R.A.W. Realms of Ancient War

In Realms of Ancient War (or R.A.W for short), you assume the role of either a Warrior, Wizard, or Rogue and hack-and-slash your way through hordes of enemies. In terms of story, the realms used to be in conflict until the kings of each realm united to form a pact. During this pact, a Demon appeared and following the battle that ensued, the human, elven and dwarven Kings were sent back to their realms, leaving the Northern King trapped. Ten years later, you set out to release the Northern King, and after a bit of a twist, you then travel to each realm in order to meet the Kings to enlist their help in defeating the Demon.

Instead of your hero arriving in each realm and merely asking to meet the King, he decides to commit mass genocide and wipe out the entire realm. This usually consists of spiders, demons and the local habitants of the realm (humans, elves, dwarfs). RPG's usually have complex stories, but hack-and-slash can be a bit of a mixed bag. R.A.W falls a bit flat, but sometimes you don't need much motivation to battle through hordes of enemies; just a good battle system.

As you level up, you can gain extra abilities which can be mapped to the face buttons of your controller. Health and mana potions are assigned to your triggers, and interacting (collecting items, talking) are mapped to the right-bumper. Battling consists of using your basic attack then using special abilities depending on remaining mana and cool-downs. Sadly, there is no block button which is a travesty in my opinion, because blocking adds an extra dimension when implemented correctly and would give the system more skill and thought.

There are many moments in the game where an insane amount of enemies spawn around you and quickly surround you. Survival only really seems possible when using your abilities wisely. I played through as the Warrior and took good advantage of his ability where attacking restores his HP; so as long as you keep mashing the attack button, you should stay alive.

I heard how hard this game was, so opted to play through on easy. Although I died a fair few times early on, once you develop your abilities and use them tactically, you should be able to stay alive easy enough. I would imagine on harder difficulties that some sections could be infuriating and borderline impossible, but I didn't try it out myself. When you are defeated, you use a 'Soul Stone' and revive from the nearest checkpoint. You can carry up to nine of these, and losing all of them means you will have to restart that level.

It took me about 6.5 hours to run through the entire campaign and I didn't enjoy it enough to warrant trying the other characters or difficulties. Even though I only experienced part of the game, it seems I've come to the same conclusion as most people, that it's just an average game with nothing particularly special about it.