Every now and then a game comes along that redefines a genre or subgenre; a game that changes your assumptions about what is possible; a game that becomes the standard-bearer against which all newcomers are judged.

Warriors of the Lost Empire isn’t one of those. Instead, it is a generic hack-n-slash dungeon crawler with limited combat and a more limited story. Amazingly for a game with such limited scope, each of the four characters has a distinct story entering the game, working through the game and all the way to the end. And while you might not want to play through to the end, fans of the hack-n-slash genre will get several hours of fun from the experience and appreciate that with all the flaws the developers at least took time to add in at least a bit of replayability.

But there are flaws – oh, how there are flaws! First and foremost, *every* dungeon you enter looks identical! OK, that isn’t quite fair – there are ‘early game dungeons’ and ‘late game dungeons’ … so that is variety, right? Not really – it is a singular change that gives you a breath of relief for a second then resumes pure boredom. Think of why you like action-RPGs: interesting and varied challenges against enemies, possibly solid enemy AI that tries to kill you and prevent dying, and a feeling of impending peril that makes you want to avoid dying. None of that is present here – the monster intelligence is poor even by the low standards of the genre, as enemies will stand around as you kill them off one at a time, and if they do notice you, move away and they’ll quickly forget you. Combat is dreadfully boring as all you have to do is button mash throughout – no strategy will help you, as either you are destined to beat the dungeon or be beaten to death. But no worries – there is no penalty whatsoever for dying – you simply restart the dungeon with every item and experience point intact. If that sounds like a formula for sucking the fun out of a game, it is. This is the sort of game that will be an effort to play for an extended time, as quickly you will start finding things such as doing laundry and cleaning floors as exciting alternatives. The game is fun in short bursts, but there are many others that are at least as good – skip this one and get the Dungeon Siege PSP game instead, even with the horrific load timesit is much better.

Tags: Game Reviews