Requital is a wholly
forgettable game. So much so that when I checked the web sites of the
publisher, Akella software, and the game developer, Primal software, I
was unable to find any mention of the game much less patches for the
silly and obvious bugs that riddle the game.
Requital
claims to be a free form RPG, but reduced to its simplest form Requital
is mostly a simulation of playing fetch. Usually you have to fetch the
whats-it for someone, but occasionally the whats-it is a whos-it for
varieties sake. In any case you slaughter everything between where you
start the quest and where you finish it unless they are merchants, then
you sell the hundreds of items you have looted. There is no subtlety
to the game play at all, rather it's over the top kill everything and
rescue the helpless quest givers. It takes this concept to such an
extreme that at times I couldn't decided if this was supposed to be
funny or if it was taking itself seriously.
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Wolfhound the Barbarian!
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Bosses are load bearing AND explosive.
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The game is visually very pretty with excellent pallet choices and
artwork. Day/night cycles give gorgeous sunsets and sunrises changing
the colors of everything you see. The game world is completely three
dimensional and you view your character from a third person chase
camera view throughout the entire game. Many cut scenes are written
into the plot, and they are all rendered using the game engine and set
into a letterbox view. Unfortunately, you are strictly limited on
where you can wander in these beautiful databases. Most of your
travels are along pathways between villages and quest sites. There are
some areas of the game where you can wander off-road but they are few
and far between, and there is no reward for free form exploring.
Requital is a straightforward quest on rails with the player character -
who is usually, but not always, called Wolfhound - lead from quest to
quest as if by a ring in his nose, or the bat on his shoulder. I never
believed in Wolfhounds motivation for undertaking the overarching story
quest and it's best to just forget all that and treat the game as a
chance to swing a sword, or axe, or stick, or dagger, or cudgel, or bow
or one of the other many weapons you can collect. The fights usually
result in messy puddles of blood so if graphic violence bothers you be
sure to give this game a miss.
Disengaging your brain when
playing Requital is extremely advised since the game presents many
puzzling design choices. The first bit of bizarreness was the install
that ran an install program from the DVD that installed to a 1 GB
install folder that ran an install program to install a 1 GB game
folder. Puzzled yet? Wait, you will be. As you play you gain points
and bonus point points. Points can be used to level up traditional RPG
type skills like strength and constitution and speed. Bonus point
points can be used to purchase special attacks and character
improvements. You gain points and bonus point points by gaining
levels, and by gaining close in levels, and by gaining hand to hand
levels, and by gaining ranged levels. The design team should have
bought a thesaurus.
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The coveted UnitName armor.
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Bad guys. Now with convenient labels.
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Other silly design choices include the
aforementioned day/night cycles, as they have no effect on the game
other than to make things hard to see at night. Villagers and bad guys
alike don't care what the sun is doing. The camera always swings
around to chase your character anytime he moves which causes fights
with multiple opponents to become a chance to practice your cursing as
you struggle to target the next opponent instead of moving. I died and
reloaded in many fights because of this problem. And finally the game
has a penchant for playing soft jazz and gentle piano solos
throughout. Personally, I don't make a connection between the
berserker type warrior bent on bloody vengeance for his decimated clan
and soft jazz music, but maybe that's just me.
I found a few
bugs in the program as well, although nothing that was a game killer.
The introduction splash screen never displayed for me. It took
clicking my mouse button to get the black display to change to the main
menu page. Many items in the game world are named and described by
programmer tags like UnitName.Armor_BodyM_02.Short.Itigul. I always
wanted a UnitName armor. The game also locked up on me twice during
game play forcing me to quit the program using the windows Task
Manager. On one quest to translate what some vital runes said, I succeeded
the quest in spite of never telling me what the translation was.
The
game dialog was clearly localized into English by non-native English
speakers. There are multiple odd word choices and extremely stilted
sentence construction. While it's technically accurate the odd
phrasings and word usage breaks any suspension of disbelief you might
have worked up. One of the funniest parts of the game, I'm sure
unintentionally, is the voice acting. In addition to the voice acting
rarely matching the displayed dialog almost all of the voices sound
echoed and strange as if they turned their restroom into the recording
studio for a day. I was half expecting to hear a flush in the
background. The voice acting is uniformly lacking in emotion, treating
the price of healing potions with just as much drama as the threat
imposed by the evil cult you discover is behind all the woe in poor
Wolfhounds life.
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Got weapons?
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Massage your medkit to heal quicker.
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Opponent AI is very weak and their stupidity
can often be used against them by drawing off single and pair opponents
out of a pack to slaughter while the rest of them stand a few feet away
watching with disinterest. There are multiple side quests that should
improve the feeling of openness in the game but fail to achieve this
because of their silliness. For example, get the flowers for the one
guy so he can propose to his girlfriend. Dude, get your own flowers
already, plus how are you going to commit to a marriage if you can't
commit to picking some flowers? I felt like lecturing him instead of
helping. You do have the options of telling any quest giver No – but
there is no reward for the player other than feeling like a big mean
bully for doing so. There is no moral ambiguity in the game and no
consequences to any of your actions other than what is scripted into
the main plot.
The primary appeal of this game is the visual style but that advantage
is quickly overcome as the game design choices, bugs and uninspired and
repetitive game play is revealed. I expect that soon, just like the
developer and the publisher, I'll never mention this game again.
Top gaming moment: The moment I laughed out loud because I could have sworn that Wolfhounds pet bat was cawing like a crow.
