Reviews - Latiro

After being blown away by Nehrim, my expectations were incredibly high for SureAI's next behemoth. In Nehrim I embarked upon vast lands which varied depending on where you went, I met original characters and beasts who were far more complex than any philosopher, and I became a slayer of gods in the process. With a sword in one arm and an attractive companion in the other, I was an unstoppable force. That feeling of godliness died the moment I entered my second hour in Enderal. Maybe my expectations were a little too high.

I was under the impression that I was entering a world full of dark storylines and many secrets, but that was not delivered at all. Upon waking up in a forested village filled with the cliched ruins and bumbling peasants, I was advised to seek out the Enderal-equivalent of a local shaman. What I got out of this long and treacherous trek to his hut was nothing more than an eligible montage which looked as if it was made for a high school art project. The concepts that this montage introduced were so complex, that I wouldn't be surprised if the developers expected it's fanbase to be able to decipher ancient markings in caves. The developers expect us to be dumb enough to ignore how cliche this beginning is, yet they expect us to be genius enough to understand their incomprehensible lore.

Never face an enemy without keeping the console commands in handy. The mod tricks you by giving you an easy group of opponents to face off with after leaving the starting village, but upon leaving a little further into the great unknown, be ready to cheat. While the enemies are generally easy to kill, they usually come in hordes that will devour you in mere seconds. Don't even try to run, because they will keep up and you will end up discovering a monster horde even deadlier than before. The game transforms you into a wimp until you can level up a few more times, but who would ever play the mod long enough to do that at this state?

The voice acting is amateur at best, which makes it hard to understand characters at times. The accents are thick and every character sounds angry at me. It's absolutely jarring when a character is smiling at me while screaming with the fury of a hate-group activist. It's almost as if everyone in the game is speaking an entirely different language! I would recommend turning down the volume and resorting to reading subtitles if you're playing this mod late at night; the sudden shrieking and shouting from NPCs is bound to upset the neighbors.

Lastly, I was not impressed by the amount of glitches I've encountered during my two-hour run. I sunk through the ground, got flung into the air, swam on land, and became encumbered for an unknown reason. My armour would never render in completely, so most of the time I was trapped wearing a nicely-shaped blur. I relaunched the mod countless times because my saves would become corrupted due to poor programming, and each time I returned my hope dwindled a little more.

The developers should've waited another year to release this damaged product. I see so much potential, yet instead of grasping for it, SureAI instead reached for an early release. So I will leave you with this question to ponder upon: who is the real victim here? The community for having to live with a disappointment in their lives, or SureAI for being pushed by harsh and demanding fanboys into releasing an incomplete product?