Silverfall (PC)

You get to choose up to two additional followers/henchmen as the story progresses and you can swap them out for new ones. You don’t control them directly but you can issue orders and so on, set their behaviour. Silverfall doesn’t break any new ground regarding this, but as I often say: if it’s not broken – why fix it?

Silverfall is a fairly generic game in most of these respects, what it does, it does reasonably well. The theme of nature against technology has been used before but in Silverfall they have implemented this story element very well.

Some people have said that Silverfall is a cell-shaded game, it might look cell-shaded, but it’s not. The developers have used a graphical trick by adding a thick black line around the graphics. The graphical detail in the game is fairly decent, there are some noticeable clipping errors from time to time on some of the structures, but you’re usually so involved in the battles you don’t actually care.

It has some superb lighting effects as well as shadows and the spells are some of the most vibrant I’ve seen in a game to date.

The AI is the typical fairly mob-orientated AI that most RPGs have and the game has a proper physics system so that when a monster is hit by a powerful spell, they flail around in a satisfying manner. The level of animation and character detail is good as well, with the actual battle animations performed with style.

The music of Silverfall is varied, it all has a sweeping epic nature to it and of course it echoes the theme of conflict between nature and technology. Those areas that are in the sway of the machine are definitely more clunky music wise, harsher and some pieces bring to mind mechanics. This is in sharp contrast to the natural themes that are flowing, sweeping pieces.

The sound in the game is good, they have a good range of spot effects and audio pieces, and nothing put me off.

The voice acting in Silverfall ranges from good to bad, there are some really cringe-worthy voices but these seem to be par for the course in RPG’s unless you have a massive budget to hire well known voice actors.

For those of you that tire of a single player romp you can take the whole thing online, party up with friends on the net or a LAN. Silvefall has several MP modes and options to set the gaming experience to your liking. You can form a party of friends and tackle the game’s story together.

So all in all Silverfall doesn’t deliver too bad a game, it’s highly generic in places but most fantasy is. It has a good solid engine and there were some quest related bugs still prevalent, one early build had a show-stopping bug that I couldn’t replicate in this version so it seems that the developers actually quashed that one.

I found myself being pulled into the game fairly quickly and I did like the way that Silverfall handled the equipping of a character, it was easy to see what I had equipped and what the new equipment would do regarding replacing weapons stats and important information.

If you’re looking for a decent RPG until the next big one hits, then you can’t go far wrong with Silverfall.