Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone

The Good
Forgotten Realms Demon Stone was a game that showed promise for me for many reasons, like the story being written by one of my favorite fantasy authors R.A. Salvatore and the fact that not only is their a cameo from familiar characters from the D&D Universe, The legendary Drizzt Do’ Urden is playable in one level and it’s a hack and slash action game, what could go wrong?

Well first off the developers of this game also developed the abysmal LOTR TT game, still this alone was not enough to keep me from playing. The lack of multiplayer did not deter me because you can play as Drizzt but sadly in practice its not as cool as it should being that Drizzt is one of the best swordsman in all of Faerun but yet he can be defeated by a bunch of trolls… Right but more on the bad later.

The good qualities are going to be very brief including the references to other things in the D&D world but as a lot of them are poorly executed its also a bad thing.

The Bad
Much like Pink Floyd, the developers of this game suffered a momentary lapse of reason because, not only do they not get this universe well,by getting all the facts wrong for EX: In a level in which you explore the Pitch Black, Underdark but the humans in your party can see perfectly well, but also they did not fix any of the problems their LOTR game had, awful camera, lack of multiplayer, poorly designed levels and missions.

The graphics are abysmal specially for an Xbox game I could see this for a PS2 game but come on! The sound was surprisingly well done having well orchestrated and fitting music and sound fitting to the appropriate world and settings.

The story is some of the most typical pieces of crap ever of coarse I saw this knowing well that the story was written by R.A. Salvatore but the only way he could of wrote this was if he had been pressured to write something quickly without thinking about it.

It’s the typical three heroes band together by fate and have to stop an Ancient incredibly powerful creature they helped create with some of the most boring and stupid characters ever created, The human warrior haunted by the invasion of his home town by monsters, a cookie cutter wizard character and the Half Drow Half Wood Elf who is too stupid to realize how evil the drow are wishes to be one until she meets Drizzt, I would expect this story and characters to come from a RPG from Japan specifically Final Fantasy.

Now back to how being Drizzt isn’t as cool as it should be so there is a mission where your party goes to Mithril Hall and it gets attacked by Trolls so, you start to control Drizzt and you’re feeling fine then you realize it takes forever For Drizzt to kill a troll, now I’m pretty damn sure a renegade and extremely skilled dark elf with two magical Scimitars would have an easy time killing simple monsters and also the trolls can break into Mithril Hall quite easily and you lose, now anyone who knows anything can tell you it is not that easy to break into a heavily fortified base and even if they do get inside Mithril Hall there are Thousands of dwarves that would slaughter them, it makes little sense.

The Bottom Line
I do not recommend this game to anyone ever in this world because it will destroy your soul!

The Good
'Demon Stone' is, if not anything else, very easy game to get into. It actually is very easy game in general, so if you don't have anything crucial to do and you need to kill a couple of minutes (which is relatively easy with 'Demon Stone' as some levels can be played through in a couple of minutes.) before doing something important. And I also got it for very cheap.

Graphics are generally nice and voice acting, even though far cry from phenomenal, does its job decently. Though Patrick Stewart has done better job in the past.

You play with three different characters: a fighter, a mage and a thief, which all have different equipment and attacks. The change between characters is easy, especially if you have a good game pad, which feels the right choice when this game is played.

Gameplay works pretty well, as the camera mostly stays in a good position, though sometimes, when a horde of creatures try to mangle you and your three companions the characters seem to get lost in the middle, but luckily you just need to press the attack buttons and the characters will hack their way to freedom.

The Bad
I'll be blunt here: I would have been a bit mad if I would have paid full prize out of this game, as it is SHORT. I mean really short. More experienced players will go through it in less than eight hours. And the game isn't exactly clever with its plot line either: Salvatore has managed to produced another generic and cliché ridden piece of fantasy so typical to his works, that its not even funny.

The Bottom Line
Even though 'Demon Stone' is described as a RPG game, the truth is, it really isn't that. It's more of a mix between 'Mortal Kombat' and other beat'em'ups, and your generic third person action games. After each level you gain experience and gold which you can use to upgrade your characters and gain new attacks, skills or weapons and armor.

If you are in a need of a easy and quickly solvable action game, then maybe 'Demon Stone' is for you, but I would suggest caution though, as there really isn't anything in it, that would really stand out. If you aren't a fan of Salvatore or Patrick Stewart that is...