Story is intriguing in the beginning, dulls after a while. Puzzles are kind of annoying in this game. Loot does not reflect on your characters looks, and loot is basically just stat upgrades.

HOWEVER, Gameplay is SOLID. Very fun. Very tactical. Has a tactical pause system and making a wrong decision in battle wether that be your positioning or focusing the wrong guy first or missing an ability timing... can kill you. The cons mentioned up above are annoying yeah, but overall in a game like this , the gameplay is the most important part to me. I bought it at full price and was pleased with my experience. If you're not sure, wait for a sale and then DEFINITELY pick it up.

Each character has 4 main abilities. As you level up characters in the game, you can allocate stat points into these abilities. Each ability has a tree that branches out into different paths. You can basically max two of any of the eight branches on each character, thus customizing their playstyle. You can have a mage healer, or they can be a damage dealer or a mix. You can implant a seed that will explode if you kill the enemy within x number of seconds, and the explosion can do a heal AOE to teammates caught within range of said explosion, or you can max a completely different ability.

There end up being eight playable characters, and you make a party of four. You choose the four. Seriously, the gameplay styles are really left in your hands with how you want to play the game. Very wise on the devs part. These are the reasons the gameplay is so satisfying. When all the abilities in your party go off just right and you completely wreck a mob... it feels pretty good.

Tactical party-based rpg with heavy focus on combat

Good points:
Nice story
Interesting Characters
Challanging tactical combats
Well balanced combat system
Cheap
Riddles lighten the gameplay up from time to time

Bad Points:
Very straight forward with little space to explore and no alternative solutions
Short
Little point in replaying, else than doing the ragnarok achievments
Disappointing end
Riddles are too easy
No influence on character devlopment (in terms of roleplay, not in terms of skills! you have all freedom there)

Conclusion:
I would recommend the game to everyone who misses Baldurs Gate /Icewind Dale or challanging combat rpgs in general.
Do not assume it to have the character or story depths of said games though, or you will be disappointed!

Aarklash: Legacy is a great game. When I first bought it, the voice acting, dialogue, and poorly written skill descriptions (there are a lot of them) scared me away. Everything else about this game brought me back in.

During the first few fights of the game the pause function seems really gimicky. But it quickly makes this game playable, and interesting. Because you can take your time, learning everything about a fight and making the best reactions, the games dificulty rapidly increases, making some fights brutal, but ultimately fair.

If you like killing stuff just cause, learing and adapting, character advancement and sweet, sweet loot, then ready your credit card. Be prepared to skip some awkward cutscenes and disable the onscreen tutorials.

6.5/10

Fun game with significant flaws. A lot of people compare it with Baldur's Gate but it has more in common with Freedom Force and other tactical games with "less RPG" and more "tactics" due a heavy emphasis on micromanagement and less so on itemization and characterization. Character customization is fun but fairly linear and you can respec your characters outside of combat at any time. Battles can be fun and difficulty is somewhat high by today's standards. Graphics are pretty good.

Some may enjoy the puzzles in this game and range from condescendingly easy to slightly annoying but solvable. I feel that they are a detriment because they're too easy for fans of puzzle solving and annoying to fans of pure micromanagement. The story is largely ignorable and the voice acting is mostly very bad. There's a lot of poor grammar within the tooltips and the dialogue.

The item system is one of the worst I've seen in a game. You can outfit your characters with various trinkets and jewelery for small stat increases, but progression is mostly very flat. It's fun in games like Baldur's Gate to find various weapons with neat mods but in this game it begins to feel like a chore to make sure your healer upgrades his "+5% healing done" trinket to "7% healing done." There's certainly no meaningful customization to be done with the items either because the mods are so linear, so they would have been better off not having items in the first place a la Freedom Force.

The game is pretty short, but if it were any longer it would get repetitive. I wouldn't pay full price for it.

In short:

THE GOOD:
-Challenging tactical "RPG" that demeands significant micromanagement
-Simple, but effective customization of character trees allows for a decent variety of gameplay options
-The game knows its audience and doesn't cram storyline down your throat

THE BAD:
-Tooltips and dialogue lack polish
-Poor storyline, weak voice acting
-Itemization is weak
-Relatively short game
-Puzzles often feel more annoying than thought provoking

Overall, it's a decent game for the right gamer, but I wouldn't pay full price for it.

Have you ever heard of Aarklash: Legacy before? Probably not.

Should you be playing Aarklash: Legacy? Well, let me put it this way: did you enjoy Icewind Dale or Dragon Age: Origins' frequent "real time w/ pause" combat? If the answers to these questions are "Yes" then Aarklash is for you!

Not much of a story but one hell of an experience, Aarklash: Legacy presents challenging, exciting isometric RPG combat in a way that hasn't been seen for years. While essentially a linear slaughter from one story event to the next, Aarklash delivers it's frantic tactical battles wrapped in a beautiful aesthetic.

This is the kind of game you buy not just to enjoy, but to also ensure the possibility of an even bigger sequel.

Absolutely worth it. Plays like a charm. Quality graphics. Skill trees actually enhance your playstyle. If you liked Baldur's Gate and if you liked raiding in any MMO, your going to enjoy the epic simplicity of Aarklash. 100% worth the price.

This game is boring. Thats basically it. After a while the game just gets dull and monotonous, it because more annoying than fun. You don't get to customize your characters (though the character designs are pretty cool), and there are only earings, artifacts, and rings, which just improve stats, the models don't change at all. So with this, (and some really meh voice acting) you don't really get attached to the characters.

Other things that don't change: character abilities. You like having four of the same abilities for each character for the entire game? I don't. On level up you can spend a point to make the ability cost less mana, or do more damage, or heal more, but at the end of the day they are the same. Yawn.

Also, some of the mechanics are just, well, kinda stupid. You have a tank character that has to spend health to use abilities. Your healer cannot regenerate mana and so has to steal it from your two other allies, a rogue and a mage, and they can get busted up really badly. So all you are doing is just constantly healing your tank, juggling the health of your two other characters, and trying to keep the healer with enough mana. At first this kind of sounds interesting, but after a while, and a lot of fighting, it just gets really, really annoying.

Other people may have fun playing this, and it does have a good strategy game at it's core, its just too bland and boring for me, and annoying. 3/10

I bought it on a whim based on some positive discussions I happened across on this form and was totally blown away with the story (not finished), the art, the mechanics, character progression, and the gameplay.


You control a group of 4 characters that each have a very distinct ability set. Each character has 4 basic abilities that can be leveled seperately and the choices are never easy and ofcourse lead to replayability. The beauty of the system is that their ability is used most effectively when chaining off another character's ability which leads to very satisfying combos.

The game is an RTS but with spacebar pause (you will spend a majority of your time paused). Even as a dad, I enjoyed sharing this with my son where I could pause, and then illustrate the value of group dynamics and cool synergies that can exist within.

Tactically, it's a treat with a lot to offer and the art style is simply stunning! Although the game offers the player a wide array of options, it's presented in a beautiful interface that is easy and intuitive to nagivate.

I simply love this title and hope it gets more attention so we can see more works of art like this in our space.

Aarklash: Legacy is a solid tactical RPG with quite a lot more depth than it initially seems to have. The battle system is reminiscent of those of Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights, using a pausable real-time system that allows you to plan without ever getting bogged down. The character roster seems somewhat limited (you can have four active characters, each with four abilities), but the number of ways to customize each character, and the ways in which you can combine them, give you a surprisingly huge number of options. And if a character isn't pulling his weight, you can respec him whenever you want.

Where the game really shines, however, is the tactical nature of its battles. Simply standing around and hitting enemies with regular attacks is a good way to lose battles quickly. Enemies have multiple abilities and will use them to full effect, and you need to do the same. Heal injured characters, draw foes away from the more fragile members of your team, and pull your characters out of range when foes start charging up their big attacks - or just knock them down to disrupt their ability.

Aarklash: Legacy isn't quite like any other game I've played, in a good way. It's a refreshing tactical experience in which every victory feels earned.

I grabbed this game on sale, and it's been really enjoyable. I bought the game for the tactical combat which I read was good, and it really is. Though, it gets a bit boring towards the end, and the last fight is probably the simplest and dullest in the game.

Other than the combat.. eh. I liked the characters, but the voiceovers were mediocre to awful. Plot doesn't really exist, and the loot is incredibly boring.

Also the game did it's best to murder my GPU via overheat. I've never played a game that caused as much GPU heat before. Eh.

This is a fantastic game, I had a blast playing it and it challenged my tactical abilities quite a bit, even though I only played on regular difficulty. Not sure if I'll be up to the challenge of Rag'narok difficulty, but I'm going to have to try!

The setting is extremely unique, and while I was put off by the odd cast of characters initially, they quickly becamse extremely likeable and entertaining. The voice acting in this game also stands out as being extremely good, and is a large part of why I enjoyed the story so much.

My only recommendation to the developers is that there be more variety in the types of enemies encountered. I would say that there were maybe 20 different types of enemies encountered throughout the game, and they usually come in packs of 4-7, so you will see the same enemies quite a bit. That being said, the abilities possessed by the enemies are unique and give the game its challenge. When you get your healer charmed and your tank frozen, you quickly realize you need to figure out who to target first, what preventative measures to take, and how to dodge projectiles.

Pros
Enjoyable level of difficulty.
Variety of tactics to choose from
Interesting story with unique characters
Great voice acting and prety visuals

Cons
Repetive enemy encounters

Great title, considering the price. It's sort of like Diablo and a turn-based squad game had a baby -- Active pause lets you give orders to your squad of adventurers, and then things unfold in real time.
Pros: 1. GREAT atmosphere and novel setting. The STORY itself could be a bit more polished, but the characters have personality and variety. I thought not being able to create your own character (you choose from pregens) would be an obstacle but it's NOT, the players are likable and learning their story is interesting.
2. Novel random look system -- there are no weapons and armor to gather but instead a variety of jewelry you choose for each character. Not the deepest loot system, but I enjoyed it and found it sufficient.
3. Game is challenging and requires REAL strategy. The key to the game is developing your characters abilities to complement each other. You both need things like tanks, healers, and glass cannons AS WELL as characters who's abilities interact in different, and sometimes surprising ways.
4. OPTIONS with your characters. There are eight different characters and they all play differently and synergize with each other in different ways. There is a combination that will be a favorite for anybody, from the most conventional hack and slasher to the most devious min-maxer.
5. Combat is fun, challenging, and interesting. you have to leverage your own abilities as well as deal with the abilities of your opponents - either locking down their skills, stealing them, or dodging them. Likewise you must counter the enemies attempts to do the same.
6. Game is hard enough on normal difficulty but upper difficulties should be challenging to the best strat-rpg'er... and if you like the game enough for a second play-through it promises to remain a challenge.
7. There is plenty of game here. Although quite linear, I've put much time into it and only now have gotten to the third act -- which may or may not be the final one.
8. You can enjoy it in small installments. do a couple of combats in 15-30 minutes, play something else, or slog through it. I've done a bit of both and it's good to have a game that doesn't require a big time commitment to enjoy.

Cons:
1. As I said, it's quite linear. Nothing resembling an open world here, and not much fork in the road either. Still, the ride is scenic and pleasurable, even if it is on rails.
2. Loot could use more variety, though it IS interesting enough to require you to make choices and move things around.
3. As I said, the SETTING is great, but the story is not as great as the characters and world are. I have gone quite far and I know a lot more about the factions in the world than anything meaningful going on between them. And the main bad guy is bad. To nobody's surprise.

All told, I recommend this game -- and can honestly say I'd already be up for a sequel if it ever came out. It does the trick.

Nice little tactical rpg so far. Unique skills that have strengths and weaknesses that make you think not just click. Characters are interesting, skills are interesting. Pretty linear for an rpg. Story is generic, but the gameplay is solid. 6/10.

EDIT: While writing this review and my characters were standing still, Denzil says while waiting "So THIS is tactical in a tactical rpg?" 7/10 now.

This is a good RPG that took me 18 hours to finish. If you don't like puzzles either find a good walkthru or pass on it.

A pure tactical game from Cyanide.
The story lacks taste but the gameplay is flawless for its type and should really keep the genre players on screens till they finish it.
Many RPG elements with big skill trees and diversed classes to have in your fighting party.
Good graphics, nice and atmospheric music all in Cyanide's unique fantasy world of Aarklash.

7/10

Fast paced tactical RPG perfectly realised and priced. It's more hack 'n' slash than mainstream RPG and seems fairly linear but, perhaps surprisingly, this isn't so much of a bad thing. In fact it's fairly original in its approach and I would recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs but would also like to take a break from their sometimes long-winded adventuring with a more high octane game that isn't bogged down by self importance and a large ammount of pointless grindy questing. 80%

Frigging brilliant game.

The combat and skills seem a little shallow for the first dozen or so battles; tank and spank, only 4 skills per character, and the talent trees look very sparse. By the time your starting party memebers reach level 4 and have all their base skills unlocked you might feel like you've reached the end of their variability, and you would be wrong.

The talent trees look sparse because, simply put, there is no fluff to be ignored, like so many other *cough* world of warcraft *cough wheeze* games. Every point in every tree is meaningful. Yes, even the ones that "merely" reduce a spells mana cost by 10% or increase a spells damage by 20%. Those small numbers matter in this game.

Then there are the truly game changing options, like a curse that makes an enemy's incoming heals cause damage to them instead. It sounds like a parlor trick or a gimmick at first, until you encounter enemies that heal themselves for large amounts every time they attack you, or sub-bosses that can heal an ally to full in a split second.

The best part about the talent trees? You can reset them on a per-character basis for free as many times as you want (outside of combat only, of course), to A) check out whether that cool-sounding change to the warlock's nuke attack that turns it into a channeled health drain is as good as it sounds/fits your preferred playstyle, and B) change the tools available to you in combat based on what kinds of enemies you are facing. Find yourself in a new area where none of the above-mentioned self-healing enemies are present? Go ahead and respec your shaman for increased potency on his heals, or even swap him out for a dedicated damage dealer.

As for the combat itself, well, it's a bit like trying to play a relatively simplistic version of some other kind of game *cough* world of warcraft *ahem*, sorry about that. Except your party of 4 is controlled entirely by you. The active-combat-but-with-pause tag applies well, but unlike other entries in the genre (mass effect 2 sort of? KOTOR 1/2, dragon age.. um.. anyone other than bioware making games in this genre?), the combat system feels like it was built around the pausing element specifically, rather than adding the pause option in as a last second adjustment to a game that was too bulky to be practical without it.

Coping with powerful enemies in this game has much more to do with positioning and actively responding to enemy actions, via commands issued during pauses. Where most RPG games expect you to survive a powerful spell by simply having accrued enough experience points from grinding to boost your health and durability stats to the point where enemy attacks are negligible, Aarklash offers you no such opportunity. Dodge or die. (sorry to have to make a pop-culture reference, but it's kind of like Team Four Star's DBZ Abridged Piccolo is watching over your shoulder as you play! You don't want to let Piccolo down, do you?.. he's probably going to hit you in the face if you do)

There are also several steam achievements in the game that are actually difficult to achieve, such as two particularly nasty challenges based on completing certain portions of the game without ever using the pause feature. It is hard. It is also fun, and satisfying to finally succeed. That is all I feel compelled to say about it.

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There are a few downsides to the game I would like to address for the sake of being fair and balanced. The equipment and looting leaves much to be desired, and the ending of the game is one of those "Hey, you guys like sequels right?!" endings. Needless to say, if there is a sequel, I will be first in line with a fistful of dollars to throw unapologetically at the developers.

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Did I mention that Wenzil is awesome?

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Wenzil is awesome.

+ Pretty interesting game with a flexible character build customization, for example, I made one of my tanks into a dmg dealing, self healing monster making her able to do solo what the rest of my team did together in fights.
Really interesting bossfights, due to the possibility of dodging projectiles by moving.
Feels pretty much like a MMO dungeon where you control every player.
Characters interract with eachother in interesting conversations.

- The final difficulty doesn't unlock before you finish the game once.
not much replayability other than beating a tougher difficulty.

There are very few good rpgs published this times.... this is one of them

difficult? yes!
gear is ♥♥♥♥♥♥? yes!

The rest is really nice for me, graphics are lushy and colourful and skilltrees, while limited, tend to custom the user to all kinds of situations, having the change of respec between combats freely.

i haven't finished it yet, because i like to have these games slowly while i greatly enjoy the horizon :)

Aarklash: Legacy has some appeal and the gameplay is solid. This game offers a unique way to battle. If you are a tactical player, I would recommend this to you. However, before you splurge your money on this, know that what this game is missing is substance.

Think of it this way: an empty cup. There’s no water, juice, coffee, etc. All Aarklash Legacy has to offer is gameplay. Aside from the gameplay, the story gets dull really fast. At first, the story may seem appealing, but after a while, the boredom and annoyance will sweep in. Bundled with an underwhelming character cast and voices, Aarklash Legacy makes its a stressful effort to continue playing.

Luckily, Aarklash Legacy is able to slightly redeemed itself with an innovative skill system. Each character has a choice between 4 skills and these skills gets more interesting around late game. Even though, it would be a challenge to continue playing that long, every choice made in the skills and how the characters are maneuvered in gameplay is crucial in succeeding in the battles. The story, voices, characters, and overall repetitious environment of Aarklash Legacy gets itself a big no.

Rating: 5.2/10 (52%)
Achievements: 8/29 (28%)
Game Done.