The Black Heart of Exile

[JSH357]

This is the best of the games by Willy that I've reviewed so far, but I'm really still just not feeling it. To start with some positives, I liked the music a lot, and thought it added quite a bit of feeling to the post-apocalyptic atmosphere of the game. While the game mostly consists of mazes, at least in the portion of it that I played, they're pretty decently done.

I liked the pacing of the exposition. You learn more as you progress, which is nice. On the same note, though, I don't care for the preparation phase that precedes playing through the maze. In general, I don't care for games that give me a bunch of options right at the start and leave me hoping I somehow knew my decisions were for the best (unless it's something really simple like Final Fantasy 1). Some people really like that kind of thing; I'm just not a fan.

I went with the fastest character at the start because I expected the battles to be really slow, and sadly, they are still really slow. With the difficulty factor of the game being very high, this doesn't make for a good combo. If I'm going to have to reset a lot, I'd prefer to die faster rather than slower.

This game probably has its market, but I don't think I'm interested in playing any more of it. Spellshard does the dungeon thing a little better in my opinion. That said, the art style is weird and kind of neat, so it's worth a shot.

Rating: 4.5 Bleeding Eyes out of 10