Occasionally it will show you an apparently gorgeous vista of castles, cliffs, and lakes, but that's largely because everything is sparse and bare when viewed up close. Though there is an element of damning with faint praise here: yes, the combat animations seem good, but that's primarily because non-player characters look and move like zombies. Swing a sword, kill a goblin, and it satisfyingly collapses in whichever direction the sword was swung. It helps a great deal that controls are responsive, and the animations fast and surprisingly robust.
going through the motions of playing an RPG as it goes through the motions of being an RPG. It becomes almost soothing to fight, recharge, and fight again. That's the rough extent of its depth, but happily, Shadowlands usually gets the rhythm of battle right. Fighting is accomplished as simply as possible: left-click to attack, hold right-click to block, and press R to cast a spell or do a special attack. Ravensword: Shadowlands is a single-character action-RPG, playable from either first- or third-person perspective. There's no dynamism or characterization to speak of the bulk of the main quest is literally a wizard telling you which direction to travel in order to find the next piece of a magic artifact.Ĭombat is no more creative, though it is more competent. The most obvious example is the plot, which goes through the motions of heroic fantasy: you play a heroic king's descendant with special powers and a destiny, sent on a quest to find a magic sword to stop a demon, etc, etc, etc. Most of the components expected in a role-playing game are included, but they're all superficial, like they're there just to be there. The core issue with Shadowlands is that it feels less like a complete RPG and more like the idea of an RPG.