They ruin the game, frankly. It’s a great idea – each member of the team has unique weapons and magic. It ruins the game for one simple reason – in almost every situation where you’d like to make use of magic (basically, every fight), things are happening so fast you don’t have time to switch characters and cast. Also, most of the time half of them are knocked out before you even have the chance. With one character’s arm-mounted minigun, which should be a butt-kicking weapon, it takes 700,000 rounds to kill an enemy. And that’s just the non-bosses. Playing on easy.

It does look good. Some complain the surroundings are a bit repetitive, but you are in a desolate ruin, not some nearly pristine relic site like in a Tomb Raider game, so to me it fits. The enemies look good and are genuinely mean, and the way a swarm of flies appears and whisks their corpses away was a pleasant surprise. It’s great for fans of the gore factor, too.

If this had teammates that don’t die at the drop of a hat, gave you a little more health to work with (you die a lot, and die, and die, and die, again and again and ag. . . ), and paused when you bring up the character select, it would be a much better game. Maybe it would even be better without the magic, as a straight ahead shooter. In any case, it simply fails to deliver on its concept.

I’ll definitely finish it (or try to), because it certainly does have its good points, but won’t be keeping it. The team system is badly flawed and what magic they do have isn’t all that fun to use anyway. Taken simply as a shooter, there’s nothing special about it. I’d say rent or buy on the cheap.
Rating: 2 / 5