Knights in shining armor, imposing castles, heretics and the inquisition, everything you would expect from the Middle Ages... and the occasional hero running around in weird armor, brandishing his brand new rocket launcher. Some would say that an RPG that mixes good old fashioned swords with high tech elements like laser guns is a killer combination that is sure to attract a large number of fans, while others remain skeptical. Let`s see if "Hard to be a God" is indeed a revolution for RPG games everywhere, like it was advertised to be.

"Hard to be a God" proved to be one of the worst gaming experiences I`ve ever had. At first, grinding my teeth, I decided to give the game a chance to the very end, but unfortunately the game didn`t give me one. When, near the end, four recent saves (including the quick save and the auto save) were inexplicably corrupted and crashed my game every time I tried to load them, I proceeded with uninstalling the game, feeling great relief in the process.

My name is Bond. James Bond. Oh, wait, it`s not, although it very well could be. Your character is a medieval secret agent of sorts, with a somewhat unclear mission ahead of him. After graduating (read this as "completing the tutorial") you will be sent to Arkanar to complete your assignment. Of course this will mean that you will have to solve a huge number of dumb quests to progress the story. They vary from the simple "take this and deliver it to X" quests, "rescue my children from the woods" quests, or "find out who the superior beings from a different planet located in a parallel universe are" quests. Since these quests provide about 1000 times more experience than killing a monster (no, I`m not exaggerating) it is advisable that you complete as many of them as you can.

While trying to complete the tutorial, the low frame rate of the game finally started getting on my nerves, so I decided to fiddle a bit with the options menu, to see if I could make things smoother. Unfortunately, the three or four options available have no impact what so ever on the performance of the game, and changing the resolution of the game just made it look worse than Diablo 1, so I just had to accept it. As you can imagine, there is no enjoyment to be had when playing at 15 frames per second, although the game`s performance was quickly shadowed by other, more irritating issues.

I quickly realized that this has nothing in common with most RPGs and it`s nowhere near an RPG revolution, more like a complete involution of the genre. First of all, the game can hardly be called an RPG. There are certain elements that define an RPG, and Hard to be a God certainly misses most of them. There is no character customization when starting the game, but I didn`t have a problem with this (remember Dungeon Siege?). I did however mind the fact that this customization is completely absent even during the game. You can`t choose a certain role for you character, such as priest, mage, warrior and so on, and neither can you customize him to fit your playing style. Also, there is no sense of character evolution, you`re as weak at level 15 as you were at level 1.

When leveling up you will receive 3 skill points to place anywhere you desire. It`s not like you have a lot of choices though... You have one skill point to assign to weapon categories (light, medium and heavy) and 2 others to assign to your misc. skills. You will discover that diplomacy is bunched here, together with health, stamina, ranged weapons (why isn`t this in the weapons category?) and medicine. Those are all the skill that you have, from start to end. You can assign a maximum of 10 points to each of the weapon categories, and you will unlock certain devastating hits as you progress. Before finishing the game you will receive about 20 skill points to assign to your weapon skills, so you can complete two weapon trees, probably medium and heavy. All fights in the game will then revolve around using your combos (depending on what weapon you are using, you might have access to one or two) and then blocking until their cool down is complete. This monotonous and retarded system will make you try and avoid combat as much as possible, as there is no fun in blocking 90% of the time.