Let me say this first. I REALLY wanted to like this game. Even when it pissed me off, I brushed it off and kept going.

That said, holy god does this game suck. Let's start with the basics.

As anyone who has played the KUF series knows, there is a Light God and a Dark God. They take turns ruling over the land so at one point the Light God controls and civilization thrives. When the Dark God's turn comes, everything gets raped and pillaged and lots of torture happens to the citizens. All of this is fine and dandy until one day the Light God who is sick and tired of seeing all of his hard work destroyed decided to not hand over control as agreed.

Which bring us to the meat of this game. Playing either a Light side or Dark Side character, you're either out to stop the Dark God from regaining control or helping the Dark God keep it. There are 6 characters to choose from, 5 to start and one unlockable. They vary in speed, starting HP, and weapon selection. Each character has about 6 weapon types they can equip. Regnier for example, the guy pictured below favors broadswords, guantlets, whips, and arm cannons.



Graphically the game is average. There are some really beautiful moments in some of the stages, other times there is clipping and some ugly texture work. There is also slowdown due to too many enemies or walking into an area that has a lot of textures on the walls plus enemies nearby.

So how does the game play? My best description for you is take Phantasy Star Online mixed with Dynasty Warriors. It is a pure hack and slash from a third person perspective. While killing and maiming you will find items, gold, armor, weapons, and other equipment to use. You're allowed the use of two weapons (most people do a melee and a ranged weapon), two spells equipped, and two items hotkeyed.

Your melee is as simple as pressing the button. Each weapon has a canned combo of 4-6 hits and they don't vary. So for example, using a 20AP Broadsword does the same combo as a 50AP Broadsword. AP is the damage it will do to an enemy. There is also an SP cost, which brings us to the most hated feature of the game: Stamina points.



Your character has a HP meter and an SP meter. SP is the amount of actions you can do before tiring. So for example, if you have 150SP and the broadsword takes 45SP to swing, you can only swing 3 times in a row before needing to recover. Recovery is handled by your equipment as they all work together to restore SP. So while you may swing 3 times, your SP is constantly recharging and may allow you to swing 4 times in a row before tiring. This brings up synthesis.

Synthesis in the game allows you to combine equipment to make better equipment. AP/SP is based on an average. So combining a 30AP sword with a 40AP sword will make a 35AP sword. Same holds true for SP usage. Also, there are abilities tied to weapons, such as the ability to gain damage done to enemies as SP(a great one to use, you'll be able to attack without stopping) or causing a spell to be randomly cast in battle. This is great for upping attack power as well as enhancing abilities (abilities on weapons can go to level 20) but will also cause the SP usage to go up. So you'll then need to synth the weapon with other items to lower the SP to a better rate.

The same holds true for armor and accessories. You can make a ring that has a healing ability and continue to synth more healing kills into. The drawback is success rate. Every time you synth an item, the chance of the next synth succeeding is lower. To get around this, you can pay gold to make it a 100% success. After synthing my weapon jut 5 times, I was having to pay over 25K to keep it at 100%. Of course you can pay less and have a chance of failure as well. This then becomes a habit of filling your inventory full of crap you pick up just to sell it all to make gold for synthing. It gets annoying quick.

So onto the bad:

So how about magic? First you have to decide what spells to learn. You do this by sleeping and going to the dream world. There you talk to your guide and decide what spells to get. It's not that easy though. You then have a list of enemies you have to kill to learn the spell. This is stupid, because some of the spells (not even the high level ones) depend on you killing for example 5 rare monsters, which can randomly spawn. I literally made it to the end of the game only learning 2 spells out of the 6 I wanted thanks to this.

How about a story? Aside from the opening scenes, the only time the story progresses or you get a quest is by going to the dream world and talking to the guide. Outside of this, there is really no story to talk about. Also the quests are realtively dull as well. Regnier's quests were geared around filling shards with souls. So you set out and kill a ton of undead for the shard of death. Only, the shard stops at 30% full. You don't find out til later on that you have to kill multiple types of undead to fill it. I wasted time killing skeletons and pulling my hair out over why the shard percentage wasn't moving. Also, add in the fact that there are only 5-6 enemy types in each area of the game.

Also, there are no shops in the game. At set points, you will find a spot for an Idol who acts as a shop and gives you a chance to sleep and go into the dream world. There are three idols (Love, Greed, Death) and each of them is stocked with different items (Death carries weapons and the only one with revive items, Love carries armor). So if you need another Idol, you either have to zone to reset the idol, sleep (with its 30 sec load into and out of dream world) or buy an expensive item to change the moon to the time you need. Again, a slightly annoying feat. This is especially bad for Regnier, who has a quest to talk to each idol. I couldn't get Death to appear no matter what I tried and had to spend time zoning and sleeping til he appeared.


Notice the Idol of Love looks like Angelina Jolie?

The biggest flaw of all in the game are ranged attacks. You will literally find enemies who either your shots will pass through with no effect or will BLOCK YOUR SHOTS repeatedly. The entire Ice world is a pain in the ass for this fact. There are enemies who have a spell which causes you to bleed HP if you get close to melee them, yet takes 8 shots to kill even though only 2 have to hit. Add in the fact that there are at least 2 bosses in the game that essentially require ranged attacks to kill, and you will be bored in no time flat.

Also, I'm gonna have to list SP here as well. Swinging 4 times and then having to retreat so I can regen SP is stupid. Nothing like running in, hitting, running away for hours on end.

There is one redeeming factor in the game, and it is 4 player online co-op. Having 3 friends makes the game more fun and easier to tolerate. However even here, there is a glitch. For some reason, voice chat does not work in a private friends game. You have to make your game public and kick people out til you get your friends into the room. This can be addressed with a patch, but this should not have been released like this in the first place.

As I said earlier, I wanted to like this game, I really did. I got fed up at one point due to boredom, but returned for more. But after one of the levels last night, I can't take it anymore. The enemies magical ability to block (which you don't have) and the absurd gameplay rules (fuck SP!) and I don't want to see these same six levels with 5 other characters. Please, make KUF:Dominion so that I can wipe this bad taste from my mouth.

Overall score - 4/10