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The FMV cut scenes, as mentioned earlier, are excellent. For such an overused (some might say “timeless”) story arc, the way the developers present it to the gamer is excellent. Putting aside the cliché content, praise must be given to ClockStone for decent execution of the story. Much of the game’s “true” story borrows from the concepts of the original Shining Force, particularly hero’s origin, and the hero/villain relationship. There are some great plot twists, but they are, again, rather cliché. How this portal became opened, and what must be done to close it, consists of the majority of the rest of the game. The academy is over-run by daemons from another world. Well, it could be considered a common backdrop for a fantasy setting, but with the height of the Harry Potter craze just having reached its peak in the past few years, one wonders if ClockStone borrowed a few ideas here and there.Īfter the training missions, the true story starts up.
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Think about it: a young magician sent to a magical school to learn how to wave a wand around and cast spells. It feels a bit like a Harry Potter clone at this point. The early portion of the game sends you on “training” missions, to prepare you for the final examination. You play the part of a young adept, sent to the magic academy of Avencast to become a full-fledged mage. The story was easily the weakest part of Avencast. Certain spells, and some enemy attacks, made noises that didn’t sound the way one would expect them to. Some sound effects just didn’t seem to jive with the actions surrounding them. We don’t know why localization crews for most console RPGs can’t find the right people, but Lighthouse Interactive found good folk to have these archmages and daemons sound just the way you’d imagine they ought to sound. Most people agree on this point you hear one, you’ve heard ’em all.Īll dialogue in the game is voiced, and the English cast was surprisingly good. ClockStone outsourced their music production, and while the music is good, it is standard “PC RPG” fare. Music is sparse, and meant to be background/ambient throughout the game. They are very enjoyable to watch, and they work wonders for bringing a certain mood to the game. Choosing to do these cut scenes in this way was a risky move, but it paid off. The game’s narrator (the man who adopted you when you were an orphaned youngster) speaks through these cut scenes, as one who is remembering something that happened long ago. Now the interesting part is that they also put grain and sepia over all of this, giving it a very “historic” feel. Still 2D character images are placed over it, and are moved from place to place as though a puppetmaster were controlling them.

A beautiful 2D still background is placed, with a “camera” panning in different directions from time to time. The game also features these interesting FMV cut scenes reminiscent of those in Baten Kaitos. This is due to a very limited camera, which I will discuss later in the review. Dungeon/environment design was also strong, but I have one major complaint: no ceilings. Definitely a scary sight, and a formidable opponent to boot. For example, a gaunt, two-headed demon in a humanoid figure has its two heads adjacent, but faces in opposite direction. Character models are decent, and some of the monster designs struck me as unique.
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The biggest issue was load times between areas, and this was only an issue for our less-impressive machines.Įverything in-game is full 3D, of course.
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Our tests showed that the game looks and runs great on high-end gaming PCs, but even on a regular PC (by today’s standards) running the bare minimum requirements, the game can run smoothly and still look pretty good. The “recommended” PC setup is about all you can play the game on, and even then with some slowdown. Some PC games, even after turning off all the shading and bloom effects, just won’t run on the bare-minimum specs. We tested Avencast out on a couple of different systems, and what we found was some reassuring news. However, they also require some high-end specs. How does this game look? In a word: beautiful. The game is not without its flaws, but overall, this game is a huge success, especially as a first-timer’s project. Now the game is out, and we’ve played it from beginning to end. Then, we saw some screens and gameplay footage.

As it turns out, ClockStone is a small game development studio based in Austria furthermore, “Avencast” is their first big project, and it’s been in development for a few years now. But what did get our attention was that the game was developed by ClockStone. When we at RPGFan learned that there was yet another generic Diablo-esque Action RPG coming out for the PC, we weren’t excited.
