Score
Gameplay:	8
Graphics:	8
Sound:	6
FunFactor:	7
PlasmaFactor:	7
Overall:	7.2

GODS: Lands of Infinity Special Edition Review
August 30, 2007 by Whitney Booker

Gods: Lands of Infinity Special Edition is a beautifully rendered RPG. The premise of the story is not undone in its medieval fantasy setting, but it provides an intriguing spin and a hint of mystery to spice up the story line. The main character, Vivien’s, role and destiny in the world that she lands in serves as the catalyst for your interest in the story. We know her origins and purpose as it was assigned to her. Finding out how she will affect the world she has landed in, and what the prophecy of that world states about her spurs the story, as well as you, as the player, on.

Swashbuckling Good Fun

 

The gameplay of Gods is very simplistic, yet effective. It is a traditional turn-based RPG. Moving is done by left-clicking on where you would like to go and the right-click button is used for looking around, either while walking or when stationary. Battles are also handled with the mouse. When a battle is initiated, a menu appears with the following options; attack, magic, inventory, formation, defend, and run away. Left-clicking on the action you want to perform gives you more options, if there are any.

Actions such as run away, are pretty self-explanatory and have no further sub-options. However, defend serves a further purpose than it does in most RPGs. Not only does it reduce the amount of damage you would normally receive, but it also adds back to your lost Attack Power (AP).Vivien and any other ally characters you may happen to pick up along the way have a limited number of AP. Actions such as magic spells and attacks tend to use minimal AP early on in the game, but you only start out with about three or four AP to begin with. The first enemies you encounter should not exhaust this limited AP (assuming there is only one), but if there are more, your AP will not last you through the battle. Therein lies the second purpose of the defend battle option.

The way money is earned in Gods differs from other RPGs. Interestingly, and sometimes unfortunately, just winning a battle does not result in payment and you must perform services or sell items to make money. Like in the real world, humans are the only beings that you can earn money from. You must sell or trade goods. You can also perform a number of mercenary duties like killing monsters, being an armed escort, or kill human enemies to get their gold. There are no animals or monsters mysteriously walking around with a pocketful, or paw-full, of gold coins!

Earning money in Gods is not the only real-world approach to the gameplay. Your characters can only carry what their bags can fit, and this is limited to a set number of specific types of items. If you run out of room on the inventory screen, then you won’t be able to stuff anything more into your bag. Also, your characters can only carry items they have the strength to haul around. The more you increase the strength attribute of your character, the more they can carry without penalty. Penalties range from walking slower to not being able to move at all. This means that you can kick as much bad guy butt as you want, but since they will be dropping all manner of items from claws, to skins, to eyes, you will need to head back to town frequently to unload.

Of course there is another solution to this problem. One of the side quests you will encounter will be a man and woman who need you to escort them to the mill to have their grain milled. Your character, being broke, gladly accepts this job, and you even get paid for your services. But there is a second part to this mission: once there grain is milled, they will want you to escort them back. This all goes according to plan until you leave the town and treachery ensues! They are like leachy vampires, clinging to you even after getting to the mill. They stay with you, contributing nothing to your party, standing in the background as you fight, doing nothing. Did I mention that they eat your food too? If you don’t feed them or their food and water get low, then you can’t make camp. So you must feed them and do all the hard, dirty work while they do nothing. But they do provide a solution to your packing problem! Use them as pack mules; unload all your stuff on them so that you can avoid having to go to town for a little.

All of these unique little aspects make this a very good game, but the one thing to be said against the gameplay is the absence of an in-game tutorial. You can get hints on what to do or where to go next, but the game is sadly lacking the essential in-game tutorial. Granted, some things are intuitive and really only a person with the mind of a red brick would not be able to figure them out, but others require a little instruction. A tutorial on how to use your alchemy would be extremely useful, but is sadly lacking.

 

An Adonis in Looks

 

The graphics of Gods blows both hot and cold. Overall, the graphics are great, but these same graphics make the kinks all the more noticeable. There are some characters that look great with well applied textures and you can tell a lot of work went into creating them. But then there are those that look like they were rushed out of the character assembly line factory without a proper inspection. There aren’t too many of these, but there are enough to tell the difference between the ones with a lot of effort and the ones that were made as an afterthought. The thing that really kills the overall score for the characters of the game is this inconsistency in the design and modeling.

Then there is the environment modeling. There are some sizeable glitches in the modeling of the trees of this game. Branches on some trees have parts that extend far beyond where any tree’s branches should extend. And these branches gone awry sometimes turn like weather vanes above your head. If it was just the mistake of the branch artifact overextending the model, it might not have been noticeable, but the twirling really can’t be ignored.

Back to the good points, and there are many. This game is beautiful. The environments are astounding, especially the texture maps. The maps that the makers have wrapped the buildings and environments with are so good that I had to walk into a wall just so that I could examine it further. And the water, silly as it sounds, is pretty extraordinary. I don’t know if I’ve seen better animated or textured water in a game without it being in a full motion video. The look of the game is so beautiful overall that it far outstrips any kinks in the graphics.

 

Resonance Falling Just Short of Godhood

 

Alas, the sound falls short where the graphics stepped up. The music of Gods is average, nothing that really blows your mind from the beauty of it. The compositions are what you would expect of a fantasy RPG and nothing really beyond that. The sound is clear with no pops or annoying and unneeded reverb. Technically, it is well done, creatively, it is lackluster. The voice acting is only so-so. Some characters’ voices do not seem to fit the character’s design or personality. And even though some characters have very good voices that fit them perfectly, the excellently chosen actor is usually undone by their lack of acting. The voice-acting overall for this game is painfully bad. In this aspect, the ratio of good voice-acting to bad voice-acting is very uneven. There is precious few decently acted voice work. This tends to make the fact that the characters only speak for a few lines before you read the rest of the dialogue a relief.

 

Onward to Mercenary Duty!

This is an undoubtedly fun game. The fact that you have to do favors for people to make any money or progress further is what makes this game. You start to feel like a mercenary or bounty hunter, or even a private eye by the time you complete a few quests. You can complete any number of quests from escorting people to a different town, to defeating monsters, to defeating threats to the kingdom. (Where the soldiers are who are supposed to be doing these things are, I don’t know.) But you get to make some interesting choices about which quests you take on and how you complete them. One quest has you track down the missing wife of the head of a town. When you find her, you can drag her back to town kicking and screaming, or you can let her stay with her new beau and just tell her husband that she’s dead. Choices like these affect how much money you get for the mission and holding off from an offer can get the person to up their offer. Strangely, I find this aspect of mercenary duty and haggling over the price of a service fun. After all, you can experience many variations of these quests depending on how you handle them.

Plasmafactor

The one factor that sets this game apart from others would have to be the story. Wars between gods may not be anything new, but Vivien’s place in the story is fascinating. Also, you can’t help but be curious about Vivien’s role in this world she has landed in and what the prophecy of that world says of her. So, points for drawing you into the story, and keeping your interest.

 

A Resolution of Epic Proportions

This game is a must for RPG fans. Experiencing a slightly different take on the traditional RPG formula is refreshing. The real world physics of Gods makes this game unique to others in the genre. Players will likely find the inventory and money making scheme to be interesting and an overall asset to the game. And this game is certainly worth having a look over just for the graphics which are, as I have said, superb. The sound definitely could do with an overhaul but it doesn’t ruin the whole experience of the game. Try Gods, you will likely find it just as fascinating as I have.