Perhaps the downside to owning a PC is the amount of RPGs you get sent to look at and begged to publicise. Sometimes there's just not enough hours in the day to sit through 3 games all sharing the exact same storyline, trying to level up significantly in each without falling asleep so you can give each a fair review. So it came as a welcome surprise to find Akella's Hard to be a God on top of my ever-increasing pile of games to play, based not on a tired and much beaten corpse of a story but instead a real life novel - the Strugatsky brothers to be exact.
This refreshing storyline sees you undergo a covert operation. Earth and a sister planet, Tsurinak, had many years of peaceful existence before war between the two ruin the relationship, and since then Earth has prospered and become a super power whereas its former comrade has stagnated, stuck in a rut in the medieval ages and slowly slipping into the abyss. Intrigued by the slump, the Empire sends you to investigate the kingdom of Arkanar and befriend its occupants.
What you've essentially got with this game is a rock solid hack 'n' slash adventure, with ample amounts of diplomacy tacked on for good measure. Often enough a quick bribe or errand can save the bother of a hard and outnumbered battle, but when all else fails you can just use your sword to make people talk. So whilst gameplay-wise Hard to be a God is a real pleaser, it's somewhat disappointing visually, especially inside houses and other buildings. It's not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, it gets the job done but some extra detail in the architecture would easily improve things. Outside you've lush forests, lonely civilians looking for help and vast landscapes, but the character models are really so simple and bland that it stops you from becoming fully immersed within this truly amazing world. And amazing it is - the outside is richly detailed, with settlements stuck in the middle of nowhere and many paths to investigate. It's just such a shame that when you come to a town you didn't expect that you're met with some tired and drab-looking buildings. Also, I found in the preview code that sound was few and far between, with very little ambient noises when venturing out in the wild and repeated stances and voices from enemies; hopefully something that can and should be sorted out for when the full retail version rolls out onto shelves this April.
Developers Burut CT must also be great fans of Lost, because the way you're drip-fed the storyline to get players to keep on going to find out more smacks of the multi award-winning TV series, and luckily you'll find gameplay so engaging that, like me, you'll spend far longer than you intended furthering the plot to find out more morsels of information. What also excels is the ability to ship in items from Earth - guns easily win over bow and arrows - so quite often you'll keep on playing to see which awesome weapon you can order next. Using such items attracts the attention of the locals however, who are still stuck in the past in terms of technology and will swarm to you to sort out their problems, thus distracting you from your real goal.
Hard to be a God takes a lot from Fable, or at least reminds me of it, because as you progress your character changes visually to show how he has evolved from his innocent start. Each piece of armour added to your inventory and weapons slung over your back get bigger and beefier to show how much stronger you have become during your quest for information. It's a very subtle way of advancing, even if you can't choose a starting race or gender, and although options for skill customization are fairly restricting and shallow, the ability to blend into different classes and factions by changing your clothes opens up more doors for personalization. This also offers new strategy for missions - killing bad guys and assuming their identity allows you to sneak in easily and fight behind enemy lines. The opposition are also very well skilled, meaning that at a low level you have to be even more cunning, using the environment and situations to overcome the problem without getting your arse kicked.
Hard to be a God is certainly well worth a play through on a long weekend home from work, and then some afterwards too. You've got an exciting and intriguing storyline, rock solid gameplay and basic yet effective visuals that just get the job done - everything a good RPG should be.
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