Action-RPGs are particularly hard to expand, thanks to Bizzard’s robust Diablo series making it virtually impossible to expand on its fantastic formula, which left a game like Titan Quest to borrow most of the series’ ideas but change the setting. The result was great, but nevertheless stale for gamers that have spent hundreds of hours in the Diablo world. Silverfall steps in with a unique change, not only in its presentation, but also providing gamers with an array of ideas that not only work well, but also offer a nice retreat from the typical Diablo-clone formula. In Silverfall, there’s a touch of Diablo, a pinch of Sacred, and a whole bunch of new ideas that couldn’t be faulted by any action-RPG fan.
From what we could tell from the intro, the story follows the destruction of a great city after an invasion from hordes of monsters. Following the wake of destruction, the people of Silverfall are left to reform in a marsh full of zombies and other creatures, and ultimately decide their fate by aligning with the forces of nature or science. The theme of nature and science works its way into much more than the story, allowing gamers to choose what factions they can talk to, what items they can use and ultimately what quests they can accomplish. The quests that we participated in, and the story elements that we could gather, weren’t that enticing, nor was it a drawing factor for the game. There didn’t seem to be much intensity or an exciting story to follow, but hopefully later in the game the nature versus science theme comes into play, and your quest is a bit more meaningful.
Yep, I chose a female as my main character. So what?
The gameplay of Silverfall is much like any other Western styled RPG ever made, combining heavy influence on character development, as well as standard hack-and-slash gameplay and interaction. The world of Silverfall is a relatively large one, and the main quest is expected to last up to 25 hours, with many more hours expected to be spent in the game’s multiplayer mode and optional quests. There will be four playable races - human, elf, goblin, and troll - allowing you to customise their appearance and gender. One of the game’s appealing features is that each zone you enter scales accordingly to your current level, meaning that you won’t be ever hard-pressed by difficult or easy encounters.
From the several hours we devoted to the game, we noticed a distinct range of quests available for gamers to accomplish. Most are structured similarly to any other RPG like World of Warcraft where you’ll need to participate in parties to defeat large monsters, while there are a variety of fetching quests such as finding treasure boxes or a certain amount of spider eggs. Parties seem to be well incorporated too. Unlike a game like Neverwinter Nights 2, where the party tends to get in your way more often than serving any purpose, your occupying members can be ordered to strictly heal you or fight alongside you - you know, being helpful.
The skill system seems a tad unbalanced from what we experienced. There are no classes, but you can distinguish your character by giving him/her certain skills such as magic abilities, enhanced bow skills and sword attributes, and this flexibility means you can be a hybrid of classes. Unfortunately however, it's difficult to successfully make a sole magic user without suffering badly during combat. Your spells are usually relatively weak and slow compared to, say, using a fist weapon and placing a few skill points into an area that increases your attack speed. It was often difficult to cast spells from a distance without being absolutely slaughtered in hand-to-hand combat. Admittedly though, we didn’t get a chance to look into all of the spell-specific skills, so perhaps it’s easier to excel in combat once learning the deeper skills; we did notice that opting for hand-to-hand combat skills made the game much easier to approach though.
Comic book inspiration or the French just being plain old crazy?
You will be able to map your skills to keys, allowing you to swing through your abilities on the fly by pressing the number keys. It’s quite effective and is easy to use, since you can press '2' to use long ranged attacks and then press '1' once enemies become within hand-to-hand combat range. With such flexibility there will be a number of options to choose from when encountering enemies.
Evidently, the most unique feature of Silverfall is its slightly cel-shaded/comic book style incorporated into the game. Characters often look as though they’ve been extracted from a comic book; meanwhile environment detail is often quite vibrant, offering a nice retreat to your typical realistic approach to games.
Our opinions are split in two at this stage. On one side we were pleasantly pleased by the overall presentation and ideas incorporated into Silverfall, making it one of the most unique action-RPGs for years. However, on the other hand, there are a number of bugs, interface issues and features that feel terribly cumbersome compared to recent endeavours from Titan Quest and Diablo.
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