Nightcaster for the original Xbox was better by a mile. Of any game i've ever played in my whole life that involves magic, abilities, spells, whatever, this is the single worst system i've ever encountered. My single largest grievance against the game is the spell casting system. I figured that it would be unfair to judge the game on that experience alone, so i finished it anyway to ensure that there were no redeeming features. As soon as i saw that it took 10 minutes of my life to kill one enemy that is supposed to take 2 minutes, i had no desire to finish the game. It took me 10 minutes (no joke, there's a timer on the round) to kill the troll, simply because my bullets were doing such low damage. So, i had this terrible little pistol that i had to kill the troll with. Like in Fable, i'd chosen to go with melee the first time around. At this point in the game i had exactly 0 skill abilities purchased. You simply cannot get enough hits off to make it worth killing them with melee. These enemies are impossible to kill with melee. They have the little worms on their bodies that you shoot. The second fight that i hated was with the trolls. They don't do much damage, and they don't stun you often, but god damn that is annoying. However, two of the three segments are wide enough that the bandits can get far enough away from the defenses to continually plink at you. In this room, they give you a set of buttons to stand on that will shoot flame jets out of the wall and stun the bandits. The first fight that sticks out to me as amazingly lame is the circular room with three 'arms' that go out to the edge of the room, and bandits that circle around the room shooting you while more bandits run up to you and beat on you. What, do the chests smell like cats or something? The arena was shit compared to the first one. I could understand a unilateral benefit, but i'd rather be able to pick something other than some stupid little dog that rips throats out and barks at treasure chests. It's bad, because you look like a man and you're ancient looking by the end of the game if you're good. If you play as a chick and spend exp on physique, you get buff. Surprisingly enough, people will flee in fear if you have a blood aura, horns, and flies orbiting you. It was fun, had a good story line, and your actions did indeed affect the game. It may have been super linear, the good/bad spectrum was a bit simple, and you could easily combine magic powers with melee skill to become completely indestructible, but that's just about the only problem i had with the game. It met and exceeded all of my expectations, and i played it day after day for hours on end. I played Fable, and it blew my socks off.

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