Etrom: The Astral Essence

Yep,Here we are with yet another "Hack-n-Slash" clickfest PC Action/RPGwhich seems to have systematically drifted downsteam into the vast sea of "DIABLO-CLONES".So why did i give such a game 4 stars???Well,it's like this,I'm a sucker for Originality - "A (LONG FORGOTTEN) and slowly decaying formula game companies *used*(PAST TENSE)to create games which had a lasting affect on thier fans".Back to the product....For some strange reason,this game is starting to grow on me.Graphically,it just passes as decent,but storywise it kind of gives me thefeeling like I'm playing through a kind of strange version of the movie"Bladerunner" only instead of just having a gun, i can also use a prettycool Medievil axe embued with 'Astral Energy'...not bad.The axe is upgradeable as with the gun,rifle and other arms in the usualaction/rpg fare. Not quite a 'Triple A' Title, but I.M.O, better than ('Hellgate London") which was 1 step short of being a total disaster.Something to past the time away,just don't compare it to any of the recenttitles of this genre and you'll find that it's very different,but yet still fun. Give it a shot...it's cheap enough and better than some of the'$50 DISASTERS' that have been incresingly flooding the market over the last (4-to-6) yrs. -tvnn2112

junk not the distrubutor fault.

This game seems to get a lot of bad reviews for some reason. I played it and was pleasantly surprised. However, there are a few issues with the game. Namely the save system sucks. It's like diablo, except if you go to the store to sell your stuff, then you lose your portal to where ever you teleported from last. Meaning that you'll have to slog your way taking 10-30 minutes to reach where ever you left off.I just started not picking up stuff after a while and almost never going to the store. It's not like you need the money after a while.There are bugs that are annoying. Admittedly, on my system I only encountered a bug only once every 10 games I played (I played on a generic XP system for reference - no dual core or nothing). So even though the bugs are there and can be frustrating especially if you have saved in a while and have to start over again from your last saved point - it's still better than some more popular games out there that get rave reviews.The online walkthroughs that I have found are also very incomplete. This is not to say that you necessarily need them, but they make life a whole lot easier.That being said the music is half decent and the gameplay is kind of fun (reminds me of games like Fate or diablo). But it does have a lot of frustrations as well too. Not only in the bugs and save system and respawning enemies (whenever you re-enter a level), but also due to the fact that some enemies and levels can be very hard all of a sudden and unexpectedly so you don't know whether or not to go to this section of the game or wait until you have enough levels to take on that section.Some levels of the game are also large meaning you'll be doing a lot of walking around. Many of the sewers and levels of the game look similar to each other meaning that you'll get the feeling of deja-vu all over again.

This is supposed to be a shooter/role-playing game, I guess. Whenever you save, you are transported to a special place. Then you have to make your way back to where you were and all the bad guys have respawned. Your character is underpowered at first and I was getting tired of covering the same ground over and over... This game won't run in Vista. I had to disable my firewall to install it on my XP machine. The game was way too buggy. Sometimes the video would just freak out and I would have to reload from the last save. When the game crashed completely, I decided this game was not worth it.