Silverfall

[DaveO 88]

After hearing many bad reviews about this title, I decided to download a demo of the game to try it out. You can play four races(human, troll, goblin, and elf) and you can choose your path. You can reassign your skill choices in case you make a 'bad' choice, and there are at least two factions as well(Nature or Technology). Guns and robots your thing? Silverfall will let you go down that path. There are other choices too, but I think I'll let you uncover what those are. I plan to wait for the expansion to go down in price before getting this title.

[DaveO 88]

So I have the standard game, and have been having some fun and challenge along the way. Melee is by far the hardest route to go down, but I'm trying out a Nature oriented Elf archer. I have the maximum of two NPCs with a Troll mage/cleric and an Elven fighter. The fighter is nasty since he has hand weapons that make him look like Wolverine and his attack is quite fast(five quick attacks like Zeal for the Diablo 2 Paladin). He does need support though and tends to eat dirt from time to time(which is why I have a freeze spell and Resurrection to help).

[stubbie 21]

I got sick of the laggy play, the hopeless auto-map that doesn't change direction, the fact that a lot of important npc's don't show on the map, the quest system that doesn't always show you where to go, incredibly long loading times, boring main story, and basically a general lack of finish.

 

Perhaps after a few patches I might continue with it but for now its back to the "not worth the effort" shelf for me.

 

stubbs

[Llama8 8]

And the black line around all of the characters was kinda annoying.

[stubbie 21]

And the black line around all of the characters was kinda annoying.

 

From memory I think it can be removed in the options .

 

stubbs

[DaveO 88]

So I went and got the expansion from Steam. Well worth the $20 to polish the game more. Interface, graphics, performance, and other areas seem to have improvements all around. You can get both from Steam for $40, which is reasonable for a game + an expansion pack. If you bought the game like I did, you'll need to do a specific procedure to get the Earth Awakening patch to recognize the Silverfall standard game.

[DaveO 88]

I finished the Earth Awakening expansion to the game today, and made my own minor walkthru with some help.

[Timotheus 416]

Would you consider posting a more complete review? I remember playing the demo but it didn't ran that well on my old setup... Gave me a bad start with the game...

[DaveO 88]

Basically the game is a bit like Dungeon Siege, and below are comments I made in a separate forum.

 

 

I'll put in the negative parts 1st so that people like you can make a good decision.

 

1. Large amount of hard disk space required - The most massive HDD real estate I've encountered for a game. With both Silverfall and the EA expansion, the content is past 25 gigabytes of space.

 

2. Level scaling - Could be a game breaker since summoning makes mobs easy in the mid-to-late game.

 

3. No multiplayer - There used to be online multiplayer, but that looks to be in limbo.

 

4. Hack and slash - Don't expect much for a story, although the tech versus nature quests and locations might be up your alley.

 

5. Limited voice acting - Not many quests have voice talented associated with them.

 

6. Unbalanced skills - Summoning in particular makes this game fairly simple once significant investment is made.

 

7. Hardware requirements a bit steep to run on highest settings. I could only get the game to run decently on medium graphics.

 

Good things:

1. Skill system can be reassigned. Make a mistake? Go see a skill master and change your build!

 

2. Open ended exploring - You can and WILL get lost in finding places or the correct path to your next point to progress forward.

 

3. Several NPCs to choose - Although you can have only two companions, there are a number to pick between. Some ARE alignment specific(Nature or Tech).

 

4. A lot of possible builds available. I played and finished the game as an Elven Archer, but there are so many skill choices and paths to go down that you likely won't have the same build twice.

 

5. Replayability - Having finished once with a ranged build, I'm confident I can do a few more. Don't do the intro tutorial more than once though.

 

6. Music score - Not too shabby for an independent developer, although tracks are recycled to an extent(but not to a point that felt annoying).

[fleet 42]

More information: A LOT of folks had trouble installing this game, even on higher end PCs when it first came out, and even currently, on Vista PCs. Solution appears to be copy the entire DVD to a temporary folder on your hard drive, and then run setup from the hard drive.

Additionally, for some readson adding the editor for the patch messed up the graphics (solution is to not patch the editor).