat system, and attached to an intriguing narrative it seemed inevitable that Lionheart would be both an intellectually compelling and eminently playable game. 

Set in the years following the disjunction, a catastrophe that set magical forces loose across medieval europe, the player is thrust into a world where the Spanish Inquisition hunts down the heretical magic users of the world and the Knights Templar jealously protect Christianity's holy relics for the magical powers they hold.  And you, with your bloodline haunted, hunted by unknown forces, poor and weak in New Barcelona take the first steps of your quest.  Lionheart begins full of potential, full of promise ...

And, in the begininng, Lionheart begins to fulfill that promise through its first, and clearly best, act, always hinting that it is perched to hit its stride at any moment.  As you work your way through New Barcelona collecting experience, finishing side quests, and swimming in the rich world it seems Reflexive has put together, it's pretty easy to keep your hopes up.  Unfortuantely, insteaed of finding a narrative and gameplay stride that leads into a satisfying second act, Lionheart's flaws become more pronounced and more disturbing the further you delve into its sixteenth century world.  The defects one might be willing to overlook when faced with a fun and mindful world become, instead, glaring and tedious.  This becomes the trend instead of the exception with Lionheart as the more hours one puts in, the more one sees missed potential.

Gameplay

Fundamentally Lionheart, like many rpgs, lives and dies by its combat system.  Dissimilar to both the strategic and methodical Fallout and the frenetic Diablo, but borrowing elements of both, Lionheart's combat is schizophrenic and usually frustrating.  Often a matter of stepping slowly through the landscape until spotted and pursued by singular enemy, as the pace of the game does not make combat with multiple foes a viable option most of the time, this stutter step is standard fare for adventuring.  And, it only grows more awkwardly pronounced as the plot throws your way greater and greater numbers of foes that would otherwise overwhelm you.  Lionheart's tip-toe adventuring style is a distraction from the start that only grows more irritating.  It feels as though Reflexive created the enemy layouts for a turn based party game, but forgot to leave the player the resources necessary to succeed.  By the end of the game combat is a trial to deal with which is problematic because combat is virtually all you're doing. 

For as deep as Lionheart's skill tree is, one realizes eventually - and often after a dozen or more hours of character development - that certain types of characters can and will become completely ineffective.  There's a very good chance that as you progress through Lionheart, unless you have a latent prescience, you will find that your character is not prepared for the trials he will face.  Starting over from scratch after putting ten hours into what proves to be a 'gimped' character is not beyond the realm of possibility, or even unusual.

The story which seemed so promising at its start, full of sidequests and fascinating characters across the first act, loses its passion once leaving New Barcelona.  The great pleasure of finding historical figures - despite the problems of DaVinci and Shakespeare living in the same city much less at the same time - blended to situations with interesting parallels to history as we know it dissolves almost completely once leaving New Barcelona.  A few more figures will show up periodically through your travels, often in surprising forms, but the game by then has become dramatically linear and so burdened by its failed combat system that it's hard to drum up enthusiasm at the relatively few sidequests offered.

Visuals

What becomes most frustrating about Lionheart is the impression that, for whatever reasons, some bad decisions were made during its development, and nothing seems to illustrate this more concretely than the visual aspects of Lionheart.  With the beautifully drawn backgrounds of New Barcelona come clumsy and stuttered character animations.  Seeing the juxtaposition of great attention to detail buried under characters that don't even seem to have an animation for standing still - they simply stop as if in mid-stride - serves as a reminder that Lionheart is a game that could have been, and should have been, much better.  But the insult upon injury comes in the resolution.  A forced 800X600 resolution might have been acceptable if the interface didn't take up a third of that screen, if more of the playfield were rendered in that screen, if you weren't attacked at range from off screen, if player-made ranged characters weren't limited by forced real-time combat, if one didn't have to scroll endlessly to mover efficiently, but that's not the case.

Sound

Overall, Lionheart does capable work in the sound department.  The background music sets a satisfying mood without becoming irritating, and character voicework is, while not inspired, certainly at or better than average.  Most of the voiced conversations take place early in the game as one spends a much larger percentage of time conversing, where the later game is dominated by the sounds of largely unvaried combat and the cries of death.  Again, Lionheart spends itself early and then devolves.

Multiplayer

Lionheart comes with up to 4-player multiplayer option which should be, but isn't, a saving grace.  Like too many games before it, Lionheart is burdened by a clumsy Gamespy interface that makes organizing a game a featureless chore.  In game, the schizophrenic pace and combat again fail the game as Lionheart tries to replicate a Diablo-style feeling in a game world that clearly resists being played that way.  To compound problems lag is a serious issue even at the best of times which, coupled with Lionheart's twitch-rpg style, leave multiplayer a veritable bust. 

 

Summary

Not only did I want to enjoy Lionheart, I even did for a while.  My first impressions of Lionheart were positive, as I was willing to look past the problems for what Lionheart was shaping up to be.  But those promises are never fulfilled, and the elements that keep you playing despite Lionheart's shortcomings are, one by one, removed until you're left with nothing but the flaws and frustrations of a game that doesn't know what it wants to be.

- Elysium