Realms of Ancient War Review

By Kevin Mitchell  |  Posted: September 28, 2012

There has been a resurgence of the dungeon crawler genre with some heavy hitter sequels releasing on PC this year in the form of Diablo III and Torchlight II. Realms of Ancient War hopes to entice fans of the genre on consoles as well as PC with impressive visuals and massive amounts of enemies charging at you on screen.

As you start, you are given the choice of three traditional fantasy Action RPG character classes: warrior, mage, and rogue. The traditional nature of R.A.W. doesn't offer much that hasn't been seen before. The story plays out as you must become the savior of a world thrust into chaos. It's quite barebones but does an adequate job of keeping things moving forward.

Making your way through each area, enemies will swarm you until they are the only thing you can see on screen. The action never lets up as you continuously move forward. With no way to block or dodge attacks, you only use offensive strategies to attack head-on or try guerrilla styles of attacking and running away. Special attacks break up the constant button mashing, but with no option to continuously attack by holding down the button, you'll be doing a lot of button mashing. Moves that use up your mana help to take down enemies faster but are considerably weak until upgraded. One of the Warrior's moves in particular attacks multiple foes at the same time while knocking them back. Foes will teleport into the correct position for the animation of the attack and will literally slide backwards after.

Gaining the ability to possess some of the larger enemies – not too far into the game – almost feels pointless. You can use the added strength from the possessed body to help take out enemies faster, but the ride doesn't last long; usually not even long enough to walk across the screen. It will keep you alive a little bit longer, but not much. In R.A.W., you will die... a lot. Slicing away at all manner of skeletons, goblins, and spiders, it's tough to tell when you're making contact and when an enemy is close to death. It's strange because attack numbers will appear as well as a hit indicator that looks to be straight from Tekken, but it's still almost impossible to tell who or what you're hitting when being attacked by hordes of enemies.

Don't even get me started about the spiders. If a horde of spiders is coming for you, only trouble can come from it. Since they are so small, it's hard to tell the difference between an attacking spider and an already dead one. The frustration doesn't end there, as you should be prepared to die quickly and frequently. As your health drops rapidly, you will die before you even realize you were taking damage. With a limited number of lives, if you run through all of them, you're forced to restart the area without any of the spoils from the previous runs – what fun.

Weapons and armor can be found from looting corpses as well as from merchants scattered throughout the different areas. Gold seems to be on the lighter side, forcing tons of grinding to acquire new gear. The new abilities earned from leveling up thankfully do help to flesh out the combat and deal with some of the tougher foes.

Outside of throwing tons of enemies on-screen and utilizing some impressive looking but small and non-interactive environments, there just isn't anything that stands out. It's an average game with a substandard experience. Co-op gameplay could have been the savior of R.A.W., but instead, it adds to the overall frustrating experience. With the only option to play locally, it's a feature that may not be used at all, especially since the second player's progress isn't saved. Like trophies or achievements? The second player won't receive anything for their hard work. Thanks.

Simply Put

R.A.W. leaves a lot to be desired, especially playing by yourself, as it is a frustrating experience. With co-op feeling more like an afterthought, there's nothing to keep you playing after the 7-9 hour experience is over. The difficulty is all over the place, with sections being easy followed by an impossible amount of hordes. Everything appears small, and with no zoom to remedy the situation, it's a constant issue.